The religious ‘abiders’ abide, and succeed in school. Not so much for crazy drivers.

This week I couldn’t choose just one topic. I happened across two articles that were so interesting I wanted to pass both on to you.

The first concerns a documented correlation between teens’ religiosity and their academic success. The second looks at a sharp rise in aggressive driving during the pandemic and the related rise in pedestrian deaths.

▪ The Conversation is a forum in which scholars present their academic research in language accessible to general readers. This week, Ilana Horwitz, the Fields-Rayant Chair in contemporary Jewish life at Tulane University, wrote about her work on the academic performance of devout Christian teens, who some researchers refer to as “abiders.”

Abiders attend religious services at least once a week, pray daily and believe in God with absolute certainty.

Horwitz found that abiders significantly out-perform their peers when it comes to grade-point-average and the likelihood of completing college, even after accounting for other factors such as race, gender, geographic region and family structure.

For instance, Horwitz says, in high school 21 percent of working-class abiders report earning A’s, compared with 9 percent of non-abiders. Sixteen percent of working-class non-abiders later complete a college bachelor’s degree, while 32 percent of abiders do. Similar gaps are found among poorer and middle class teens as well.

One oddity: high-achieving abiders tend to choose less prestigious colleges than high achievers who aren’t as religious.

Horwitz suggests this might be because abiders, especially young women, “over and over mention life goals of parenthood, altruism and serving God,” rather than pursuing the high-powered careers often associated with studying at elite universities. They have different priorities.

Why is it that abiders perform better in high school and college? A sociologist, Christian Smith, speculates that religion “deters young people from risky behaviors, connects them to more adults and provides them more leadership opportunities,” in Horwitz’s summary.

Horwitz says interviews with abiders showed they’re “constantly working to emulate and please God, which led them to try to be conscientious and cooperative.” Traits such as conscientiousness and cooperation track well with school success, “in part because teachers value respect.”

A second oddity: the group of teens that does perform as well as the devout is, paradoxically, young atheists. Horwitz says only 3 percent of teens describe themselves as atheists, and there’s still a stigma attached to that label.

“The kinds of teens who are willing to go against the grain by taking an unpopular religious view are also the kinds of teens who are curious and self-driven,” she writes. “Rather than being motivated to please God by being well behaved, atheists tend to be intrinsically motivated to pursue knowledge, think critically and be open to new experiences. These dispositions are also linked with better academic performance.”

▪ Turns out it’s not just my imagination. People really are driving like lunatics during the COVID-19 pandemic. Other people are dying as a result.

The New York Times reported on a sharp increase in pedestrian fatalities around the country. States as far-flung as New Mexico and New Jersey have set all-time records.

It’s part of “a nationwide flare-up in reckless driving,” the Times explains. “In various initiatives to reverse the trends, authorities in one state after another are citing factors from the rise in anxiety levels and pandemic drinking to the fraying of social norms.”

Early on in the pandemic, traffic experts assumed pedestrian deaths would decline, as folks worked from home and restaurants and bars closed. But the experts were wrong.

“Empty roads allowed some to drive much faster than before,” correspondent Simon Romero writes. “Some police chiefs eased enforcement, wary of face-to-face contact. For reasons that psychologists and transit safety experts are just beginning to explain, drivers also seemed to get angrier.”

“There’s the feeling that the rules are suspended and all bets are off,” Dr. David Spiegel, director of Stanford Medical School’s Center on Stress and Health, says in the article.

If my observations are any indicator, this phenomenon doesn’t just endanger pedestrians crossing big-city streets. My travels these days consist mainly of driving from Mt. Sterling over to Lexington, a bucolic journey of 35 miles down I-64.

I’ve never been a nervous driver. Never given driving a second thought. But it’s begun to feel as if I’m taking my life in my hands every time I merge onto the interstate.

Semis tailgate in blinding thunderstorms, pickups zoom past at what must be—no exaggeration—100 miles an hour, SUVs weave in and out of traffic clusters with no regard for signals or even sanity. There have always been obnoxious drivers, yes, but in the past two years there’s been a palpable increase.

Mark Hallenbeck, director of the Washington State Transportation Center at the University of Washington, said this to the Times:

“There’s a portion of the population that is incredibly frustrated, enraged, and some of that behavior shows up in their driving. We in our vehicles are given anonymity in this giant metal box around us, and we act out in ways that we wouldn’t face to face.”

Please—calm down. Be kind. No matter how jangled you feel, you solve nothing by killing yourself or some stranger hauling her grandkids to ball practice or some teenager trying to cross the street.

Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling, Ky. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.