Abby Day - Religion and İndividual - Belief, Practice, Identity
Abby Day - Religion and İndividual - Belief, Practice, Identity
Abby Day - Religion and İndividual - Belief, Practice, Identity
This volume brings together a significant set of reflections on the meaning of religion
for the individual as well as society. In doing so it makes a timely and valuable
contribution to our understanding both of individualizing tendencies within religion,
and of appropriate theoretical and methodological responses to that shift.
Professor Linda Woodhead, Director AHRC/ESRC
Religion and Society Programme, Lancaster University, UK
How are people religious and what do their beliefs, practices and identities mean to
them?
The individual’s place within studies of religion has tended to be overlooked recently
in favour of macro analyses. Religion and the Individual draws together authors
from around the world to explore belief, practice and identity. Using original case
studies and other work firmly placed in the empirical, contributors discuss what
religious belief means to the individual. They examine how people embody what
religion means to them through practice, considering the different meanings that
people attach to religion and the social expressions of their personal understandings
and the ways in which religion shapes how people see themselves in relation to
others. This work is cross-cultural, with contributions from Asia, Europe and North
America.
THEOLOGY AND RELIGION IN INTERDISCIPLINARY PERSPECTIVE
SERIES IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE
BSA SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION STUDY GROUP
Other titles published in the BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group Series
A Sociology of Spirituality
Edited by Kieran Flanagan and Peter C. Jupp
ISBN 978-0-7546-5458-2 (HBK)
Materializing Religion
Expression, Performance and Ritual
Edited by Elisabeth Arweck and William Keenan
ISBN 978-0-7546-5094-2 (HBK)
Edited by
ABBY DAY
University of Sussex, UK
© Abby Day 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Abby Day has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,
to be identified as the editor of this work.
Published by
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Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.
Contents
Introduction 1
Abby Day
Part I: Belief
10 Accommodating the Individual and the Social, the Religious and the
Secular: Modelling the Parameters of Discourse in ‘Religious’ Contexts 143
Peter Collins
Index 197
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
Tables
As with other books in the series, this collection was inspired by an international
gathering of scholars discussing an important theme within the sociology of religion.
The focus of the conference of the Sociology of Religion Study Group of the British
Sociological Association (BSA) held at the University of Manchester in 2006
was ‘Religion and the Individual’, a theme chosen to provoke dialogue between
psychologists and sociologists of religion. Eleven of the papers in this volume were
commissioned from scholars who presented at that conference; a further two were
commissioned from presenters at the 2007 BSA conference who contributed to a
specially designed stream, Religious Identity in Contemporary Contexts.
Contributors to this volume shaped their work to reflect a common theme: how
do individuals engage with religion to create and express meaning? Although it is a
commonplace within the sociology of religion that the individual’s religious beliefs,
practices and identities are influenced by social contexts, the question for individuals
is often ‘what does this mean to me’? The work published here discusses that question
from a variety of disciplinary perspectives: sociology, psychology, anthropology,
and theology. Much of the work is empirical, drawn from international contexts,
but some is expressly theoretical. Methods vary according to the questions being
explored: we have large-scale quantitative studies and micro qualitative work. What
matters here is not epistemological preference, but rather how in fact people are
religious and what their beliefs, practices and identities mean to them.
Accordingly, the collection has been organised into three parts. The first explores
‘belief’ in terms of what belief means to the individual. Douglas Davies begins
by exploring why the individual became sidelined in sociology and, rather more
importantly, why we lack an analytical category within which sociological and
psychological factors can complement each other to allow the individual to reappear
within sociological studies. Janet Eccles conducted doctoral research in north-west
England, revealing what she described as the ‘hiddenness’ of relational forms of the
sacred, and what those mean to two kinds of women: those who are active church-
goers, and those who have left the church.
Exploring belief amongst those do not attend church is also taken up in the next
chapter by Sylvia Collins-Mayo as she looks at the nature and meaning of prayer
in young people’s daily lives in the UK, particularly amongst those who have little
or no contact with institutional religion. Xiaowen Lu, Richard O’Leary and Yaojun
Li look in depth at the meaning of religious belief in China. Although China is the
most populous state in the world, there has been limited inquiry into the relationship
between socio-economic development in contemporary China and the individual
value orientations of Chinese people.
2 Religion and the Individual
Part II of the book explores different ways in which people are religious in
practice, considering the different meanings that people attach to religion, and the
social expressions of their personal understandings. From Singapore, researcher
Jayeel Serrano Cornelio considers what may account for the success of what is termed
‘new-paradigm Christianity’. Another form of religious practice and its related
meaning is explored by Kevin S. Reimer, Alvin C. Dueck, Joshua P. Morgan and
Deborah E. Kessel. Here, we move explicitly from an exclusive Christian context as
explored thus far in the volume and consider life experiences, attitudes and practices
of exemplar Muslim and Christian peacemakers who effect positive change under
difficult and often dangerous circumstances. The theme of autonomous practices
within a wider religious context is picked up by Rob Warner in the UK with his
study of Spring Harvest, the largest charismatic-evangelical conference in Britain.
From practices of commitment, peace-making and individual choice-making, we
conclude this section on a more prosaic note: what do religious people mean by
‘giving’ and how do they practise their religion through what they do with their
material wealth? Ali Çarkoğlu used survey data to probe how Muslims in Turkey
practised philanthropy.
Finally, what religion means to people often shapes and reflects how they see
themselves. This does not happen in isolation, but necessarily in relation to others.
In Part III of the book we explore identities and the tensions between external
and internal meanings and constraints. David Bell dresses the stage theoretically
by arguing that the meaning of religious identity has been clouded and ill-defined.
He provides a theoretical foundation for measuring religious identity and proposes
further research into types of religious institutions that promote different aspects of
religious identity.
From his perspective as an anthropologist, Peter Collins seeks initially to
interrogate two apparently opposite modes of being in religious contexts –
individuality and sociality. He introduces what he describes as a complicating
factor, the plane of ‘secular discourse’, to show how the terms ‘religious’ and
‘secular’ represent a second dichotomy which may contribute fundamentally to a
misunderstanding of religious contexts. Russell Sandberg discusses how lawyers and
sociologists have often wrestled with the question of defining religion, and yet there
has been little sociological commentary on the various definitions and conceptions
of religion found in law. He works to address this omission within a Durkheimian
theoretical framework. A struggle to define a sense of identity is described by Michael
Keenan as he looks at how Anglican male gay clergy manage the coexistence of gay,
Christian and clerical identities. The way that the men connect life sectors, such as
sexual and professional identities, provides a meaning framework for individuals.
Concluding our volume, Andrew Dawson explores the new religion of Santo Daime
in Brazil and discusses the fabrication of religious identity by urban middle-class
daimistas through their appropriation of millenarian motifs traditionally associated
with Brazil’s rural poor.
I am grateful to all the authors for their work and for the privilege and pleasure
it has been working with them. We hope you find this volume engaging, provocative
and useful in your learning, teaching and research.
Introduction 3
Acknowledgements
Cultural Intensification:
A Theory for Religion
Douglas Davies
Nor love thy life. Nor hate: but what thou liv’st
Live well, how long or short permit to Heav’n.
Here, as throughout its length, John Milton’s Paradise Lost presents a volume in
a phrase (Book XI:550). Such poetically descriptive brevity permits a wisdom not
easily achieved in prose. Its power lies in a literary intensification of thought and
feeling: cognitive and affective dimensions of life unite in a heightened impact upon
the hearer. Drama, too, takes recognizable problems normally requiring decades to
play themselves out in life and presents them in an hour. Religious ritual, for its
part, also integrates texts and drama, and often enhances this pervasive process. Yet,
despite its omnipresence, there is no general analytical category available to embrace
these social contexts in a manner that allows sociological and psychological factors
to complement each other in such a way that the individual may reappear within
sociological studies.
One potential candidate for this theoretical vacancy lies in the notion of ‘cultural
intensification’. Accordingly, the purpose of this chapter is to define the term and
consider reasons for its acceptance as such. While Milton’s lines reveal a literary
case of ‘cultural intensification’ other examples could as easily be drawn from
iconographic, ideological or musical domains as from historical, contemporary or
mythical individuals and their social effects. To approach such contexts in terms
of ‘cultural intensification’ is, potentially, to gain a new and expanded socio-
psychological perspective upon familiar things.
‘Cultural intensification’ can be taken both as a category embracing a wide
variety of behaviours and as a process identifiable within them in which the values
of a group are brought to a behavioural focus and emotionally appropriated. It
assumes an integration of sociological and psychological ideas in the interpretation
of social life whilst providing a reference category for diverse and well-known social
scientific analytical concepts not least those of embodiment and rites of passage, as
well as less familiar notions such as rites of intensification from which this category
has been developed by extension. The rest of this chapter explores these issues on
the assumption that the individual is the focal point of embodiment.
8 Religion and the Individual
Uniting Divisions
Historically speaking, the sociological study of religion has often assumed the
procedural necessity of distinguishing between methods utilizing what it defines as
social facts on the one hand and psychological ones on the other. Here Durkheim’s
formal influence in seeking sociological explanation only in terms of what he saw as
social facts and not from psychological causes has been overly effective irrespective
of whether he followed the distinction himself in accounting for totemic ritual,
and despite his affirmation that ‘the study of psychological facts’ is valuable for
the sociologist (1938, 111). In the process the individual was lost amidst the social
group. Other contemporaries, including anthropologists Rivers (1916, see Slobodin
1997) and Bateson (1936), did seek to integrate these domains as did numerous later
anthropologists (for example, J. Davies 1982) though sociological work on religion
could easily ignore these dimensions and also leave the individual in theoretical
exile. David Lyons’ (2006) recent reflections on the body, for example, has a focus
more upon the 1990s including Bryan Turner (1996) and Mellor and Shilling (1997),
with an absence of anything anthropological (for example, Blacking 1977). This
divide between anthropology and sociology is widespread and as regrettable as that
between sociology and psychology, though there is no guarantee that either will
bring the individual as such into greater prominence
Today, however, little is to be gained by isolating the social facts constituted
by values, beliefs and the social organization of life from the psychological
facts constituted by emotions and varieties of feeling states as is increasingly
acknowledged within religious studies at large (Rue 2005), even though the formal
study of emotions is, itself, in its early stages (Frijda 1986). It is with that recognition
in mind that this chapter explores the notion of ‘cultural intensification’ as a means
of fostering the integration of cognitive and affective streams of life.
Theoretically, cultural intensification has obvious intellectual roots beginning with the
fundamental sociological, psychological and theological challenge of understanding
the relationship between individual and society. Within those disciplines the interface
of socially or divinely established rules for social life and the personal and collective
emotional engagement with them assumes primacy of place. More specifically, within
the social sciences of sociology and, to a lesser extent, anthropology ‘meaning-
making’ has generally been credited with a philosophical background, especially
in phenomenological philosophy, an issue I have analyzed in association with the
question of how ‘meaning’ might relate to the notion of ‘salvation’ in religious
traditions (D.J. Davies 1984). Psychology, by contrast, has been more experimental
in pursuing the meaning achieved in and through the processes of human cognition
as well as their limits (Pinker 1997). What is often ignored is just how individuals
achieve meaning within the broad bands offered by their society and by their personal
temperament. Here the study of biographical narrative is invaluable, but demands a
sense of plasticity between ‘the social group’ and personal construal of life.
Cultural Intensification: A Theory for Religion 9
The more specific origin of ‘cultural intensification’ in this chapter, however, is
anthropological, developed from Chapple and Coon’s (1947) anthropological notion
of ‘rites of intensification’, ritual moments in which a group gathered to re-engage
with their basic values, an approach clearly echoing Durkheimian notions of society
generating the very categories of thought and fostering the emotional experiences
bringing them to practical life. Chapple and Coon do, however, offer a specific term
that easily identifies the issue of a person’s affective engagement with the values of
their society and it is unfortunate that it never gained the popularity of Van Gennep’s
notion of rites of passage. While the latter have not only become popular but are
often abused through inappropriate application the former have been largely ignored.
In seeking to correct this omission it might be valuable, for example, to identify rites
of passage as one subset of rites of intensification, for Chapple and Coon’s concept
denoted ritual behaviour in which participants do not engage in transition but in
a repeatedly renewed familiarity with and commitment to their group’s values. In
this sense, for example, Christian participation in the Eucharist or daily prayer, or
the Muslim’s daily prayers all serve as rites of intensification even though some
loose interpretation might be tempted to see them as rites of passage into and out of
’holy’ states. The sheer familiarity with concepts is a temptation for inappropriate
application, certainly as far as rites of passage are concerned. A wider familiarization
with rites of intensification could, alone, be valuable in fostering more appropriate
application of ideas and allow for individual appropriation of values and not simply
for shifting status positions.
