Sacred trust and secular impact: an examination of the societal influence of religious institutions in Africa

Does religion function primarily as a moral compass, a social identity, a political resource, or something else entirely? The limited philosophical conceptualisation of religious institutions and the recent research focus on trends in religious participation and belief in a deity render the debates on the (dis)confirmation of the secularisation thesis an unfinished business. The current research aims to (1) explore a broader conceptualisation of the sacredness of religious institutions and (2) examine the social, economic and political impact of religious institutions. We utilise the ninth wave of Afrobarometer survey data and generalised structural equation modelling (GSEM) to examine the secular trust-secular impact (ST-SI) model for Malawi, with a defined criterion for comparative analyses from Botswana and Seychelles. We find that religious institutions have a stronger influence on the social and political aspects of people’s lives in Malawi than in Botswana, where their influence is primarily evident in social spheres. On the other hand, we found that religious institutions significantly influence the economic aspects of people’s lives in Seychelles. Taken together, these cross-country patterns demonstrate that institutional religious influence does not decline uniformly with development but instead persists in differentiated, domain-specific forms. By shifting the focus from individual religiosity to institutional influence across societal domains, the study refines secularisation theory and shows how religion continues to shape society even in highly developed contexts.