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Your classification of "conformist" doesn't really work and indeed, you could just as well say "centring your religious behaviour around Scripture alone" is Conscientious. Especially when trying to tie it to the printing press and the Protestant Reformation - the printing press was the tool to challenge social orthodoxy, be it Pope or King, and the Reformers were not 'conforming' to anything but their 'consciences'. And they certainly were not liberals as you say "Conformists favour abolition and liberalism", as may be seen when the fringe movements of Dissenters etc. come into conflict with the new Protestant major denominations. Lutherans weren't any more soft on Anabaptists than the Calvinists.
Besides, the initial popularity of Christianity - if we take the example of Rome - was amongst (1) the lower classes, including slaves and (2) rich noble women, a strange mixture.
I don't think you can neatly divide Red Tribe/Blue Tribe along religious grounds. Religous affilation/behaviour as part of the tribal backgrounds, sure: the Blue Tribe tendency to be the "plain living and high thinking" that evolved into Boston Brahmanism of the Transcendental type, and the Red Tribe burned over district tendency in contradistinction, but in practice in both groups you have functional atheists/agnostics/freethinkers. The Blue Tribe may be more overt in being secular, but there are plenty of Red Tribe who are 'cultural Christians' only.
And would you define, say, Joe Biden as Blue Tribe or Red Tribe? Democrat - Blue Tribe; Catholic - Red Tribe (or Conscientious in your formulation); claims to working-class background - Red Tribe. But while he may mention his rosary beads, he's fully in line with the values on gay marriage, contraception, abortion, etc. So - Conformist or Conscientious? Red Tribe or Blue Tribe?
And how about someone from Red Tribe background and family, with Blue Tribe cultural tastes?
Yes, this is what I would define. In that the Conscientious follow the specific prescriptions of the bible, whereas the 'Conformists' would use the bible as a higher-order reasoning device from which to infer social principles. Both would have used the Bible, hence why they gained status relative to other groups, but would use the Bible in noticeably different ways. My train of thought on this is "ingroup conformity as a consequence of debate and disagreement," which I have slightly elaborated on elsewhere in this thread, but it's clearly confusing people and I need to explain it better or ditch it. Your criticism that the label of "Conformist" doesn't really work is taken, and I'll have to figure out how to define the cluster in a more appropriate way.
If I understand what you're saying, I disagree. Hating the outgroup isn't incompatible with being liberal.
Women grade measurably higher in agreeableness and conscientiousness, and as far as I'm aware have always been considerably more religious than men. Strange a priori I'd agree, but given what we know of the last 2000 years it's relatively unsurprising.
Just reading more about the Burned Over District, as I'm unfamiliar with it, but I would consider the Burned Over District to be heavily conformist (blue tribe). The sexual experimentation feels like a a pretty clear giveaway, especially relative to the heavily Presbytarian (red tribe) regions of New England that many of the immigrants to the Burned Over District originated from. One of my points, which I've poorly expressed, is that Conformists and the Conscientious represent two psychological dispositions that frequently splinter off each other. Even if heavy self-selection occurs, families will produce kids across a new continuum, and across generations families will once again self-select.
Blueish-Purple. Political leaders are often chosen for electability, so they frequently converge towards the mean of the electoral base.
I would consider them to be Purple. To the extent that they represent the Blue end of the continuum of traits that can be produced by Red Tribe parents, and will likely self-select into a more neutral environment.
I appreciate your comment, it's helped me identify some of the thoughts I need to clean up.
There's development in degrees in all this:
(1) First, we start off with the very convinced, those who believe the doctrines and follow the rules because they believe (although even sorting this out into "Abrahamic religions" ignores that, for instance, as soon as Moses had gone up the mountain to talk with God, the people waiting below in the camp started worshipping an idol from when they were in Egypt). That would be your "Conformists" in your typography
(2) Then the movement/religion gets more widespread. The traditional take on this is the Donation of Constantine and establishing Christianity as the state religion. Now, whether you really do believe all the doctrines or not, everyone is an X and you go along to get along. You go to church on Sunday, you say the right things. You may not be very well versed in the faith, you may not follow all the rules, but you're there.
(3) We get to a stage, be it during the Protestant Reformation or today, where it's more or less 'cultural Christianity'. X is the dominant social direction, so even if you don't believe a word of it, you don't stand up and shout about not believing a word of it. Everyone is worldly in practice, whatever about theory, Cue your "Conscientious" who arise and start reforming, be that Protestants going back to the "pure Gospel" or the modern social justice/CRT lot, who are all out to stamp out systemic racism and the likes. They are the zealous true believers.
(4) We get New Stage (2), which is probably where we are at now. Wokeness is now the new social and cultural dominant force. Companies bedeck themselves in Pride Flags for June and produce DEI policies for their mission statements. Even if you don't agree, you go along to get along.
So are we "Conscientious" or "Conformist"? We're 'conforming' to a 'conscientious' agenda. Rule-following = Conscientious, 'obey even if you disagree', Social conformity = Conformists, 'agree even if you disobey'. You can see how this is confusing terminology? If we take 'wokeness' to be the dominant social ideology of the moment, and that everyone is being pushed to "you must agree", then is that conforming (going along with social consensus) or conscientious (giving lip-service to the shibboleths, e.g. HR diversity training, while privately not believing "trans women are real women")?
I think I see what you are trying to get at, but you need to clear up your terminology. And, as I said, there is always an admixture of the True Believers and the wider mass of people who are just nodding and saying "yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir" be that cheering for the king this year as he passes by on royal progress, or cheering as they cut off the king's head next year.
Definitely, yes.
I think what I’m realizing is that my initial choice of terminology unintentionally framed this as two continuous factions that have “survived,” rather than the consequence of self-organization and a constant structural force.
Nonetheless, you’re correct the terminology is messy, compounding on an already messy concept.
Thank you for all the feedback.
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IME the red tribe is a lot blunter about their religion, and tends to say things like ‘I’m not very religious’ or ‘church helps a lot, you should check out mine’, while blue tribers don’t like overt discussions of religion beyond superficiality.
Blue tribe adult converts to or second gen raised by blue tribe converts to non-Christian, especially non-Abrahamic religions tend to be very open to overt discussions about religion. Typically Wiccans, blue flavors of Neopaganism or various Buddhist sects (ironically Soka Gakkai codes blue in the US in-spite of Komeito being an LDP partner).
Did not know that about Soka Gakkai. I was under the impression they were universally a conservative sect- are these regular blue tribers or conservative blue tribers?
And is red tribe Neo-paganism a thing? I know some are conservative but was under the impression that aside from a few Nazis with ties to organized crime these were mostly blue tribe conservatives, while red tribers who think American Protestantism is too modern become orthodox or tradcath.
I know wiccans are open about religion, though, probably should have specified.
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I think easier to sort them into "spiritual but not religious" and "religious but not spiritual" 😁
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