The move from Chapple and Coon’s rites of intensification to the idea of
cultural intensification is relatively simple, involving a shift from the specific to
the general. Cultural intensification simply describes the wider process of which
rites of intensification are narrower manifestations. It describes a wide collection of
rites, events and phenomena in and through which the values and beliefs of a society
are related to the emotional and sensory dynamics of individuals as members of a
society. Cultural intensification is a concept able to direct analyses of a multiplicity
of social events whilst also giving them both a sense of direction and of family
resemblance. The remainder of this chapter sets out a variety of such events and
discusses a selection of more theoretical concepts in current use to illustrate the
value of this relatively abstract and unifying notion of cultural intensification.
Culture
There are, of course, many ways of approaching this configuration of concept and
affect, here I mention only Durkheim, Turner, Bloch and Geertz. Durkheim (1915)
argued for an essentially sociological treatment of ritual as a process in which
members of a group bring their basic ideas to mind and engage with them in and
through the acts performed, the objects used and the place of performance. Yet his
work is rooted in the experiential mood shifts of ritual participants. Geertz (1973)
by contrast, admits moods into the motivations of devotees in the symbolic ritual
of religious institutions as his much debated cultural definition of religion made
clear. In a very similar fashion Victor Turner (1996) also directly linked thought and
feeling in his notion of ritual symbols as constituted by ideological and sensory poles
and by the process of condensation of many ideas onto a single focus that echoes
Freud’s psychological notion of condensation. That kind of integration of the rational
and emotional, the cognitive and affective domains of life, in ritual performance
exemplifies Chapple and Coon’s rite of intensification and can, as already indicated,
be taken as a subset of ‘cultural intensification’. Finally, Maurice Bloch’s (1992)
theory of rebounding conquest can also be interpreted as an expression of cultural
intensification, especially in the way he developed both van Gennep and Victor
Turner‘s emphasis upon liminality in transition rites to stress that individuals do not
simply change status through initiation but may also be emotionally or existentially
changed to some degree.
At this point it is worth trying to clarify the meaning of the ‘values’ that are manifest
in ritual and identify them as ideas invested with a degree of emotional intensity.
Most often such values are the ideas by which a society directs its communal life
with the members of society not being neutrally related to them. The very process
of socialization involves the inculcation of values that become second nature to the
individuals concerned whose sense of identity is partly composed of these values,
but there is always the possibility of idiosyncrasy emerging whether perceived as
deviant or revelatory.
It is also useful to distinguish between ideas and values, taking ideas to be
foundational concepts grounded in basic social categories that are constitutive of a
society’s way of life. An idea is usually a word or phrase that summarizes a way of
understanding part of the world around us and, indeed, of understanding ourselves.
Ideas are often names of or for things, helping us relate to our environment, they
are foundational to the process of meaning-making that is a characteristic activity
of human beings. The expression ‘to have an idea’ takes this process a little further,
describing the way in which a person makes new connections between things, and
this reveals the creative capacity to adapt to the world. And there may be no emotional
Cultural Intensification: A Theory for Religion 11
charge associated with such an idea. Ideas may, however, come to assume the status
of a value in which emotion is vested and identity aligned. Such is the contemporary
situation with the idea of evolution when it comes either to frame an atheist identity
or an anti-evolutionist stance whose identity is emotionally lodged in creationism. In
the latter case ‘creation’ becomes transformed from an idea into a value.
So, not all ideas are values. Many ideas are abstract labels for things both in
the tangible world as in the realms of imagination, but values emerge from ideas
as those ideas becoming increasingly significant for identity, for the organization
of life and its many forms of relationships. The idea of a ‘father’ for example can
remain simply at the level of an idea and can be compared in different societies in
which the ‘father’ is viewed in a wide variety of ways. But when individuals speak
of the place of the ‘father’ in their own smaller world then ‘father’, or perhaps we
might say ‘fatherhood’, comes to be a value: it is an idea in which particular forms
of emotion are invested.
What then of the notion of ‘belief’, how does that resemble and differ from
‘idea’ or ‘value’? Here I will not examine even a fraction of the extensive academic
discussion that has gone into analyses of belief (for example, Needham 1972) but
will simply regard beliefs as the way in which people describe the values they
perceive as central to their own sense of identity and to the meaningfulness of the
social group to which they belong. So we may say that key or prime values function
as beliefs. The focus lies on the subjective and social function of the belief within
identity formation and the meaningfulness of the world rather than on any objective
content of the belief.
By approaching beliefs by this route of values as ideas vested with emotional
significance, there is no need to argue for beliefs as pertaining essentially to what is
often called religion. Religious beliefs can simply take their place alongside other
forms of belief for these are simply ideas relating to what a particular society may
define as religion, politics, the natural environment or whatever. I will not assume
that a belief concerning what a person regards as invisible and supernatural beings
or powers is any different from a belief that there are laws governing how history
unfolds or how individuals align themselves through marriage, work or play. Finally,
it is worth mentioning ‘attitude’ as a means of pondering the nature and degree of
the emotional charge brought to bear upon an idea. Quite often we find that attitudes
bear a very strong family resemblance to values in that they involve a degree of
emotional attachment or detachment. In many contexts an attitude would be thought
to express a lower degree of investment of emotional energy than would a ‘belief’.
When ideas are invested with an emotional energy to form a value we often find it
occurs through some kind of group activity, and when values are described as beliefs
that activity often takes the form of ritual behaviour.
Embodiment
To pay so much attention to the emotional charge vested in ideas to yield values,
and to identify the core values of a group in terms of belief that involves ritual
behaviour, means that it is inevitable that we arrive at a discussion of what has come
12 Religion and the Individual
to be called embodiment (for example, Csordas 1994). By embodiment I refer to the
process by which beliefs come to be part of the very way in which a person comes
to be constituted and behave, acknowledging the integration of ‘nature and nurture’
factors within the individual. In more traditional terms one often speaks of ideas as
something one thinks about, in the present context one would wish to speak more in
terms of values as something practised. If those values hold primacy of place such
that they may be viewed as beliefs then one could easily speak of ‘behaving belief’.
To behave, practise or perform a belief is a perfectly natural way of ‘thinking’ about
human life.
The entire process of human socialization as babies and children, along with
the many subsequent learning experiences as people become parts of new groups
or institutions, involves the acquisition of new behaviour patterns. As a body we
imitate others amongst whom we live, and we learn new forms of activity that are,
themselves, grounded in particular beliefs. The body itself is a complex system in
which biochemical processes are of fundamental importance in providing a feeling-
state for the individual. Some of the feelings that our bodies give us are provided
with names by our societies whilst others remain unnamed and are known only to the
individuals concerned. The use of the word ‘emotion’ is valuable in describing some
of these feeling-states and different societies tend to favour particular lists of their
own as numerous anthropological studies spotlighting emotion have shown (Corrigan
2004; Milton and Svasek 2005). But our biochemical systems are, themselves, open
to influence by our thoughts, by new experiences and by old memories (d‘Aquili
et al. 1979). To recall a particular life event may, for example, bring a feeling of
pleasure or of pained embarrassment even if we are alone when the memory occurs,
such is biography embodied. The interface between personal experience and social
life is, for example, clearly evident in contexts of justice, injustice and law. This
intricate intimacy I have emphasized elsewhere through the notion of ‘moral-somatic’
relationships that describes how the moral domain of social values pervades the very
somatic base of individual life (D.J. Davies 2001).
Groups are grounded in their own moral-somatic syndromes and exist to foster
sentiments, feelings and memories binding believers and cherished ideas. Ritual
and ceremonial behaviour, fired by narrative language and calculated silence
serves the purpose of cultural intensification as in the obvious cases of legal and
religious institutions. Laws and legal judgments as well as doctrines and liturgical
formulae offer clear examples of how a society’s values are expressed, embodied
and implemented. When the fact that a convicted criminal shows no remorse is noted
by a judge it is because the moral-somatic domain appears to be untouched. It is the
social recognition of the dynamics of moral-somatic factors that has, for example,
seen the wisdom of allowing victims to speak in court and express their own distress.
In many religious contexts the place of confession, of testimony and of worship has
long engaged in the moral-somatic interface of ideology and embodied emotion.
And such experiences tend to be enhanced through the built environment in which
Cultural Intensification: A Theory for Religion 13
they are pronounced. The court of law or the church helps frame the linguistic forms
of a vow or a prayer in a dramatic way, often bringing a sense of history and a
society’s past to bear upon the present and, in that very moment, contributing to the
intensifying of the prime values involved
The role of particular places or buildings is also of fundamental importance in this
stimulation of feeling-states as part of the wider process of cultural intensification.
Cultures possessing ancient monuments and long-standing architectural features
use these as environments of memory. The history of a people or group becomes
embedded in them, often through the material culture of sculpture, art or memorials
to individuals and past events that, together, help compose the story of that people.
This narrative comes to be foundational for cultural intensification by providing a
focus for the way people feel in the present about things that have happened in the
past and which help interpret contemporary life and give some sense of how to
engage with the future. Here memory and hope cohere (Harvey 2000). A great deal
of cultural appraisal and the expression of a society’s sense of itself emerges both
in architecture and place. Indeed, today’s dominant political issues are preoccupied
precisely with the cultural intensification aligned with buildings and places deemed
sacred by Jews, Moslems and Christians. Another reason why more attention is now
paid to the nature of building and place than has been for centuries concerns the
environment, as people see their own nature enhanced or nullified when even a single
building, let alone its civic, urban, or rural environment, may be viewed as related
to climatic aspects of the world’s ecological destiny. Here, too, a process of cultural
intensification may apply when basic values and the emotions aligned with them are
brought to focus on building design. No building stands alone, none ‘an island’ unto
itself. Lindsay Jones’s (1993) insightful analysis of architecture and place embodies
this in the notion of a ‘ritual architectural event’ in which the hopes and expectations of
people interplay with the allurement inherent in a structure and its potential promise.
The existence of a building such as London’s Westminster Abbey exemplifies the
notion of an allurement of place associated with the historical events that have taken
place within it. The fact of the Abbey’s geographical setting amidst other places
of similar historical asociations further enhances its capacity of allurement. When
a formal ritual such as a royal wedding, funeral or coronation takes place in such
an architectural environment the scene is set for cultural intensification. Indeed,
coronation rites offer a prime example of this process as theological ideas and deep
historical resonances focus in vows taken and ceremonial acts performed upon the
Monarch’s body, as much of Mary Douglas’s early embodiment studies demonstrate
(1966; 1970). Cultural intensification of social values is, here, inseparable from
their embodiment in an individual as Head of State. Here the acclamation for the
monarch’s life, vivat regina, is quite telling, uniting as it does, biological life and
social office. One final example will reinforce this point: viz., the death of one of
the world’s greatest operatic tenors, Enrico Caruso (1873–1921), who sang at New
York’s Metropolitan Opera no fewer than 607 times. His sudden death in his beloved
Naples was marked by the entire city with ‘the sorrow of hundreds of thousands
of the dead man’s fellow citizens … shared by millions all over the world’, and
with King Victor Emmanuel, granting the use of his royal basilica of San Francisco
di Paola for the ceremony (Ybarra 1954, 222). Caruso’s funerary rites present a
14 Religion and the Individual
distinctive case of cultural intensification in which national identity is complemented
by the international love of music both embodied in a large-hearted individual in the
vanguard of that twentieth-century celebrity culture.
Underlying great people, the sacred places marking ethnic, national or religious
identity, or natural locales of ecological health, the issue of survival predominates. It
is evident in long-standing and widespread graves that should not simply be viewed
as memorials of the past but also as symbols of endurance, of the ongoing survival
of a society, often in the link between ancestor and descendant that is perpetuated in
the rites for ancestors that are performed by the living (Prendergast 2005). Survival,
perhaps the foundational drive is as evident amongst human beings as amongst
other animal species and cultural intensification is a way of describing the social
manifestation of biological life.
Intensification Behaviour
Situational Intensification
Conclusion
In this biblical case and the foregoing discussion enough has been said to suggest
that emotion and the values it pervades may find in ‘cultural intensification’ an
appropriate interpretative category, a higher-order notion able to embrace and
illuminate other ideas bearing a family likeness. It is for this reason of generality
that the chapter’s subtitle prefers thinking of cultural intensification as a theoretical
construct with potential as a theory for use when discussing religion as one amongst
other aspects of life rather than a theory of religion as a distinctive category. A great
deal more needs saying on all of these sketched issues but, for now, it may be wiser
to heed Milton (XII: 585) in our conclusion as in the introduction. Accordingly,
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Chapter Two
Speaking Personally:
Women Making Meaning through
Subjectivised Belief 1
Janet Eccles
Introduction
In this chapter I report on the results of a series of interviews with a small group of
women in north-west England. These were carried out to determine what influence,
if any, their attendance at church, either past or still continuing, has on their present
beliefs and practices, together with what influences might also have been exerted by
cultural changes since the 1960s.
