The Psychology of Religious Behaviour, Belief and Experience

Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Michael Argyle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317799030
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie in der Psychologie

Because society is increasingly secular, it may seem irrelevant to consider the psychology of religion. But the diversity of our multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society in fact makes religion more important to the social sciences than it has ever been before. What are the social consequences of religion? Every day the news is full of events that can be blamed on religion perpetrated by a range of groups from whole societies to individuals.
Beit-Hallami and Argyle are renowned for their clear, analytical approach to topics and this new, state-of-the-art study of psychology and religion is no exception. It will be welcomed as an update to their previous work in the area by social psychologists, sociologists and theologians worldwide.

Chapter 1

Religious phenomena and their interpretations

THE PHENOMENA: ECSTASY AND ROUTINE

The term ‘religion’ brings to mind countless baffling scenes and images, from saintliness to cruelty, and from art to madness. The wealth of religious behaviours and experiences seems to cover most areas of human culture and society, from great art to bloody conflict. Complexity and multivocality characterize religion at every level (Turner, 1974). For the individual, there are heights of joy and depths of depression and guilt. There are many claimed miracles, and some events and human accomplishments which may be judged as truly miraculous. Religion has served for most of human history as the inspiration for the finest art, from pre-historical cave art in Lascaux to not only the greatest compositions by J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel but also the greatest paintings in the history of Western art, by Michelangelo, Leonardo and countless others. Such works are capable of moving all audiences, regardless of religious affiliation or faith.

There is no intrinsically religious meaning in anything. Any object, person, time, or place may become imbued with holiness and thus gain religious meaning. Religious actions are defined solely by their relation to the religiously defined realm of holiness. Holiness is a realm of content, not psychological function or structure (Beit-Hallahmi, 1989). The idea of purity and pollution, a dimension of distance from the holy, serves as the starting point for numerous rituals, bringing about psychological gratification to individuals as well as benefits to group cohesion. Hindus, Orthodox Jews, and Moslems come to mind, but elements of ritual purity traditions are everywhere. All religions have created sacred space and time, structuring day-to-day life, and connecting secular activities with gradations of sacrality.

Religion in reality is joy in fellowship, warmth and belonging. We are touched when we experience the community of believers, conjoined in faith, security and camaraderie. At the same time we remember that such heightened community ties may also lead to depths of suffering and rivers of blood. At the social and communal level, religion has served as the inspiration to the heights of altruism and devotion, while being also the declared source of cruelty and moral depravity. For society there are schisms and conflicts, as well as unity and brotherhood, and actions that range from the sublime to the horrifying, from the absolute reverence for life of the Jains, to fanatic massacres committed by groups of believers in all societies and in all times.

History and current events show us that religion, or at least religious claims and identities, are involved in large-scale violence. A closer look at history shows us that violence rarely occurs in the context of small religious groups. It is tied to mass movements and large mobs, as in the Crusades or in more recent religious riots in India. In this respect religion is no different than other mass identities, such as nationalism, as a cause of violence and cruelty. In the cases of the conflict in West Asia between Israelis and Palestinians, or the conflict in Southeast Europe between Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians, or in Northern Ireland, religion does not seem to be the real cause, despite all appearances, but it clearly is not conducive to tolerance.

While we are prone to bring up cases where religion is implicated in violence and conflict, numerous instances of the opposite are quite important historically. Indian religious traditions show a potential for conflict, together with its total opposite. The Jain tradition of absolute respect for all forms of life has been an inspiration not only for Gandhi but also for (often secular) individuals and movements all over the world. In many religions we may find non-violence, but even more often we find the turning of aggression inward towards the self. This is, of course, already a psychological way of putting it, but this seems quite compelling, even obvious. Asceticism in its strong forms seems masochistic, and while its social consequences are more positive than that of religious violence, similar psychological questions must be raised. The most extreme form of religious self-sacrifice is martyrdom, encountered throughout human history. Group suicide as a form of martyrdom is the rarest form of turning aggression inwards. Often it is the result of total devotion to a ‘charismatic’ (or psychopathic) leader.

