The legacy media often portrays the rise of irreligion as harmless—merely a matter of Americans owning up to their declining belief in God—but a groundbreaking new study reveals a terrifying correlation between the increase of Americans who identify with no religion and upticks in rape and suicide rates.
The Ph.D. sociologist who uncovered this connection argues for universal school choice, especially programs that enable parents to direct the education funds for their students to religious schools, in order to preserve the self-control that accompanies religious observance, according to his research.
“If the parents want to choose religious schools and want to preserve the religious faith of their children, well, my research indicates that’s going to be very good for everyone,” Philip Truscott told The Daily Signal in a Zoom interview Tuesday. A sociologist who earned his Ph.D. from the University of Surrey in England, Truscott taught as a professor of sociology at Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri, for 10 years, ending in July.
If religion makes a comeback, “everybody’s less likely to be a rape victim, everybody will have less need for public expenditure on mental health, because for every completed suicide, you get like 10 that are attempted suicides,” he said.
Rape and Religion
The academic journal Journal of Sociology and Christianity published Truscott’s abstract “Rape, Suicide, and the Rise of Religious Nones,” in its fall 2024 edition.
In the paper, Truscott compares five sets of data: the rape reports colleges and universities submit to the Department of Education, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (where police departments report rapes), the Pew Religious Landscape Survey from 2014 (where respondents identified their religion as “none”), the Public Religion Research Institute’s surveys from 2014 onward (where respondents recorded their religious affiliation as “unaffiliated”), and the suicide rates reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Truscott’s analysis showed a very clear correlation between increases in the rate of Americans identifying as religious “nones” and rape and suicide rates.
The study shows the sample correlation coefficient, or “r value,” the measure of how closely one variable relates to another; in this case, rape rates and the rise in “nones.” It also shows the “p value,” the probability that the correlation between two values would have occurred by chance.
“R values” range from zero (no correlation) to 1 or -1, representing a perfect correlation, whether positive or negative. Truscott pointed The Daily Signal to the methodology of statistician Jacob Cohen, who said that an “r value” between .1 and .3 represents a “small” association, while one between .3 and .5 represents a “medium” association, and one between .5 and 1 represents a “large” association.
An R-squared of .2, so a Pearson's R of about .4, is a moderate-to-large correlation per Cohen's guidelines by the way. pic.twitter.com/FH4ebZIS4p
— Alexander (@datepsych) May 18, 2023
Lower “p values,” by contrast, show the likelihood that a correlation is the result of chance. “P values” below 0.05 or 0.01 are considered statistically significant.
Truscott finds a positive correlation between the proportion of the population declaring no religious affiliation and the rape rate on campus. For every year besides 2015 and 2020—when many colleges suspended in-person classes amid the COVID-19 pandemic—the rates of reported rape on campus aligned with the increasing rates of American “nones.” He did not explain why the 2015 correlation proved weaker.
Beginning in 2018, the “nones” rate began to increase along with the police reports on rape in the Uniform Crime Report.
Truscott also finds that an increase in the suicide rate corresponded to the increase in the rate of “nones,” though not as closely. The nationwide suicide rate increased alongside the UCR rape rate, with a far greater correlation.
To demonstrate the correlation between the Uniform Crime Report rape rate and the rise of American “nones,” Truscott plots the rates side-by-side on the chart below.
He also compares national suicide rates with the rise of religious “nones.”
Rape Reporting Objections
Truscott told The Daily Signal that he found it difficult to publish his results because many academic journals lean to the Left and attempted to poke holes in his research. He also said feminists claim that the official reports of rape represent an undercount of the true number, because many victims hesitate to come forward.
Truscott’s survey analyzes the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey, which tends to pick up more rape reports because it asks people if they have been victimized by a crime, rather than relying on police reports. Truscott finds that while UCR rape totals represent an undercount of real rapes, they align with the true count.
The FBI altered its definition of rape in 2013, broadening it to include many types of sexual assault. The survey shows that the UCR data (using the new and legacy definitions) correlates with the rates of rape and sexual assault in the National Crime Victimization Survey.
The NCVS data correlates strongly with the UCR legacy definition data (r=0.669, p.<0.001) and it correlates even more strongly with the UCR revised definition data (r=0.74, p.=0.57). The “p value” is low because the revised definition counts are only available from the year 2013, while the legacy definition data goes back to 1993.
The Self-Control Theory of Rape
Truscott’s study finds a large correlation between the suicide rate and the Uniform Crime Report rape rate across America between 2014 and 2019, and suicides are predominantly male in that period (between 76.9% and 78.4%). He notes that “one tangible indicator of declining male self-control (the suicide rate) makes it plausible that another indicator of declining male self-control (actual rape attacks) might be varying in the same direction.”
He cites a 2012 study finding that non-religious people tend to drink more alcohol and use more illegal drugs. He cites a 2010 study finding that binge-drinking, marijuana, and illicit drugs are associated with increased probabilities that the user will commit rape, “in which case these victimless crimes succeeded in finding victims.”
“To put it another way, some nonreligious men made a short moral step into substance use and then, in a diminished state of self-control, made a much larger one into criminality,” Truscott adds.
He cites previous social science data demonstrating that religiosity corresponds with self-control.
“The less self-control a person has, the more likely they are to be a rapist,” Truscott told The Daily Signal.
He encouraged media outlets, especially publicly funded outlets like National Public Radio, to reconsider promoting irreligion.
“I do think it’s important where there are public institutions that think it’s clever or good to promote irreligion or promote the decline of religion—like, say National Public Radio. They need to cool it,” Truscott said. “They need to really live up to their claims of neutrality and give equal sides to both parts of the argument.”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect the meaning of scientific terms more accurately.