ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the image and story of the mother love of God ought to predict other and more proximate stories, for example, stories of attitudes toward the civil liberties of communists, atheists, homosexuals, and militarists. Religious stories, particularly as they are expressed in images of God, will predict political, social, and familial stories. Catholics on the low end of the scale are less likely to be tolerant than moderate and liberal Protestants at the low end of the scale, perhaps because less gracious stories of God also have a greater impact on Catholics than they do on Protestants. If frequency of prayer affects attitudes toward the death penalty and, for Catholics, toward AIDS, one might not even want that kind of religion to disappear. Various measures of religious stories correlate positively with such public policy matters as civil liberties, feminism, the death penalty, AIDS, environmental spending, government intervention on the side of the poor, and cheating the government.