While dramatic acts of martyrdom are naturally short-lived, and only their memory lingers, less extreme ideals of charity and humility lead to continuous miracles of devotion and altruism. It seems that only religion has been able to produce these examples of unselfish service to others. The continuous, everyday martyrdom of religious altruism remains a shining example even when it is only rarely encountered.

One intuitive meaning of ‘religious’ is the spiritual, in the sense of being otherworldly, indifferent to material necessities or power relations in society. But we do find a tremendous range of differences in worldliness, first on the individual level, and then in terms of groups and movements. Some religious individuals do follow an ideal of withdrawal from the world which most of us find stunning. Others, while truly committed to religious ideals, manage to be very much in this world, not needing the structures of separation to bind them. While we see religious movements which aim at changing the world through prayer and charity, there are others who are ready to enter political struggles and dream of creating totally religious states, such as the Islamist integrists who are today active in North Africa and West Asia.

The dream of creating a truly religious government, unifying the political and the religious institutions, has always been part of human history. Revitalization through religious revival has been a common hope in many cultures. It is only that at the end of the twentieth century such an idea strikes us as out of place, but many are still ready to die for it.

What we call religious behaviour, that is, observable, measurable activity, which today can be easily filmed (if allowed), preserved, and then leisurely analysed, consists mainly of rituals. Ritual behaviour includes an enormous range of actions, all focused on worship, expressed through feasts or fasts, prayer or silence. The ideal of sacrifice is central to many forms of ritual. The worshipper is expected to give of himself or herself as evidence of true devotion.

Pilgrimages may be regarded as an elaborate form of ritual and sacrifice. On the road to the shrine of Santiago de Campostella in northern Spain, immortalized in countless works of art, pilgrims march for hundreds of miles in the hope of spiritual salvation and regeneration. Other pilgrimages all over the world are initiated in the hope of finding miracle cures, visiting relics (a hair from the beard of the prophet Muhammad in northern India) or tombs, places in which apparitions have been reported, or just a mountain considered sacred since time immemorial.

All over the world humans worship their ancestors within the family circle, and those worshipping today know, or hope, that they themselves will be the objects of such veneration in some future time. Humans also worship other humans who, they believe, have become divine, as they have moved up the ladder of sacredness and have become saints. Such saints, who are believed to provide protection from various dangers, are represented in shrines, pictures, and statues. Some entities are believed to have always combined human and divine qualities, and Christians worship the mythic figures of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ as both human flesh and blood, and supernatural. Not only humans but also animals are worshipped everywhere. In India devout Hindus maintain the goshala, which is a rest home for sacred cows past their prime. All rites and sacraments are held and performed to ensure eventual salvation at some final time of reckoning.

We are most struck by religious virtuosi and religious ‘professionals’, those who have decided to devote their lives to living out a religious ideal. It seems to us that to some clergy, and certainly to many members of religious orders, all of life is a ritual. When we observe the monks on Mount Athos, or nuns who have chosen to become the brides of Christ, we are stunned by their total commitment, and by the ritualized structure of their lives. We may get the same feeling from observing closed communities of believers, such as the Amish or Orthodox Jews. While the power of the Sufi brotherhood or any such religious community is striking, even more surprising is the solitary Jain monk reaching the heights of self-negation.

Solitary experience marks also the testimonials of great revelations and the ecstasy of the great mystics. These private miracles make up what we call the religious experience, when an individual is struck as if by lightning. These mysteries sometimes turn into torments, but most often are the source of individual redemption and great beauty. Conversions seem like another kind of miracle, unplanned initiations into certainty in old or new beliefs. But both religious experiences and conversions are ultimately social in their sources and consequences. Sharing infrequent private revelations and conversions with the majority of believers becomes a major ritual and a source of confidence. The ideal of metamorphosis for individuals and collectivities is nourished by the example of individual conversions.