Research by Heelas and Woodhead (2005) into those individuals and communities
pursuing the sacred, in whatever form, in a market town of northern England, suggests
they fall into two distinct constituencies. The majority of those who attend church
and chapel have a non-subjectivised belief in a theistic, transcendent, male, Christian
god, whose word is inviolate and has been handed down for centuries by hallowed
tradition, a god, who, Callum Brown (2001) maintains, legitimates the notion of
the pious (domestic, submissive and self-sacrificing) female. Those who pursue the
sacred through what might be called the working together of mind-body-spirit and
inner-life spirituality, the holistic realm, have much more subjectivised beliefs in
that they aim to improve the quality of their individual and unique lives, whether
they are male or female. Only 4 per cent of the Christian church attenders they
interviewed had become involved in the holistic realm. Hence they see a bifurcation
of beliefs between the two groups. Those who seek the sacred belong, by and large,
to either that which privileges non-subjectivised belief – submission to a male God
and saviour – or that which privileges the empowering of one’s own subjective life.
Other evidence (Roof 1998; Wuthnow 1998; Lambert 1999; Roof 1999;
Hervieu-Léger 2000; Roof 2003) suggests, however, there is much more fluidity of
belief, that many individuals are engaged in a process, a quest, which may involve
moving in and out of different sacred milieux, according to perceived need at the
time. Ammerman (2003, 224) believes that, ‘Describing religious identities is not
a matter of asking a checklist of categorical questions, but a matter of analyzing a
dynamic process’, because we are all made up of multiple identities which means
1 I am grateful to Professors Linda Woodhead and Paul Heelas and to Dr Abby Day for
their helpful comments and suggestions during the writing of this chapter.
20 Religion and the Individual
that no situation or identity is ever utterly devoid of multiple narratives, both public
and private, sacred and secular. Thus, it is more likely that ‘believers’ will be placed
along a continuum, indicated by the notion of ‘dynamic process’, from those, at one
extreme, who submit to the non-subjectivised unquestioned authority of a male God
all the way through to those, at the other, listening to their inner subjective selves and
getting in touch with their deepest feelings.
To try and discover to what extent there is either bifurcation or fluidity of belief,
I embarked on a micro-level gendered ethnographic study in southern Lakeland,
where I live. Given that women are in the majority in congregations in England
(Gelder and Escott 2001), and that Heelas and Woodhead found women made up
the majority of the holistic realm participants, and in view of my own interest in
a gendered approach to the sociology of religion, I restricted myself to studying
women. The data gathering, which extended over a period of two years from 2004
to 2006, involved me conducting a series of open-ended informal interviews, lasting
on average two hours, with more than 70 women, aged 40 and over. Roughly 40
per cent of these respondents attended a place of worship, another 40 per cent of
them have disaffiliated, with the remaining 20 per cent being irregular attenders. The
lower age limit of 40 was imposed because women younger than 40 are much less
likely to have been, or remain, churchgoers. The sample cannot be representative of
women in England as a whole as time and resources did not permit me to choose that
kind of sample. It certainly raises questions, however, as to how much some women
in church simply accept traditional orthodoxy, including the male god, salvation
only through this male god and saviour, the gendered hierarchy and the prioritising
of the female domestic role, and how much they have been influenced by the
increasing salience of the holistic milieu and the more plural contexts in which most
of life in the West is now fashioned. It also raises the question as to how much any
women, attending church or not, have actually been able to shift off their domestic
commitments, despite having lived through the sexual revolution of the 1960s.
There is certainly evidence that all have been affected, one way or another, by
the changes brought about in that period, regardless of their beliefs. Some women
continue to worship in a congregation acknowledging a Christian male god and,
hence, continue to operate in an environment privileging the male. Nonetheless,
there is testimony that even here faith stances are changing, sometimes influenced
by the more subjectivised holistic realm and the increased knowledge and awareness
of other faith traditions. Some women use Christianity’s spiritual goods but subject
them to considerable reinterpretation. Others have abandoned any kind of faith
stance.
The evidence from the women I shall quote, therefore, representative of others
in this study, suggests that there is no straight bifurcation in beliefs between the
traditional attender and those in the holistic realm. Beliefs represented here span a
continuum, from the traditional member of a conservative/evangelical congregation
to the holistic practitioner utilising a number of ‘spiritual’ goods and services. Where
bifurcation occurs it may be rather more between the ‘seekers’ of the sacred in
whatever form and the more rationalist ‘non-seekers’. Whatever these women may
be, however, the emphasis, for most of them, will be on their own direct experience,
which ‘authorises’ their beliefs, and the personal affirmation and empowerment they
Women Making Meaning through Subjectivised Belief 21
receive through the particular social relations in which they are implicated. Whether
churchgoers or not, women go on attending to domestic commitments albeit with a
changed attitude to these commitments.
The continuum of belief, which moves continuously from the completely non-
subjectivised to the subjectivised, then, runs from the belief in orthodox Christianity
with its male, transcendent, controlling God and his son, Jesus, as the saviour of the
world, to the ‘sense’ that there is some kind of life force or presence, which may be
male or female or genderless, sometimes immanent sometimes transcendent, but
which connects us to all that is, with many variations and nuances in between. All
these women are believers in something, therefore, beyond that which is directly
observable by our senses. Bifurcation occurs between them and the remaining
group who simply do not attend to the matter of belief and dismiss any idea of
the supernatural, if asked, believing only in that which seems to be scientifically
provable and rational.
The non-subjectivised believers, therefore, are the traditional, self-sacrificial
women, whose faith and praxis have remained closest to the Christian ‘home’ –
culturally and religiously, if not always geographically – in which they were first
nurtured. These women see God as male and Jesus as their saviour, devote large
amounts of their time, when not doing paid work or attending to home and (often
extended) family, to arranging the altar flowers, cleaning the church, running the
Mothers’ Union, teaching in Sunday school, organising fund-raising events, taking
part in services as lay preachers/readers, serving as sideswomen, elders, secretaries,
treasurers and organists, as well as assisting with communion and helping their
neighbours in need. Many describe their work as ‘a privilege’ and when they are in
some difficulties, domestic or professional, simply refer to these as ‘testing times’.
But the numbers of women falling within this category represented no more than
10 per cent, at the most, and none is under 50. These communities have their place
for some women. As Ozorak comments in her study of 61 churchwomen, and as I
found in mine, this kind of community provides opportunities for women to work
together and to form close friendships with other women. They are places in which
as Ozorak says, ‘power emanates from the support of the community’ and so is
increased by being shared (1996, 7).
Nonetheless, the findings from my study suggest that women with traditional
beliefs and lifestyle are diminishing and that even women in apparently traditional
congregations do not always hold entirely to all that is understood as orthodoxy. The
churchgoing women I spoke to for a previous (2003) study were simultaneously
consumers of the goods and services of the holistic realm. A number practise yoga
with a spiritual input, for example, or may go circle dancing or are members of
an Iona or spiritual healing group. Churches Together in Britain and Ireland has
a specific arm, Churches Together for Healing which was formed following the
Anglican report A Time to Heal (2000). This group, of which I was a regional member
for four years, is certainly happy to include various forms of holistic therapy into
22 Religion and the Individual
its programmes. Another organisation, The Churches’ Fellowship for Psychical and
Spiritual Studies, founded over 50 years ago, and which publishes an organ, The
Christian Parapsychologist, certainly combines a number of aspects of more holistic
belief with traditional faith and practice.
As Ammerman (2003) argues, we are all made up of multiple selves, participating
in multiple narratives. Many of the women also have/had paid employment outside
the home and are members of family groups as well as charitable or recreational
organisations, in addition to being attached to their worshipping community These,
too, have their own particular discourses and narratives in which the women are
embedded.
For some women, however, it is not possible for them to remain connected to the same
religious institution in which these patriarchal relations hold sway. These particular
women are mainly tertiary educated and have been exposed to a more cosmopolitan,
pluralist environment, thus to a greater multiplicity of narratives, both public and
private, sacred and secular. For these women, at the other end of the continuum,
this is the moment at which they ‘move out’ altogether, as one might say, living an
independent life, geographically removed from home, but also independent of the
beliefs and the patriarchal relations which have authorised those beliefs, learned in
the original home.
But, remaining at this end of the continuum for the moment, one can see that,
while moving away geographically, one may remain culturally close to home, even
if not always religiously. There may be a need to move to another worshipping
community, one which allows for greater freedom to conceptualise the sacred in
a new, possibly non-theistic, mode, one which no longer privileges the male god
and saviour and hence the subordination of the female, casting her into the purely
domestic role – one which allows, in sum, for much less orthodoxy. Still, there is
the need to remain attached to community of some kind, an awareness that life is
better for being with others who seek the sacred, however differently each may
conceptualise it.
Rebecca will serve as an example of this need to move rather further away from
‘home’, having been immersed in other narratives, yet still wishing to ‘import’ into
her new situation something of the original narrative which shaped her formative
24 Religion and the Individual
years. Rebecca’s father is a minister in the Presbyterian Church and both parents
are committed not only to their faith but also to political activism on behalf of the
disadvantaged. The sense of commitment, both to a worshipping community and to
the activism which they enjoined on their daughter, has remained firmly in place,
but Rebecca has lived and worked abroad for a number of years on an international
ecumenical project
Staying with the rigid doctrines of her past, staying within the ‘parish system’ as
Ruth has managed to do, did not accord with how Rebecca now conceptualised what
the worshipping community should be. She has subsequently become committed to
the Quakers but remains, like her parents, a member of the politically active Iona
group.
So far, at this end of the continuum, we have considered women firmly within
a community where the male, Christian god is dominant. Even Rebecca envisages
God in a fairly traditional Christian way at times, although not always. But what of
the more feminised forms of religion and/or spirituality, characteristic of the holistic
realm? To what extent have they made an impact on women in the pews, when
numerous books on women’s religions and goddess spirituality have made their
appearance on the scene in more recent years? (See, for example, Christ and Plaskow
1978; Starhawk 1979; Stone 1979; Christ and Plaskow 1989; Starhawk 1990; Sered
1994; Christ 1997; Griffin 2000.) I did not come across many women during my
research who were particularly interested in goddess spirituality, even among
women in the holistic realm – where I came across just one Druid and a member of a
drumming group who perform rituals similar to those described by Christ, Starhawk
and others. But I note also that Heelas and Woodhead (2005) similarly, did not find
many participants in groups which might be devoted to a goddess. Eleven were
involved in ‘Pagan activities’, seven in a ‘Women’s Spirituality Group’ and two in a
group called ‘Wild Women’, compared with 128 practising yoga.
Anna, who is a keen practitioner of goddess spirituality, is part of a group
attached to her local Unitarian Church, not a member of a Pagan activities group.
Consequently, Anna does participate in much more orthodox theistic worship as well
as goddess rituals. Carol Christ remarks that there are large numbers of women all
over the Western world brought up ‘in the biblical religions’ who are rediscovering
the language, symbols and rituals of the Goddess (1997, xiii). However, Christ
implies that one is unlikely to be a follower of the Goddess and a believer in a
theistic Christian (or Jewish or presumably, therefore, also Unitarian) god at the
same time. ‘The Goddesses are presented in the Bible as “abomination” and it is hard
for scholars to shake the mind-set that has encouraged all of us to think of Goddesses
in relation to terms such idolatry, fertility fetish, nature religions, orgiastic cult,
bloodthirsty, and ritual prostitution’ (1997, 78 – original emphasis). Despite this,
Anna’s group has grown and is both ‘respectable’ and ‘respected’ in a way that it was
not even in the early 1990s.
Although there are few Goddess worshippers in my study, as such, Anna is one
of a number of women whom I interviewed who are coming to experience a growing
distaste for ‘male’ religion – particularly its negation of women’s sufferings and
the female body. Women, thus disenchanted, have, by and large, either given up on
belief of any kind or turned to the holistic realm, the latter being the main finding of
Women Making Meaning through Subjectivised Belief 25
Heelas and Woodhead’s thesis (2005). Anna’s group is possibly somewhat unusual,
therefore, in practising Goddess spirituality, while being attached to a church
promulgating theistic belief. Anna still joins in with singing the Lord’s prayer in her
church and remains a firmly committed member. She explains her ambivalence in
this regard by saying,
[A]s a kid, early teens, I picked up these Bible reading things, read a bit every day. Did O
level Scripture, so I think all that has remained with me but the pagan thing has developed
and makes more sense. I can’t say makes entire sense, but is coming together.
Visiting Occasionally
The women discussed so far are all regular attenders at a place of worship but Roof
(1999; 2003) speaks of a ‘quest’, people moving in and out of sacred space, as
need arises. Among such are Davie’s (1994) ‘believers but not belongers’, those
who have left off committed churchgoing but who may visit occasionally and retain
belief in ‘God’ of some kind. My own research suggests this god varies from the
transcendent, all-powerful creator, who ‘fixes’ things in answer to prayer in a way
which is beyond our ken, to a vague kind of ‘somebody or something there but we
won’t worry too much about it and just get on with life’, to a sense that we are not
simply the sum of our parts nor is the world in which we live. Ammerman claims
that ‘no interaction is utterly secular or utterly sacred’ (2003, 222). I did meet some
women who would wish to disagree that there could be anything remotely sacred in
their life, but there were very few. Why women retain belief, even though they do not
wish to be committed to regular attendance, can be explained in various ways, but
Isobel will serve as an example. There are two compelling reasons for her to access
the sacred on an ad hoc basis.
