Research on the impact of religion has been marked by a recurrent flaw: the failure to analyze the greater social context of religion. The present study addresses this by inspecting the impact of Catholicism on suicide in two socio-culturally different regions in the state of Louisiana. A multiple regression analysis of county suicide rates, however, finds no evidence for a contextual effect. Catholicism does not reduce suicide in the historically French Catholic, southern region of the state, and it does not increase suicide in the historically Anglo-Saxon, Protestant northern region of the state. The results tend to question the religious networks and religious integration perspectives.
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