Religion is about dreams and promises deeply believed and awaited, voyages to the realm of imagination where all things are possible. There are millennial dreams of heaven on earth, as well as promises of resurrection, and expected immortality. All promises are tied to the private and public calculus of sin and expiation, without which eternal punishment is expected. The idea of reincarnation as punishment or reward is extremely popular among humans, as well as the idea of nirvana, the final release from the endless chain of metamorphoses and metempsychoses.

For individuals, religion is experienced most vividly in such dramatic events as possessions, exorcisms, visions, apparitions, dream visions, and similar experiences. But we should resist this temptation to dwell on what is extravagant. Let us mention the non-dramatic, mass phenomena which make up the majority of religious behaviour. Most individuals experience religion through routine rituals, which are very much tied to security and structure. Dramatic quality is relative. Cow worship seems amazing to Europeans, while being totally routine to hundreds of millions in India.

Despite widespread secularization, especially in the developed world, religion is not just history. A global view reminds us that most humans regard themselves as followers of a religious tradition, even if their commitment to specific commandments may be partial only. They make up a clear majority of humanity, and two main traditions claim about a billion followers each (Islam and Hinduism), while Christianity in several varieties can claim even more, including almost one billion Roman Catholics.

As we observe this panorama of humanity engaged in religious actions, we may want to ask what do all of these have in common. Is there a red thread connecting Jains, Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs, Shintoists, Jews, and Christians? Religious ideas travel well. They move from one continent to another, finding new audiences and hospitable cultural environments. Mormons, coming from the New World of North America, find converts in old Europe, Africa, as well as Oceania. African ideas have found a home in the New World.

We are struck by the prevalence of similar customs, ideas, myths, and rituals. Syncretism seems to be the rule, rather than the exception, in all traditions. An ancient Judaic taboo about the mixing of milk and meat is found in East Africa, and stories told in India about Krishna are being told in Europe about Jesus. So what is the common core and the basic unity? In the next section we will try to specify this uniqueness.

DEFINING PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION

An academic field is defined by (a) a set of problems, topics, or questions, and (b) a range of research methods. The two sets, (a) and (b), create a unique field, whether it is chemistry, sociology, or psychology. The field of academic psychology is defined through its two components. In academic psychology set (a) includes questions about regularities in the behaviour of humans, that is, in their observable actions, as well as in human consciousness. Beyond looking for regularities, we seek to explain them by using various measurement techniques included in set (b). These consist of using experiments, questionnaires, and systematic observations. The verbal behaviour of individuals is a major source of data, but is treated as material to be weighed and analysed, not as evidence in itself. As will be very much in evidence throughout this book, concern and doubt about the adequacy of measurement techniques are always on psychologists’ minds, as they share many interests with the other human sciences, such as anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, folklore, and history.

Delineating the boundaries of the phenomenon to be studied is our next task. What do all religious phenomena have in common? The common denominator of all religious actions is made up of beliefs and claims. Some definitions of religion are very broad and include most systems of beliefs, philosophy or ethics. Religion is clearly an ideology, meaning ‘that part of culture which is actively concerned with the establishment and defense of patterns of beliefs and values’ (Geertz, 1964, p. 64). But it is clearly different from all other ideologies we know, such as left-wing or right-wing worldviews in politics, in the nature of its claims. Religion is a very particular kind of ideology, involving the individual in a unique commitment, in the absence of evidence or rational argument, and in a unique network of relationships, real and imagined. The working definition of religion we use here is the straightforward, everyday description of religion as a system of beliefs in divine or superhuman power, and practices of worship or other rituals directed towards such a power (Argyle and Beit-Hallahmi, 1975).