Apart from attendance at a Moravian secondary school or taking her children to
mass when her Catholic husband was away on business, Isobel has had virtually no
involvement with a Christian church, being too busy, domestically, professionally
and in her local community. She has worked all her life in a large industrial northern
city, which has seen a very high influx of families of other races and faiths. There
have been tensions and some violent clashes. Isobel, in consequence, retired to a
quiet village in the Lake District.
She has also experienced in recent years both the deaths of her parents and the
suicide of a young friend. While all Isobel’s activities have kept her occupied, they
26 Religion and the Individual
do not help her to come to terms with the two major changes in her life; going to the
ancient priory church in her village, from time to time, for the very traditional, high
Anglican service and visiting her old school for its end of term services do, however,
help her. Sitting in the ancient priory and visiting her old school not only ‘include’ her
in Hervieu-Léger’s (2000) chain of memory – in this case, of a great ethnic Christian
tradition of which she sees herself a part – but the priory’s discourse of resurrection
and the life to come provides comfort and meaning. Isobel was quite happy to lay
aside her Christian ‘resources’ of the past when all seemed to be going well, but
when she came up against radical change, she ‘re-imported’ those resources, those
categories of understanding, back into her personal narrative.
While Isobel is happy to ‘re-import’ a former category of understanding to help
her make sense both of her imagined loss of her ethnic-cum-Christian identity and the
death of those she loves, other interviewees are unwilling, in the midst of major life
events, to rely on one single tradition or ‘resource’ – and resource is a very apt term
to describe the provenance of those goods and services on which these women rely –
for their personal ‘theodicy’. I use this term, although we are stretching its meaning
far beyond any mere theos here. These women are participants in the holistic realm,
indeed, they have no wish to see themselves as overtly Christian at all, but a number
of those I interviewed were using Christian symbolic ‘goods’, alongside practising
reiki, attending various spirituality groups, healing groups and self-help groups, and
accessing internet sites on alternative spiritualities and healing.
It could be argued these women were the mirror image of the Christian attenders,
quoted above, who sometimes visited these groups or websites but found their main
source of significance, to use Charles Taylor’s (2002) term, within the worshipping
community. These women sometimes made use of Christian resources, often
interpreted differently, alongside many others. They prefer, as one of my interviewees
said, more the ‘yin-yang sort of idea, not the wafty masculine God the father, son
and holy spirit thing’. They are as likely to use female images and ways of relating,
speaking of ‘Mother Earth’, and the ‘interconnectedness of all things’, for example,
although, as noted above, very few specifically name ‘the Goddess’ as such.
Albanese suggests healing in the holistic realm is a ‘work of reconciliation’.
Its holistic ethos means that this form of healing ‘emphasises a forgiveness that
dissolves physical disease, emotional hurt and the collective distress of society and
nature’ (1992, 78). But, if one were to consult the materials put out by Churches
Together for Healing, they, too, speak of the ‘work of reconciliation’ and the same
kind of ‘“dissolving” forgiveness’, to which Albanese refers. The difference would
be that the Christian women would be urged by their clergy to pray to a transcendent
male authority, or in the case of Catholics perhaps to the Virgin Mary, for help in such
acts of reconciliation. Whether they only access transcendent authority, however,
I think could be questionable. Interactions with others within their worshipping
communities – largely female, I suggest – would also play a part. This has certainly
been my observation over many years of church attendance. The holistic women,
however, are resolutely self-helpers, but helping others too, let it be importantly
noted.
While women like Ruth, Rebecca and Anna remain fully committed to a
worshipping community and see the importance of belonging, and Isobel sees the
Women Making Meaning through Subjectivised Belief 27
importance of believing but also of ’belonging’, in a more ad hoc sort of way, Mary
would be an example of a woman situated a further step along the continuum. She
does attend a church but considerably less willingly. Like many of the women in this
study, Mary has had more than her share of difficult life events, the worst being the
suicide of her daughter, followed by a life-threatening breakdown in health of her
second husband. This has caused Mary to search far beyond the Church (Catholic or
Protestant) for meaning: in India, among a number of eastern gurus, in meditative
practices, in the native American spiritualities, in such holistic purveyors of the
spiritual as the Conscious Creation website, in visiting spiritualist mediums who
assure her she is here ‘for your own soul’s growth, not your neighbour’s’, always
looking for the meaning of so much unhappiness and her part in it. She distances
herself completely from the Church, which she sees as ‘in control … For Christians
the suppression of women has been total. If only the Church knew the potential of
women. It’s been taught out of them.’
But, despite Mary’s vehement declaration of where her faith stance now is, she
sees supporting her Roman Catholic convert husband, by attending mass fairly
regularly, as well as singing in his church’s choir, as part of her commitment to
another in marriage, while seeking her own meaning elsewhere. Mary concludes that
we are all ‘selves-in-relation’, we’re all connected to everything that is, part of the
continual cycle of birth, life and death. This convinces Mary far more than the sense
that all her unhappiness is simply a (male postulated) theodicy of ‘God’s will’ or a
trial of her faith or one of the traditionalist believers’ ‘testing times’.
Her belief in connectedness and how this relates to issues of finitude and death
resonates well with Christ’s ‘web of life’ (1997, 113–134) and, as Christ would
suggest, translates into a passionate commitment, for Mary, for various animal
welfare charities, as well as promotion of green issues and battling with medical
practitioners for some degree of active participation and control in the management
of one’s own health. Knott and Franks (2007), in their study of a medical practice,
have also identified this subject as a site for women’s rather than men’s contestation
and resistance.
Living Independently
The remaining small group of interviewees, while churchgoers at some time in their
past, felt no need of invocations or prayers or rituals or healing groups or connection to
distinct communities of seekers after the sacred. These women, similarly implicated
in intersectional narratives, just like all the other women interviewed, do not talk to
dead relatives or to any form of deity. In fact they rarely give the sacred (or the dead)
another thought. When I asked them about such matters as belief in an afterlife, for
example, it was clear they viewed this as irrational, preferring to invest in belief in
the life processes themselves. As one interviewee told me,
When you look at any other living being, animals … the emphasis is on survival and their
future is in their offspring, so their purpose is to secure a future in life and for their genes
to be carried forward. I sometimes see our purpose in life is more with our children, to
give them the best grounding, to set them up, but then not all people have children. But
28 Religion and the Individual
all these people dying and existing somewhere else. Where is it happening? I don’t know.
And for what purpose? What are they doing?
These women generally feel they live their life by certain principles and morals,
trying to be kind and helpful. They admit that they don’t know if they are always
successful but feel that, if there is somebody making a judgement at the end of the
day, they’re not going to be ‘that narrow-minded whether you went to church or not,
it’s more important how you’ve lived your life’. We note that Abby Day, in her case
study from Yorkshire, has documented ‘belief’ in family and friends as the alternative
form of ‘belief’ she observed in those of no religious persuasion. ‘Most people I
interviewed believe in their affective, reciprocal human relationships as the main site
for sourcing and expressing emotions, morality and transcendence’ (Day 2006, 5).
Day terms this a secular ‘believing in belonging’. She could detect no notion of ‘the
sacred’ in their discourse and neither could I in that of my interviewees. But this was
a fairly small proportion of my interviews as a whole.
Conclusions
As can be seen, it is hard to argue for the bifurcation of belief theory in this study,
except between the believers in something sacred and the believers in belonging.
Some women combine, to a greater or lesser degree, traditional elements of belief
with a much more expressivistic, subjectivised and individualistic kind of faith,
arising out of their own direct experience. Some women have cast off Christian
tradition altogether, either in favour of other forms of the sacred or of combining some
reconceived elements of Christianity with other forms of the sacred derived from
other cultures and traditions, as commentators such as Roof, Lambert and Hervieu-
Léger maintain. Others see no need of the sacred at all: they have effectively laid
aside those ‘categories of understanding’ and have no need, at least not presently, of
those ‘resources’. But all these women are engaged in multiple narratives, situated
in multiple relational and institutional contexts. How these women make meaning,
how anybody makes meaning, one might argue, arises as a consequence of the
intersectionality of one’s multiple identities. Given that women are members of a
family, may work both inside and outside the home, may be engaged in recreational
pursuits and may attend a church, as a committed or a casual attender, the multiplicity
of their narratives has increased quite significantly in recent times. There is fierce
competition. Sometimes the church may win a – greater or lesser – share in that
competition, sometimes it cannot.
As to Christianity reinforcing the role of dutiful wife, we note that regular
churchgoers may embody this role to some extent, but they may well exercise
agency and be empowered by such roles as the one Ruth holds on the PCC and/or
through the shared support of the community of women within the church. What we
do observe is that all these women have commitments of one sort or another, whether
attending church or not. There is little sign these have been abandoned as Hochschild
(2003) testifies (see also Christ, 1997, and Hartsock 2000, on the ‘double shift’),
while Day similarly comments that ‘Responsibilities for offspring are maternal …
Women Making Meaning through Subjectivised Belief 29
I did not find anyone in my study who questioned the norm of family care being
women’s work’ (2006, 75–76).
But I would argue that because these women all have (or have had) paid work,
there is much less a sense of dependence, hence no need for dutiful submissiveness.
Moreover, Day (2006) points to the suggestion that women’s inability to spend time
on themselves is probably not to be viewed as self-denial but rather as self-fulfilment.
She quotes the work of Strathern who argues that we must, as researchers, be aware of
the process of denigration which exists in our culture and renders women’s domestic
labour of such little value that the women themselves are not seen as full persons
(1984, 13–31). There was a sense, to me, in these interviews, of each woman playing
her own part in a partnership, even though its equality may be more apparent than
real. Similarly they perceive their family, friends and colleagues within their various
sacred/secular communities/groups as offering an empowering sense of connection
as equals.
Although it would be hard to argue that any of these women had achieved
anything like gender equality, whatever we may mean by that, it would be equally
hard to argue for their dissolution ‘into the stronger side of partnership’ (Alexander
and Taylor 2006, 57). Regardless of their social location, these women have cleared
themselves a space to create their own identity(ies). This is an act facilitated by their
increased financial independence, almost certainly, but also, importantly, facilitated
and empowered, by the community and social relations in which they find their
‘home’.
Moreover, these women, as we have seen, cannot be simply categorised into
theistic versus holistic believers, as Heelas and Woodhead argue. As a result of
the intersectionality of their multiple selves, an intersectionality to which we are
all subject, they import, in varying degrees, and for many different reasons, other
narratives into their belief systems from the social positioning and culture in which
they are embedded; hence it is not surprising that we see a continuum of belief not
a bifurcation. Bifurcation only occurs where there is a refusal to import any kind of
religious or spiritual discourse into the narrative one currently relates.
We might ask, therefore, whether these women become more subjectivised in
their belief as the influence of the church decreases in their life, or whether it is
the other way round. Given the salience of the holistic in our culture at large (see
Heelas and Woodhead 2005, for elaboration of this thesis) and the evidence here, I
would hazard a guess it is the latter, but this is an area which might well merit further
research.
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Chapter Three
Alice and Laticia live on an inner-ciy house estate in Manchester. Laticia is 18 and of
dual heritage. Alice is 19 and White. Life on the estate is not easy. One evening last
summer whilst the girls were out with a friend, there was a shooting. The friend was
shot right in front of Alice. In the ensuing drama Alice found herself administering
first aid, stemming the blood flow, cradling the lad in her arms and trying to keep
him conscious until the ambulance came. When the girls eventually got home and
Laticia had fallen asleep, Alice looked out of her bedroom window and started to
pray. She prayed that her friend would get better; that he would not die. ‘I thought
I’d see what God was made of; if it would help’, she told a youth worker. In the
days that followed Laticia prayed similar prayers, ‘God, please help. Don’t let him
die.’ Neither Alice nor Laticia are churchgoers. Neither had a clear idea of to whom
or what they were praying, or whether there would be tangible outcomes to their
petitions. Nevertheless they prayed.
Alice and Laticia’s story is a dramatic one, but it highlights an important topic
around the theme of religion and the individual, namely the meaning and place of
prayer in young people’s lives. As a spiritual practice, prayer can take many forms
but it always implies some sort of deliberate act on the part of the individual, however
minimal (Mauss 2003; Wuthnow 2003). Consequently, the prayer lives of young
people can tell us much about the nature of spirituality as it is understood and lived
out in contemporary society – how belief relates to practice and what difference
spirituality makes to how young people face the world. The aim of this chapter
is therefore to draw out salient aspects of the form, meaning and use of prayer as
described by young people. The accounts I use come from the study in which Alice
and Laticia participated, the primary focus of which was the influence of Christian
youth work on young people’s religious sensibility. Prayer featured strongly in the
course of the study.
