“A society or a community is rooted in mutual affection” and “There is no commonwealth where there is no common interest”, as said by Jean Bodin.
We know that faith leads to each of the commonly accepted social virtues: altruism, cooperativeness, honesty, justice, liberty, and solidarity. Next, it is well understood that the development of group social virtues enforces the development of group trust. Now, since faith leads to social virtues, we can suggest that faith also leads to trust.
When people practice their faith together, “know one another, interact with one another each week”, they have a “model and a moral foundation” and can “trust one another to behave honorably”, according to Robert Putnam, who further suggests that faith leads to trust when he states that, “Trustworthiness lubricates social life” and social capital “rests on cultural roots” such as religion.
Francis Fukuyama confirms this when he states that “trust is not the consequence of rational calculation; it arises from sources like religion or ethical habit that have nothing to do with modernity.”
Further, according to Sanjeev Goyal, “overlapping social connections, reflected in trading links, of intermarriage, common religious affiliation, and physical proximity help in creating and sustaining trust and facilitating the functioning of a very high-value market.”
Taking from two separate article from Guiso, Sapienza, and Zingales (here and here): “We find that on average religion is associated positively with attitudes that are conducive to free markets and better institutions. Religious people trust others more, trust the government and the legal system more, are less willing to break the law, and are more likely to believe that markets’ outcomes are fair”. As trust has a “positive and statistically significant impact on the probability of becoming an entrepreneur”, and religious people are more typically trusting, religious people then have an increased “probability of being self-employed by 1.3 percentage points.” Finally, easing any doubts as to the correlation of faith to the development of mutual trust: “Being raised religiously raises the level of trust by 2 percent. If a person regularly attends religious services, the level of trust increases by another 20 percent. This effect differs across denominations; while Catholic and Protestant have roughly a similar positive effect, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist do not.” See below the chart “Effect Of Religion On Trust”, slightly modified from Guiso, Sapienza, and Zingales.
There is no doubt – yes, faith leads to trust.
Thanks for reading!