The irreducible belief core common to all religions contains the belief in spirits inhabiting an invisible world, and our relationship with them (Beit-Hallahmi, 1989). We will use the presence of the supernatural premise, or supernatural assumptions (Stark and Bainbridge, 1987), as the touchstone for defining certain human behaviours as religious. What is this premise?

It is the premise of every religion – and this premise is religion’s defining characteristic – that souls, supernatural beings, and supernatural forces exist. Furthermore, there are certain minimal categories of behavior, which, in the context of the supernatural premise, are always found in association with one another and which are the substance of religion itself.

(Wallace, 1966, p. 52)

All religions promote the idea of an invisible world, inhabited by various creatures, gods, angels, and devils, which control much of what happens to us. Ideas about the external control of the self are, of course, much more prevalent, and much older than ideas of human self-determination. Religion and occultism emphasize access to external forces controlling human destiny. ‘Magic suggests aid from sources lying in the unseen and in the unknown’ (Loomis, 1948, p. 3).

If our emphasis is clearly on a particular kind of belief we follow a respected tradition. William James described a separation of the visible and the invisible worlds:

Religion has meant many things in human history: but when from now onward I use the word I mean to use it in the supernaturalist sense, as declaring that the so-called order of nature, which constitutes this world’s experience, is only one portion of the total universe, and that there stretches beyond this visible world an unseen world of which we now know nothing positive, but in its relation to which the true significance of our present mundane life consists. A man’s religious faith … means for me essentially his faith in the existence of an unseen order of some kind in which the riddles of the natural order may be found explained.

(James, 1897, p. 51)

Thouless (1971) stated that what distinguished religious individuals from others is that they ‘believe that there is also some kind of spiritual world which makes demands on our behaviour, our thinking and our feeling’ (p. 12). And if we believe in the existence of the unseen world, then religion as a social institution is for us the mediator between the invisible supernatural world and the visible, human and natural world; but that institution, with the behaviours tied to it, does not exist without the belief in the supernatural.

While this definition may be too narrow to include some belief systems, it is broad enough to cover what to most human beings is connoted by religion, through their concrete historical experience. Our definition has the advantages of being concrete, historical, and close to the direct experience of the proverbial person on the street, the common believer. The psychological definition of religion has to be close to that which real people experience and recognize immediately, and such substantive definitions are in line with the traditions of scholarship in the study of religion.

The emphasis on the supernatural assumption in defining religion gives us first a clear distinction between religious and non-religious behaviours, and then a valid cross-cultural definition. The universality of our definition is based on the universality of beliefs in the world of the spirits. Despite the cultural variations and the claims for uniqueness, the description of supernaturalism is valid not just for Westerners, but also for Shintoists, Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs, and members of the thousands of other religious groups.

We should also discuss here the sphere of parareligious beliefs and practices, often referred to as superstitions (Jahoda, 1969). As stated above, there is a psychological and cultural continuity between normative religious beliefs and parareligious beliefs which are constituents of the occult folklore in every society. Religious and occult beliefs share the quality of offering certainty and completeness, in placing the self within a cosmic order (Zusne and Jones, 1982). In cultural praxis, parareligious beliefs are transmitted unofficially and orally, as folklore, whereas religious beliefs are part of an official sacred lore transmitted purposefully and officially and found in scriptures. The content of the two classes of beliefs and of the consequent practices is similar, contiguous, and consistent. Beliefs, as well as attitudes, tend to become organized structures and one may speak of an ‘occult ideology’ (Zusne and Jones, 1982) which parallels normative religion. The empirical correlates of the occult ideology are similar to those of normative religiosity.

RELEVANCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DATA AND FINDINGS

Why do people engage in religious acts? Is there a ‘pure’ religious behaviour, with no ulterior motives? These are the questions put before the psychologist of religion. What can we say about individuals who are of high religiosity, in any religious tradition, in terms of personal qualities? And then what can we say about the real world consequences for individuals of high religiosity? When individuals tell us that they espouse a certain belief system, what can we say about the ...