The research began with a survey of young people aged 11–23 years who had
contact with Christian youth work projects in England between 2004 and 2006. The
projects catered for both churchgoing and non-churchgoing young people. Some
were associated with particular churches, others were community-based projects;
all offered a provision of informal and social education allied to an element of
Christian outreach. A third of the projects were described by the youth workers as
overtly Christian, the rest said they had a Christian ethos. In all, 297 young people
completed a questionnaire on their religious identity, beliefs and practices, their
34 Religion and the Individual
broader values and their experiences of the youth work projects they attended. Of
these, 107 young people took part in qualitative individual or small group interviews
with the research team to further elaborate on these topics. The demographic profile
of the young people was equally balanced between young men and women but
was predominately White (over 90 per cent) and nominally Christian (nearly two
thirds claimed a Christian identity); there were only two Muslim boys and the rest
described themselves as Agnostic (10 per cent), Atheist (5 per cent) or ‘Don’t Know’
(13 per cent).
After the initial survey and interviews were completed, 40 non-churchgoing
young people took part in a series of structured conversations with their youth
workers in order to find out how they engaged with the youth work programme and
how their ideas on various topics changed over the course of a term. Prayer was
one topic included in the discussions and with the permission of the young people
I also refer to the content of these conversations as recorded by the youth workers.
The sample was balanced in terms of gender; half were White, a quarter Black and a
quarter of dual heritage. None had any practising religious affiliation.
Prevalence of Prayer
The prevalence of prayer in the general population has been identified in a number of
surveys. Opinion polls suggest around a third of British adults pray weekly outside
of religious services, and as many as 20 per cent pray every day (Barley 2006; Mori
2000). It is not surprisingly that frequency of prayer is positively correlated with
church attendance (Francis and Brown 2001). Nevertheless even non-churchgoers
indicate they pray from time to time. Amongst young people, Francis and Robbins
(2006) found 29 per cent of non-churchgoing 13- to 15-year-olds pray at least
occasionally and 3 per cent pray almost daily.
In this survey of young people in contact with Christian youth work, the figures
for prayer were higher still. Of those who answered the questionnaire 60 per cent
said they prayed at least once a month, 22 per cent that they prayed less than once a
month but occasionally, and only 18 per cent said they never prayed. The correlation
with church attendance was clear. Just over half the young people were frequent
churchgoers (that is, they attended church at least once a month) and 91 per cent of
them said that they also prayed frequently (at least monthly). Indeed, they may have
included church prayers in their tally. Of the remaining infrequent churchgoers (those
who went to church less than once a month or never), 24 per cent said they prayed
frequently. This is more in line with Francis and Robbins’ findings. The qualitative
interviews suggested the reason prayer was relatively commonplace was because
the young people, even the non-churchgoers, routinely came across prayer activities
in the institutional settings of which they were a part. For churchgoers prayer was
obviously a routine part of Sunday or midweek worship, but for nearly all of the
young people in this study school and/or the youth club also provided opportunities
for prayer – and many of the young people chose to participate in them either wholly
or partially.
Young People’s Spirituality and the Meaning of Prayer 35
Learning to Pray
There are nearly 21,000 state schools in England, a third of which are church schools
(Department for Education and Skills 2006), and all of them are supposed to offer
a daily act of collective worship under the Education Reform Act 1988. This often
includes prayer. Consequently, school assemblies and in some church schools
classroom prayers, were two occasions for institutionalised prayer mentioned by
the young people. Given the negative views young people sometimes hold about
church and religious education (Rankin 2005), it was surprising that alongside the
anticipated comments about school prayers being irrelevant or boring, even some of
the infrequent churchgoing young people still said that they willingly joined in with
school prayers and found it helpful to do so1
Jack: I don’t pray every day, but as a group pray every day.
Int.: But that’s at school?
Jack: Yeah.
Int.: But what of your own free will?
Jack: Yeah, it is our own free will …
William: In assembly yeah, well they pray for us, most people don’t – but when they
say like put your head down [and] think about it, I do think about it. …
Int.: Yeah, is that helpful or?
Sue: When you have like the morning after a major thing, then that helps.
The youth clubs offered a rather different context for prayer midway between the
formality of school and the informality of home life. Whilst there is no legislative
requirement that youth work includes acts of worship, the projects in this study
were all of a Christian nature and 43 per cent of the youth workers said that prayer
featured in their programmes. This took various forms across projects ranging from
the youth workers openly praying before club meetings through to the provision
of a dedicated prayer room and opportunities for structured prayer activities. The
young people could join in with these activities if they wanted to. None of the young
people interviewed were hostile to this prayer activity. At worst they viewed it with
indifference but often they spoke in a reasonably positive way. The lack of hostility
was partly down to the young people’s recognition of the Christian identity of the
clubs and youth workers, which they were happy to respect in a spirit of tolerance
because they enjoyed the club and liked the youth workers. As Ashley said, ‘It’s like,
they can be who they want to be and I can be who I want to be.’ And partly because
joining in the prayers was optional.
Clive: They’ve got like a prayer time at the club where people can just go and pray
and stuff, and just talk about God and stuff.
Int.: Do you do that?
Clive: Umm – but I like the way they don’t pressure people into praying and they
don’t make God like a massive presence at their events and stuff.
1 All the names quoted in this chapter are pseudonyms. ‘Int.:’ refers to ‘Interviewer’.
36 Religion and the Individual
These institutional prayer activities had the function of modelling prayer both in
terms of accomplishing a prayer act itself (the content and form it might take) and in
terms of prayer being viewed as a valid and valued action.
Family influences were also important in this respect, particularly mothers and
grandparents.
Karen: … we always pray as a family and my mum, you know, she tries to make
us pray on our own, so … one day when we have our own family we can
pray a prayer, say a prayer. I find that good as well.
Such modelling provided a template onto which young people could map their
own private prayers if they chose to do so. This is important because without such
socialisation young people are much less likely to pray. Spiritual practices, like faith
itself, need to be taught if young people are going to engage in them as part of their
emotional and intellectual repertoire (Francis and Brown 2001).
The fact that these institutional and family prayers largely took place within a
Christian framework is important given the decline in church attendance amongst
young people nationally (Brierley 2006) and recent discussions in the literature about
the rise of new forms of spirituality in wider culture (Heelas and Woodhead 2005).
Whilst it is undoubtedly the case that young people’s lives are highly subjectivised
and institutional authority is much weaker than for past generations, young people
are not yet entirely cut loose from established social structures. Furlong and Cartmel
(2007) make this clear in their analysis of youth experiences in education, work
and leisure. On the spiritual front the same is also true. The great majority of young
people in England still inherit the Christian culture, albeit a fading heritage which
now competes with other religious and secular worldviews. Consequently Rankin
(2005) found young people generally associate the concept of spirituality with
religion, and religion with the Church, since this is closest to their experience.
Christianity was therefore the starting point for prayer amongst the young
people in this study. That is not to say, however, that they fully engaged with or
even understood the wider Christian tradition in detail. Hornsby-Smith described
what he called ‘customary Christianity’ amongst the adult Catholic population
in England during the 1980s: ‘derived from “official” religion but without being
under its continuing control … the beliefs and practices that make up customary
religion are the product of formal religious socialization but subject to trivialisation,
conventionality, apathy, convenience and self-interest’ (Hornsby-Smith 1991, 90).
This description could well be applied to many of the young people in the
current study. Whilst Christianity was the starting point in schools and the youth
clubs, teachers and youth workers generally introduced prayer with a light touch
which meant there was a lot of scope for personal interpretation and selectivity; the
young people very much viewed participation as optional. Herein lies some of the
Young People’s Spirituality and the Meaning of Prayer 37
subjectivisation of late modern spirituality. The fact that young people continued to
refer to a Christian template for prayer may say more about a lack of involvement
in the direction of alternative spiritualities than a conscious decision to specifically
engage with the Christian tradition. Nevertheless, that Christianity however vaguely
understood, did provide the template for both public and private prayers was evident
in the standardisation of the accounts given during the interviews. The young people
spoke about their prayers broadly falling into three categories: petitionary prayers,
confessional prayers and prayers of thanksgiving.
Petitionary Prayer
By far the most prevalent form of prayer amongst both the frequent and infrequent
churchgoing young people was petitionary in nature – front-line prayers asking God
for help when ‘something bad happens’ or if difficulties are known to lie ahead.
As Russell enthusiastically put it, ‘I pray when I want a miracle. When I want to
complete a mission of James Bond!’
Personal troubles and challenges, it seems, can still make spirituality a salient
aspect of life even amongst quite secular youth. Alice and Laticia’s prayers in
response to the shooting of their friend were a case in point. Illness, death, arguments,
friends having a hard time were all causes for petitions to God. As were exams,
worries about the future and generally feeling low. Praying for personal material
gain, however, was not seen as an acceptable subject for petitions.
Speck argues that stress causes people to adopt ‘culturally acquired methods of
coping’ (Speck 1978, 116). There is an obvious sense in which prayer is one such
method. The young people’s prayers held within them an attempt to restore meaning
and order to circumstances that would otherwise appear beyond their control,
chaotic or frightening. Of course, for some like Alice prayer was something of a
last resort after other measures had been tried. Nevertheless, it was still seen as a
legitimate practical response to a tough situation, a way to bring hope to difficult
circumstances. It was also different from simply thinking, hoping or wishing; prayer
overlapped with these patterns of cognition but was regarded as a separate category
of behaviour in the young people’s minds, which they could identify themselves as
doing or not doing:
I think eighty per cent of what I do when I pray is thinking and talking. It’s not actually
religious. Praying, I guess, is twenty per cent of the time. I do actually ask God about it.
(Faith)
I don’t necessarily pray. But I sometimes hope that things will happen, but I don’t see it as
praying … just send a hope rather than pray by myself. (Polly)
... anything that’s happened in the day, anything serious, I’ll mull it over in my mind and
just pray about it. (Amanda)
Prayer, for the young people in this study, involved the work of holding in mind the
self, another person or situation, and bringing them into a symbolic relationship with
38 Religion and the Individual
God or more rarely another spiritual entity. In the words of the young people: Prayer
is ‘a way of talking to God, one to one’, ‘a way to ask God for something’. I ‘pray
to God.’ ‘I just have a talk with the Big Man upstairs.’ Conversely, ‘I don’t believe
in God so therefore there’s no need for prayer.’ That said, the concept of God did not
have to be thoroughly worked out in order to engage in an act of prayer. Most did refer
to a traditional view of God as an external male reality, albeit God was more friend
than omnipotent being; and a couple of girls suggested prayers might be directed at
a guardian angel. Others, however, were quite unsure what they believed but were
willing to suspend disbelief for the purposes of helping themselves or somebody they
cared about. It was largely because the young people regarded prayer as a benevolent
act and associated it with caring relationships that when the youth workers offered to
pray for them, they generally took it in a positive light. To pray with the young person,
however, could be a step too far for those who were not used to praying.
Given that prayers were generally seen as a positive form of action to help others,
the scope of the young people’s prayers indicated something of their sense of moral
connectedness. It was very clear from their comments that local concerns were most
important to the young people; family and friends were prioritised. Relatively few
mentioned praying for people they did not know or for world issues. Katy was one
of the few: ‘If I see a poor man in the street I pray for him – Find him a job or some
housing.’
Other studies have also found that young people lay great emphasis and value
on relationships with family and friends. They are central to young people’s sense
of happiness and well-being (Collins 1997; nfpSynergy 2007; Savage et al. 2006).
Praying for family and friends in many cases seemed to mark out and reinforce these
loyalties of their relational networks.
Over time, however, loyalties can change. In one case this produced an interesting
dilemma for a youth worker who had just begun to introduce the idea of praying
to young people who had little experience of it. A young woman asked the youth
worker to pray that Clive, her ex-boyfriend, would die because he had cheated on her
with her best friend. The youth worker was left to explain the benevolence of prayer
should go beyond immediate loyalties and personal hurts and prayed instead that she
would not feel so bad about the betrayal. In this way, the teaching of prayer was used
to extend and shape the young person’s moral universe as well as to socialise her into
what counts as ‘acceptable’ prayer. Iain and Jack also illustrate the point, this time
in the context of school:
Iain: And in the morning when we go to school … one person’s got to pray every
day.
Int.: Oh right.
Iain: And everyone does it.
Int.: Yeah? And how do you feel about doing that?
Iain: I feel like it’s good to do.
Int.: Yeah?
Iain: Like when we pray we say intentions like world peace and stuff like that,
and that’s good.
Int.: Why is it good to pray?
Iain: It makes you feel good about yourself, and that.
Young People’s Spirituality and the Meaning of Prayer 39
Int.: You said it’s good too, why’s that?
Jack: You are thinking that you can pray for other people’s needs and stuff like
that. Pray for people that maybe you don’t like, but just pray for them to get
on and help everyone around you.
Int.: People you don’t like?
Jack: Yeah, say you don’t like someone, you still pray for them. Tell God to
somehow bring them together and make peace or something.
Int.: Does that make any difference?
