Ideology, Moral Cosmology, and Community in the United States
We propose an ideological/cosmological model to complement the three answers that have been offered to the Community Question: contentions that community is now lost, saved, or liberated. We hypothesize that the U.S. education system inculcates an individualistic ideology that disposes highly educated people to a weaker sense of community. We also hypothesize that the theologically modernist moral cosmology is inherently individualistic relative to the religiously orthodox cosmology and inclines those holding it to feel less of a sense of community. Through analyses of national survey data on people's feelings of community from their town or city, neighbors, friends, place of worship, co‐workers or fellow students, ethnic group members, and people met on the web, we find strong confirmation for both hypotheses. Education and moral cosmology are each more consistent predictors of people's sense of community across a range of communities than most of the variables in the conventional answers to the Community Question.