Jack: Yeah, ’cos you start feeling better.
Int.: Start feeling better?
Jack: Yeah, start thinking better.
Int.: Start thinking better.
Jack: Yeah.
Confessional Prayer
The second most common category of prayer could broadly be called ‘confessional’.
Traditionally the act of confession is one of penitence, a means by which guilt for
moral failings can be acknowledged and repented of before God (mediated by a
priest or directly through prayer depending on the church tradition) in order to
receive pardon, healing of the soul and reconciliation with the Almighty and the
Church. It involves speaking the truth about self and the assurance of salvation.
However, Foucault (1990) and others have elaborated on the fact that confession is
no longer confined to church but appears in many guises. Indeed, we can now talk of
living in a confessional culture where it is commonplace to lay the soul bare before
a judging audience and find relief and validation in the telling of self. Counselling
and psychotherapy for those who can afford it, chat shows and reality television for
celebrities and ‘wannabes’, problem pages and blog sites for the rest. Of course these
forms of confession and the power dynamics within the confessional relationship are
different from that of religious tradition. Nevertheless the essential features identified
by Foucault are retained – a reflexive self, an assumption of truthful admissions, an
40 Religion and the Individual
authority to listen and respond to the confession (counsellor, audience, reader) and
an unburdening of anxiety and emotions leading to restoration of a valid self.
The development of a confessional culture can be seen as an outcome of our
increasingly individualised society. When institutional association and group
belonging are no longer the main sources of identity, individuals are obliged to
engage in self-reflexive projects in order to work out their own identity (Giddens
1991). As Aslama and Pantti argue ‘an essential part of the strategies of finding
the authentic self is the confession of one’s innermost feelings to others’ (2006,
107). It is in terms of this culture of self-exploration that young people’s prayers can
be described as confessional. Questions of identity (Who am I? What should I do
with my life?) are key to young people as they make the transition from dependent
childhood to independent adulthood. At this stage, however, they are not so much
looking for salvation as for self-acceptance and a socially acceptable, coping self.
The traditional religious language associated with confession was therefore very
limited in the interviews. Paige, Lily and Anthony were in the minority when they
talked about sin.
Sometime when I pray I think I may not have said sorry for the last sin I did – it may not
have been counted. (Paige)
I pray all the time because, like, God created us and everything, and if you sin you go to
hell. I don’t want to go to hell. (Lily)
Sometimes like when I’m in trouble … [I pray to] help me get out of the sin [fighting].
(Anthony)
And Blake’s comment to a youth worker on the nature of his confessions after
wrong-doing was fairly cursory: ‘If he’d done something wrong then he’d kind of
just chuck a quick prayer up there.’
However, many of the young people spoke about the need to confess the self in
general terms, as a means of dealing with anxieties and concerns, a way of coping
and reorienting a failing or struggling self.
If you’re struggling – everybody struggles in life – sometimes you just need someone.
Even though you’ve got your family and friends to talk to, it sometimes just feels [like]
you need somebody else to talk to, so you talk to God. (Karen)
Regardless of whether He exists or not, if you’re going through a problem and you’re
explaining them to whoever you believe in, it’s got to be good. (Elvis)
prayer for me is getting things off my chest. It’s talking to God. When you do you feel that
you are listened to and not judged. (Eric)
… sometimes God sort of reveals something to you about yourself, what you should be
doing, changing and stuff. (Frank)
Rachel explained how she would pray if she had an argument with a friend:
… saying I’ve had an argument, I’m upset. I’m sure it will work, I don’t know – it’s up to
me. I did say some bad things I shouldn’t have, I’m really sorry. Erm, just, I don’t know,
[give me] the strength to make up with them. … I believe that it’s all my actions but
praying gives me comfort, but it’s all up to me, it’s all down to my decisions.
These prayers allowed the young people to imagine an improved self and to find
within that the will to change for the better. The result of these prayers could therefore
best be described as cathartic relief, comfort, reassurance and a more positive sense
of self. Not quite salvation but personally significant nevertheless.
Prayers of Thanksgiving
The last category of prayer was thanksgiving. This was mentioned less often than
petitionary or confessional prayers, but was interesting in terms of the young people’s
sense of the rectitude of prayer content and in terms of its potential sociological
42 Religion and the Individual
function. It also stands in contrast with the common portrayal of young people as
hedonistic, inward-looking and ungrateful souls.
Oh yeah, I pray. It’s not always negative, like if I’m praying everyday, obviously there’s
not dramas in my life everyday, so when I pray ... like today, I’m happy, so it’s going to be
about thanking God for today, thanking him for my friends, my cousin. (Cecilia)
Pray to thank God and asking him for stuff as well. (Iain)
I try to kinda balance it [the content of prayers] out; just sort of saying thanks and ... things
that worry you. (Elvis)
If a bad thing happens I really concentrate on something, but if it’s thanking, if it’s been
a good day then it’s just thanking and I don’t really concentrate as much as I would if
something really bad had happened.
Nevertheless, even if thanksgiving could be quite perfunctory, the fact that some
young people still saw it as a part of the prayer act says something about the tenacity
of cultural practices. Consumer society of which young people are very much a part
does not promote appreciation of, or thankfulness for, things, people or even the
planet, despite our growing awareness of ecological issues. Consumerism is based
on the principle of being dissatisfied and moving on to the next thing. This, coupled
with a growing emphasis on individual rights means that there is little imperative
to give thanks anywhere, to anyone, in our society, let alone to God. Yet in these
voluntary prayers of thanksgiving the young people have stopped, however briefly,
to acknowledge the benefits of life that they enjoy. Indeed, the template of prayer
may help to generate feelings of gratitude insofar as it prompts the pray-er to think
of things they are thankful for. This in itself could be beneficial for young people.
Simon, for example, only prayed when he joined in the prayers at the beginning of
youth club football matches; but, much to the youth worker’s surprise, he said that he
valued those prayers because it ‘was a chance to be grateful’. For Linda thanksgiving
helped her appreciate life.
Linda: Just before I go to bed I normally do that [pray]. I say ... how my day’s
been and thanks for whatever else that’s going on in my life, and that.
Int.: Oh OK, is that important to you?
Linda: Yeah, sort of.
Int.: Why is that important, what does it do?
Linda: It makes me feel like I’ve appreciated my life, what’s going on.
From the young people’s comments it seems that prayer is still a valid practice
for some despite the apparent secularisation of much of their lives. As might be
expected, frequent churchgoers are more likely to pray than those who rarely or
never go to church. But even infrequent churchgoers tend to regard prayer as a good
thing and may occasionally pray as a way to make sense of their lives and cope
with problems and difficulties. Prayer therefore remains a possibility for young
people like Alice and Laticia, with the potential to help them build up a positive self-
identity, strengthen their sense of moral connectedness and motivate them towards
more purposive and confident living.
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Spirituality. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
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Catholicism and Transformations of Religious Authority. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
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Studies 24: 399–414.
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Press. First published in 1909.
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polls/2000/bbc-top.shtml. 14 January. Accessed 11 March 2007.
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Really Like Today.’ London: nfpSynergy.
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11 March 2007.
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Simmel, George. 1950. ‘Faithfulness and Gratitude.’ In Kurt H. Wolff, ed. and trans.,
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Chapter Four
Introduction
While it is widely accepted that there has been a revival of religious belief in post-
Mao China, so far there is still relatively little known about this development.
Sociologists and others have documented the changes in the laws and state regulation
pertaining to religion (Yang 2006; Leung 2005; Potter 2003) and have provided
accounts of religious practices and beliefs based on field research (for example,
Dean 2003 on popular religion; Madsen 1998 on Catholics; Hunter and Chan 1993
on Protestants). However, to date there has been a lack of research based on national
random sample surveys which could provide a firmer basis for generalization. The
development of nationwide survey-based research has been hampered by both the
relative underdevelopment of survey research generally in China and the inhibition
about conducting empirical research on the sensitive topic of religion. Those survey
findings about religion which have recently emerged have tended to lend themselves
to superficial, sensationalist media headlines about the number of believers, devoid
of critical interpretation. Furthermore, they have been limited to reporting simple
percentages and have not proceeded to multivariate statistical analysis. In this
chapter we attempt to rectify this by presenting some important new findings about
religion in contemporary China that are based on multivariate statistical analysis of
national random sample survey data.
Our research focus in on the specific question of who are the believers in religion
in China. Our starting point needs to be how we interpret what Chinese mean by the
self-description ‘believer in religion’. Our initial research finding will be a report
on the number of self-reporting believers in religion in China. Our main empirical
results pertain to the multivariate statistical analysis which examines the socio-
demographic and other individual characteristics associated with believing in religion.
We locate this analysis within the broad theoretical framework of modernization and
secularization and their application to the study of religion in contemporary China.
Before we do this it will be helpful to our readers if we present the context for the
study of believing in religion in present-day China. Of particular relevance are the
legal status, and the meaning, of believing in religion.
48 Religion and the Individual
The Legal Status of Believing in Religion
In the post-Mao period, the principal law affecting religion has been the provisions
of Article 36 of the 1982 constitution. These state:
and
No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not
to believe in, any religion: nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or
do not believe in any religion. (PRC Constitution 1982)
While the freedom to believe in religion is protected under the law, the state is not
indifferent to religious belief as the ruling Communist Party is explicitly atheistic.
In accordance with traditional Marxist theory, religion is at best frowned upon and
is supposed to gradually disappear as the socialist development progresses. In the
view of one academic commentator, the Communist Party policy has privileged
the freedom not to believe in religion and has used its control over the educational
system to marginalize religious belief (Potter 2003, 14).
The state also distinguishes between what it views as legitimate religious
activities and illegitimate activities which disrupt social order; and it only protects
what it describes as normal religious activities. The Constitution specifies that no one
may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the
health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the state. The Religious
Affairs Bureau monitors the activities of all religions from the local to the national
level. The practice of religion is legally confined to designated public places which
can more easily be monitored. The government has suppressed some heterodox
Christian and Qigong sects (Yang 2006). However, at times even some Protestant
and Catholics centres of worship, their clergy or members have been censured by
the Religious Affairs Bureau. This is typically related to unregistered ‘house church’
Protestants or Catholics operating outside the designated state-sponsored religious
organizations. Potter (2003, 11) has summed up the situation for religious belief
under the post-Mao government as permitting limited freedom of religious belief,
subject to legal and regulatory restrictions on religious behaviour.
There are now a number of qualitative studies of religious believers in China (see
for example, Fan 2003 on folk religion; Aikman 2003 on Protestants; Lozada
2001 on Catholics). A strength of qualitative studies is that they provide valuable
ethnographic material and offer some insights into the characteristics of believers in
religion, in small localities or among particular congregations. However, there are
not in existence – and it is unlikely there ever will be – sufficient local studies to
piece together a national overview of believers in religion. Furthermore, small-scale
studies which are not intended to be a basis for generalization may nevertheless have
coloured our perception of the characteristics of believers in religion. Nationwide
research based on random sample surveys can also complement the qualitative
research and provide confirmation of or correction to some of the insights.
50 Religion and the Individual
First, we examine a range of individual characteristics which the literature has
suggested may be associated with being a believer in religion in China. We then
attempt to make sense of the effect of these characteristics in terms of the framework
of modernization and concomitant secularization. This framework has been widely
applied to the study of religion in Western industrial societies, and proposes that
religion declines with advancing modernization (Wilson 1982; Wallis and Bruce
1992). Modernization is typically presented as a process effecting secularization
but this thesis has been hotly debated and criticized (see Bruce 1992; Crockett
and O’Leary 2004, O’Leary 2004) including when it is applied to Asian societies
(Overmyer 2003,4). There is an additional dimension in China, in that the Christian
religion in particular is perceived as being associated with modern Western societies,
which may add to its appeal. Nevertheless, despite criticisms, the modernization-
secularization framework generates clear hypotheses which can be tested for
contemporary China.
The concept of modernization is used to describe a society in terms of economic
growth, industrialization, changing occupational structure, and the expansion of
education, institutional differentiation and urbanization. The more a society’s
economy is based on industry rather than agriculture, the better educated its
population and the more urban it is, then the more modern that society is considered
to be. We can also view individuals in terms of whether they belong to a modern
sector of society or they have exposure to modern influences (O’Leary 2001).
The secularization thesis lies within the broad theoretical framework of
modernization. As part of this thesis, religious decline is predicted in response to the
operation of features of modernization such as rationalization and societalization.
Following Weber and his emphasis on the shift to rationality as part of the process
of modernization, Bryan Wilson (1982) highlighted how the rational, scientific way
of thinking of the modern individual would displace the religious way of thinking,
undermining religious belief ranging from belief in the healing power of religious
charms to belief in God. At the same time, societalization entails the enlargement of
scale in society with a shift from living in small communities, typically the village, to
living in cities. For Wilson, the small community, including the agriculturally based,
is more conducive to religious belief and practice. In terms of the modernization-
secularization perspective we would hypothesize that persons who might be seen as
less advanced along the modernization process – that is, older compared to younger,
least educated compared to tertiary educated, farmers/peasants compared to white-
collar workers, and rural compared to urban – would all be more likely to be believers
in religion.
The recent rapid modernization in China and the sharp shift from a state-
controlled to a more market-based economy and society in the post-Mao period
have brought substantial material benefits to many citizens. However, they have
also been accompanied by the break-up of rural communes and mass rural-to-urban
migration, high unemployment and involuntary early retirement, the ejection of
persons from the universal state health-care system and increased marital breakdown.
Social dislocation may generate new spiritual questions (Fan 2003, 65) and quasi-
religious healing practices may give meaning to those who are displaced in the
new economic order (Chen 2003, 199). Bays (2003, 193) draws attention to how
Who are the Believers in Religion in China? 51
the Christian magazine Tianfeng (Heavenly Wind) often prints articles or replies to
readers advising them how to cope with the stresses of economic change and family
problems. Therefore, persons from these dislocated and disadvantaged categories
may search for comfort and so we may hypothesize that they will be more likely
than persons in the socially advantaged or socially stable categories to be believers
in religion.
There are additional categories or persons, such as women and ethnic minorities,
who do not so neatly fit into a general designation as less modernized or more
socially dislocated. However, in spite of state-sponsored gender equality, women in
China tend to be more disadvantaged in socio-economic positions and, even among
the city dwellers, they tend to be disproportionately vulnerable to unemployment
and early retirement in the wake of economic restructuring, and less likely to find
re-employment after being laid off. Ethnic minority groups tend to be concentrated
in economically backward interior regions which remain socio-economically
disadvantaged or have even declined in comparison with the rapid development
witnessed by the coastal areas since the 1980s. Thus, international research on
women and on ethnic minorities and ethnographic accounts for China would lead us
to hypothesize that these categories too will be more likely to believe in religion.
Methodology
In order to address the research questions as outlined above, we use the China Values
Survey conducted by Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and Beijing University
in 2004. This is a national representative sample covering 3,267 respondents aged
18 or over and resident in private households. The sampling instrument employed
is that of satellite targeting, a new method increasingly used for government and
academic research in China. The geographic coverage includes 65 counties in 23
(out of 30) provinces. The total effective response rate is 75 per cent.
To investigate the patterns of religious belief in China, we use the question ‘ni
xing jiao ma?’ (Do you believe in religion?), as noted above. This is a dichotomous
variable used in descriptive and modelling analysis. We also use a range of
socio-economic variables (as earlier discussed) to address the modernization and
secularization theses. As some of the explanatory variables such as sex and marital
status are self-evident, we give a brief description below of the other explanatory
variables as we constructed.
Age
We differentiate three age groups: 18–35, 36–50 and 51–70. The youngest group
are those born and educated after China adopted the opening policy after the end of
the Cultural Revolution. The middle group were mainly educated during the period
after the founding of the new China and prior to the socio-economic restructuring
that started in 1978 as a result of the adoption of the reforms. The oldest group was
the least educated.
52 Religion and the Individual
Education
Class
We use a six-category variable for class to reflect the social realities in China. As
is well documented, China has a large agricultural sector. Many city dwellers were
forced to take early retirement or were laid off. A large number of people turned to
self-employment either as a result of forced redundancy or as a means to economic
prosperity. The six categories were based on the occupational status of the respondents
at the time of interview: (1) salariat (professionals and managers); (2) routine non-
manual or manual workers (the former consisting mainly of junior office clerks or
sales/personal service workers in commerce and service sectors, and the latter of
manual workers in industry and commerce); (3) retired; (4) petty bourgeoisie (sole
traders or small employers); (5) the unemployed/laid off/never worked; and (6)
peasants/farmers.
Urban-rural (Hukou)
Results
Note: Weighted percentages and unweighted Ns. Each of the other categories in a variable is
contrasted with the reference category listed in italics with significance levels shown for the
differences in question: †p<0.10; *p<0.05; ** p<0.01; and *** p<0.001.
Source: The China Social Values Survey (2004).
54 Religion and the Individual
Individual Characteristics Associated with Believing in Religion
Of the 11.4 per cent of our respondents who declared they believed in religion, the
largest single category of believing was Buddhism, amounting to 4.4 per cent of all
persons in the survey. Less than 1 per cent reported that they believed in Taoism.
This obviously underestimates the extent to which people may engage in some
Taoist practices. It may also indicate the damage done to Taoism in particular by
the suppression of religion (Lai 2003). A total of 2.5 per cent of all respondents
reported that they were believers in Christianity (Protestantism). There were far
fewer reported believers in Catholicism at 0.5 per cent. This looks about right as it
is widely accepted that Protestants are about three times as numerous as Catholics.
Finally, 3 per cent of respondents reported that they were Muslim believers. While
these simple percentages may be of interest to some of our readers, we recall Chen’s
observation that there can be an undue interest in simply counting the number
of believers (2003, 212). We are even more curious about who the believers are.
Therefore, we wish to move on to our multivariate analysis of the characteristics of
those respondents who declare they are believers in religion.
Logistic regression models are used to assess the relative importance of each of the
socio-cultural-demographic characteristics while holding constant the other
variables. The models use log odds ratios and therefore we report the coefficients of
each category as against the base or reference category, holding constant all other
variables in the models. If a category is equally likely to be a believer in religion as
the reference category, then the odds ratio would be 1 and the log of the ratio would
be 0. Thus a positive coefficient means a greater and a negative coefficient a lesser
likelihood of being a believer. The data are shown in Table 4.2, where we present
two models.
56 Religion and the Individual
Table 4.2 Logit regression coefficients on ‘believe in religion’ by socio-
cultural-demographic factors
Model 1 Model 2
Age
18–35 .000 .000
36–50 –.199 –.063
51–70 –.332† –.163
Sex
Male .000 .000
Female .280* .336**
Education
Tertiary .000 .000
Secondary .017 –.271
Primary .029 –.412
None .258 –.153
Class
Salariat .000 .000
Routine non-manual or manual –.019 –.033
Retired .135 .192
Petty bourgeoisie .447 .359
Unemployed .581† .551
Farmer/peasant .655* .606*
Marital status
Single .000
Married .087
Separated/Divorced/Widowed .412
Health
Good .000
Fair .181
Poor 1.084***
Ethnicity
Han .000
Minority ethnicity 1.594***
Urban-rural (Hukou)
Urbanite .000
Migrant worker .756***
Rural .141
Note: Weighted percentages and unweighted Ns. Each of the other categories in a variable is
contrasted with the reference category listed in italics with significance levels shown for the
differences in question: †p<0.10; *p<0.05; ** p<0.01; and *** p<0.001.
Standard errors and 95 per cent confidence intervals are not shown but are available on request.
a
refers to terms in Model 2 that are additional to those in Model 1.
Source: The China Social Values Survey (2004).
Who are the Believers in Religion in China? 57
Model 1 in Table 4.2 shows that when age, gender, level of education and class
are entered into the model as the independent variables, respondents who are female
compared to male and those who are farmers/peasants compared to the salariat are
both significantly more likely to report they believe in religion. As in Table 4.1 the
asterix is used to indicate statistical significance. It is note-worthy that, while the ‘no
education’ category was shown in Table 4.1 to be significantly more likely than the
tertiary educated to believe in religion when no other factors were considered, the
significance disappears in this model when age, gender and class effects are taken
into account. Similarly, the effect of being unemployed is no longer significant when
these other variables are taken into account.
Model 2 adds marital status, health status, ethnicity and type of residency. At the
bottom of Table 4.2, we show that Model 2 gives a significant improvement in fit
over Model 1. We see that the coefficients for female and for farmer/peasant change
only slightly and that both are still significant. We also now see that respondents
who report poor health compared to good health, are minority ethnics compared to
Han Chinese, or are migrant workers compared to urbanites, are all significantly
more likely to report they believe in religion. Again, it is noteworthy that, while the
rural category was shown in Table 4.1 to be significantly more likely than the urban
category to believe in religion when no other factors were considered, the significance
disappears in this model when our other variables are taken into account. It seems
that what is important for believing in religion is being a farmer/peasant rather than
simply being a rural dweller.
Therefore, some of the patterns suggested in our bivariate analysis in Table 4.1 are
no longer present when we consider all the variables simultaneously in our Model 2.
The categories of low level of education, being unemployed or being a rural dweller
are no longer associated with believing in religion. What still holds is that females,
farmers/peasants, those with poor health, minority ethnics and migrants are more
likely to be believers in religion. Among these, it is minority ethnicity and health
status which carry the greatest relative importance in terms of believing in religion.
We turn now to the insights our results may provide us about the possible associations
between modernization, social dislocation and disadvantage, and the reporting of
believing in religion. We found no association between age group and believing in
religion – neither reduced believing among the young which would be consistent
with the prediction of both secularization and Marxist theories, nor an increased
level of believing among the young consistent with the claims of religious revival
and which might be expected given the increased tolerance of religious belief by the
Communist Party. The absence of either an age effect or an effect for being ‘retired’
would also appear to belie the emphasis on greater religiosity among older and
retired persons (for example, Luo 1991). We do not attempt to deny that many older
people believe in religion, but we cannot claim that they are more likely to believe
than younger people. The resolution here may be that there may be less difference
58 Religion and the Individual
between the age groups as regards believing in religion (as narrowly defined) but
larger differences may be uncovered when examining religious practice.
A higher percentage of believing was found among the ‘no education’ category
in the bivariate tables. This is consistent with claims of other commentators (for
example, Kindopp 2004, 135; reported in Tamney 2005, 8). However, this may not
necessarily be attributable to education per se. The association disappeared when
other variables, including class, were taken into account in the multivariate analysis.
Overall, the findings for level of education do not offer support to the modernization-
secularization perspective, which would expect the higher educated to be more non-
believing. It is even possible that there is some under-reporting of believing among
intellectuals. For example, Bays (2003, 193) advises us that, for intellectuals, to
be known to be a religious believer would be detrimental to one’s career. Here we
should note that there is a difference between public proclamation of religious belief
and anonymous response to a survey item.
On the basis of the multivariate analysis, rural dwellers are no more likely than
urban dwellers to report being believers in religion, once class-occupational situation
is taken into account. The absence of a rural effect would at first appear to belie the
numerous ethnographic studies which highlight the association between rural dwellers
and religion. While it is the case that there are many more places of worship in rural
areas, including folk religion temples, and so practice may be higher, the levels of
believing in religion (as narrowly understood in terms of Buddhism, Christianity
or Islam) may not necessarily be higher. What is more relevant is whether or not
the respondent is a farmer/peasant. The statistically significant result for farmers is
consistent with a modernization-secularization perspective, although, overall, our
results are rather indifferent to that perspective since being older and being less
educated were not associated with being a believer.
Where we might extend the usefulness of the insight from the focus on
modernization is to consider the impact of being in categories which may be viewed
as disadvantaged and socially dislocated, and which may be a concomitant of
that modernization. There is a positive effect on believing in religion for being a
migrant. This is even more important for believing than being rural, once being a
farmer has been taken into account. This is an interesting result as it contradicts the
expectation under the modernization perspective that migration from the rural to
urban environment would diminish religious belief. Given the extent of rural-to-
urban migration taking place in China under modernization, this represents a large
and growing potential market for religious suppliers.
Having a self-perception of poor health is associated with being a believer. This
is consistent with ethnographic studies on Chinese folk religion, quasi religious
Qigong and Christianity where the attraction of faith healing is a prominent feature
(Fan 2003; Chen 2003). Chen, in discussing healing sects in particular, describes
how ‘followers were drawn to the messages of inclusion where anyone could
participate, especially those who had lost jobs or health care benefits’ (2003, 199). If
this reflects an appeal of religions more widely, then, as with the migrants, the appeal
is to a socially disadvantaged group and their incorporation into the population of
believers would shape the social composition of believers. However, we also note
that, although we saw in the bivariate analysis that the unemployed were more
Who are the Believers in Religion in China? 59
likely than the salariat to believe in religion, there was no effect in the multivariate
analysis once level of education was taken into account. Therefore, the higher level
of believing in religion is not evident for all our categories of social disadvantage.
We found that ethnic minority respondents were much more likely to be
believers. However, it is also interesting to note that, even among the minority ethnic
respondents, only a third report that they believe in religion. This belies a tendency
in the literature on religion in China which tends to equate minority ethnicity and
being religious. The finding of higher levels of believing for women is consistent
with numerous other commentators on a wide range of religions. It is also consistent
with Feuchtwang’s (2002) observation that there may be a feminization of both
Buddhism and Christianity, at least in its congregational forms.
We are aware of limitations of our study – the respondent’s own definition of
religion available to us through our survey data is narrow. Further analysis for
the different religious categories within the believing group is likely to reveal
differences between the adherents of the various religions. Nevertheless, our present
multivariate analysis has produced important new findings on religion across the
entire Chinese population. We have identified particular categories of individual
who are associated with believing in religion. These are women, farmers/peasants,
ethnic minorities, persons with poor health and migrants. We have not found
statistically significant effects for age or level of education and overall our findings
do not lend themselves to a consistent explanation in terms of a modernization-
secularization perspective. However, there is more consistent support for the view
that the believers are disproportionately drawn from some of the socially dislocated
and disadvantaged categories in society. This has implications for the future growth
and social composition of believers in religion in China.
Bibliography
Hope Filipino
Moving away from the frequently studied large churches in the US, this research
looks at the experience of a relatively young migrant congregation in an Asian context
where new paradigm churches are increasingly changing the religious landscape.
What accounts for lay involvement in the new paradigm environment at Hope
Filipino? What subjectivities surrounding commitment are emerging? As contribution
to the present volume, my inquiry attempts to enrich understanding of new paradigm
Christianity in view of particular subjectivities and practices individuals have about
religious involvement. In this chapter, I argue that new paradigm Christianity’s
determination to be culturally relevant in terms of its openness to new ways of doing
church while maintaining an arguably strict position on Biblical standards on behavior
and providing opportunities for greater involvement becomes the institutional space
for the development of significant levels of commitment. This is a phenomenon that
surfaces as Hope Filipino, as a new paradigm congregation, strategically addresses
the issues of the migrant Filipino professional. By focusing on the subjectivity, my
analysis of commitment-formation deviates from less meaningful conceptualizations
of religious involvement in terms of attendance and affiliation (for discussion, see
Roberts and Davidson 1984). The chapter ends by presenting a more nuanced
theoretical view of new paradigm Christianity.
Because my interest is in the subjectivities concerning commitment, the
method is qualitative. I conducted data gathering in early 2006 for my independent
research at the master’s level. Interviewees have been selected based on a balanced
representation of gender, length of stay in church, leadership position, degree of
involvement and nationality (local Singaporean and Filipino). A very small number
of the key leaders, including the pastor, are Chinese Singaporeans who pioneered
the congregation. Participant observations of major evangelistic activities, including
an evangelistic Sunday service and an evangelistic care group session, complete the
methodology.
Largely successful in the US and Australia and mostly in the form of megachurch
movements, new paradigm Christianity’s ability to draw crowds to Protestant
conversion foreshadows a new form of contemporary Christianity sensitive to the
needs and interests of the modern individual (Miller 1997). In his groundbreaking
work, Miller (1997) looks at the massive success of its congregations in terms of their
ability to be culturally relevant, which he describes as the new paradigm of doing
evangelism. The main target is the modern urbanite, who, as a result of a secular
environment, avoids mainstream religion (Balmer and Winner 2002). Relevance is
achieved by overhauling many of the traditional practices in mainline Protestantism
in light of adopting appealing contemporary culture. This explains why megachurches
have thrown out images and rituals that offer any tinge of structured religiosity.
Miller (1997, 1) has identified several defining characteristics of new paradigm
Christianity: up-to-date worship style incorporating elements from the music scene,
New Paradigm Christianity and Commitment-formation 67
a Christ-centered theology applicable to everyday living and a social organization
principally run by the laity. The operative word describing what is also known as
new evangelicalism (Balmer and Winner 2002) is flexibility, the openness to new
processes in doing church. As a religious movement, new paradigm Christianity
not only builds new congregations but also reforms existing ones in the hope of
making church appealing. One may typically find megachurches conducting Sunday
services in such secular places as auditoriums or function rooms of hotels. The more
affluent churches capable of constructing their own buildings reflect nevertheless
mall-like architecture and interior.
Although challenging tradition, new paradigm Christianity maintains its ties with
Protestantism through its central belief in salvation through Christ. The ‘focus is on
“inviting Jesus into your heart” and witnessing his transforming love’ (Miller 1998,
203). Miller argues that doctrinal persuasions are usually of individual position,
depending on one’s experience and exposure to the Bible:
New paradigm Christians are doctrinal minimalists. Their focus is on retelling the
narratives of the Bible and seeking analogues to the experience of their members. So long
as one subscribes to the basic teaching of Jesus and the practice of the early Christians,
there is room for debate on the details of interpretation. The goal is for members to have
a relationship with Jesus, not to pledge allegiance to a particular catechism or doctrinal
statement. (1998, 203)
Theoretical Location
In this chapter, I argue that new paradigm Christianity provides a unique space that
allows for the emergence of an idioculture wherein the church is focal to membership
commitment. Here, Fine’s work on idioculture, which he defines as the ‘system of
knowledge, beliefs, behaviors, and customs shared by members of an interacting
group to which members can refer and employ as the basis of further interaction’
(1979, 734), proves helpful in understanding community and identity in the context
of commitment-formation within the group life at Hope Filipino. The key elements
of group life, in this case the congregation itself, are socioemotional orientation
(interpersonal relationships) and task orientation (collective objective).
Socioemotional orientation is reflected in Miller’s observation that ‘individuals
gravitate toward communities with some cultural resonance for them’ (1997, 79).
New paradigm Christianity’s flexibility in doing church allows for the adoption of
relevant practices that build and reinforce socioemotional orientation with members
and new believers. Twitchell (2006) comments, for instance, that men find the
megachurch as a hiding place.
Serving as the congregation’s task orientation (Fine 1979), the commitment to
life-transformation is manifest in the organizational arrangements wherein personal
development is cultivated, for instance, the small care groups, and in the case of
Hope Filipino, one-on-one shepherding. Miller points out that ‘converts are going to
maintain loyalty to institutions that rigorously pursue the task of life-transformation’
(1997, 79). He also confirms that ‘words such as discipleship and accountability
are heard at every turn … More mature Christians disciple younger converts …’
(1997, 76). So, despite the apparent casualness in new paradigm Christianity,
the relationships within the institution can be demanding, a critical element in
instilling loyalty (Miller 1997; see also Ianaccone 1994). Describing contemporary
evangelicals in America, which include new paradigm churches, Shibley (1998,
83–84) points out that, although they are world-affirming in adapting to secular
lifestyle, ‘these congregations provide a distinct identity and relatively clear
guidelines for organizing a new life’, the postconversion lifestyle. However, Miller’s
discussion on the postconversion lifestyle, which I argue informs the congregational
New Paradigm Christianity and Commitment-formation 69
identity in new paradigm Christianity, is rather limited. This inquiry on the meaning-
making processes of individuals that inform the identity of Hope Filipino locates
itself within intrinsic congregational studies (Guest, Tusting and Woodhead 2004).
For me, it’s about being there all the time. Opportunity, you take every opportunity you
can grab. You are committed that through you, the Lord will be able to accomplish what
He wants in people’s lives. I am always there, even if without enough sleep, even if I lack
the time, being always ready to go, to serve, to share what I can in order to be a blessing
to other people.
2 Such reorganization occurs after conversion. In the event that one is already a
Protestant prior to affiliating with Hope Filipino, what possibly occurs is ‘alternation’ in
which one embraces a supposedly more meaningful framework for Christian living (Barker
and Currie 1985). In my analysis, then, the subjectivity surrounding commitment points to a
postconversion (or postalternation) lifestyle.
70 Religion and the Individual
acknowledged maturity. Opportunities to lead, say, a new care group, or shepherd
another individual, arise as membership increases.
Many of the members of Hope Filipino who have now taken up leadership
responsibilities have decided to stay in Singapore because of the church. Furthermore,
the congregation has seen two of its members give up their profession to become
exploratory missionaries to Brazil. Two are in the process of leaving in 2007. The
emergence of this kind of commitment becomes an intriguing phenomenon given
the existing assessment of new paradigm churches as consumerist and, hence,
undemanding.
Socioemotional Orientation
The local pastor has identified three important matters to help the Filipino cope with
the demands of Singapore living: punctuality, as Filipinos are known for tardiness;
financial responsibility, as they have the tendency to be debt-ridden; and management
of emotions, as they are away from spouses and families. The last two are typical
issues of the migrant Filipino professional, although I focus on the last one as it
is most strategically addressed by the congregation. The importance of emotional
support for new immigrants has also been identified in Korean Christian churches in
the US (Kwon, Ebaugh and Hagan 1997).
Kinship relationships formed in the care groups and shepherding arrangements
help Filipinos cope with emotional difficulties. For instance, the usual point of
entry for guests is the Matthew Care Group gathering, wherein invited friends are
New Paradigm Christianity and Commitment-formation 71
introduced to the rest in an atmosphere of games and food. Once they are comfortable
with the ‘family’, the succeeding gatherings conduct a presentation of the gospel.
Furthermore, female shepherds are often called ‘nanay’, Filipino term for mother.
Interestingly, family-orientation as a Filipino value is also employed in the formation
of social capital in Asian American religions (Gonzalez and Maison 2004).
Jerebel’s narrative reflects a typical story among current members who decided
to join Hope Filipino because of the available relationships. I quote her narrative at
length:
Actually, back in the Philippines, I was anti-Christian. If anyone would ask me to come
to a Christian church, I would readily tell them that best of friends who talk about politics
and religion become best of enemies. I respect your religion, you respect my belief.
Let’s talk about another topic. That was because I saw the Christians in the Philippines
singing in the streets, reading the Bible but I felt their actions were hypocritical. But
I was a religious person. I would always lead the rosary and prayer. I would go to a
Catholic church regularly on top of the Sunday Mass. To the point that I really wanted to
be a nun. When I came to Singapore, my housemates met Daphne [a pioneering Chinese
Singaporean at Hope Filipino] and other Christians. Then they came to our place. We were
actually doubtful of their motives. They were bringing us food and a lot more. When they
invited us to attend church [there was no Filipino congregation then], we went with them.
After that, when they came back to us, we tried to avoid them. But they still came back.
And so I joined them. And I noticed that at Hope, even if I was alone, I felt I already had
a family after service. All of a sudden, I knew a lot of people! And during that time, there
were people following up on me. They would come to our house to discuss the Word of
God – without missing a weekend. I realized that this was the church where I got family,
where they helped me grow, read the Bible and know about God.
Task Orientation
Such socioemotional orientations constructed in the group life (Fine 1979) allow for
the individual’s life-transformation that in effect is a socialization process to establish
the behavioral expectations of and affiliation with the congregation, and ultimately
membership. Here, life-transformation, in Fine’s (1979) framework, comes in as the
task orientation at Hope Filipino. Behavioral expectations are adjusted to biblical
standards. Miller observes that ‘new paradigm Christians believe that they are
continually being humbled and transformed and that it is through daily interaction
with God’s word that they are given direction’ (1997, 130).
At Hope Filipino, however, the process is not completely independent. One’s
understanding of the Scriptures is shaped in the discipleship contexts of shepherding,
care group and the Sunday service, where the church’s values are reiterated to both
member and new believer, whose conversion takes place by ‘accepting Jesus’.
Maturity is seen in how the individual concedes to the principles and practices of
the congregation and how he/she accounts life details to his/her leader, most likely
the shepherd and care leader, depends on the constant interaction available in the
discipleship contexts. Official membership simultaneously becomes an individual
declaration and a public recognition of one’s identification with the community.
72 Religion and the Individual
With socioemotional orientations and behavioral expectations established in
the process of life-transformation through constant interaction in the care group
and shepherding, possibilities of free-riding is minimized despite the size of the
congregation. This substantiates what Miller (1997, 76) considers to be the ‘structure
of mentoring and accountability’. The pastor explains:
We want the people to realize that when you become a member, you are saying that you
are one of the family. The family matters. It’s just the members who can be part of it.
Before the person becomes a member, we’d know the character, lives, needs of the people
because it’s not so much about coming and going [to and from the congregation].
When I received Christ in the church, the leaders never stopped from following up on me.
Doctrine, 18 lessons, how to grow as a Christian – all these were discussed in shepherding.
I was encouraged in shepherding. Also, this might be the church that has most number
of meetings and teachings! Seven days a week, if possible. And then there’s the informal
follow up, as when they call you up on your handphone. When they called me, they
shared the word and they rebuked me too because I was quite tactless. So I was also being
corrected.
Greater Involvement
We have many ways of doing evangelism. But we always pray for the place first. At one
time, we went from flat to flat. And we even went into one to pray for the people inside,
hoping that God will answer the prayer. When there’s a big event in church, especially if
New Paradigm Christianity and Commitment-formation 73
it’s Christmas, we go to Lucky Plaza [the shopping center famous for being the hangout
for many Filipinos] to invite people to church. Then we have sports evangelism designed
for one month. First week, we just play tennis and we don’t mention anything about
religion. Second week, we play, then we mention one thing about God. Third, [we talk]
about God and who we are in the church. Fourth, we invite them to care group. Usually,
the fourth week is Matthew Care Group, which is non-threatening for people to get to
know one another. Sports evangelism caters for those who work in aerospace, men who
are uncomfortable when you start talking about Bible, church or religion.
Construction of Worldview
With opportunities for greater involvement, the ‘Kingdom of God’ then becomes an
experienced reality seen in light of the congregation. The local pastor explains:
The value I impart to the Filipinos about commitment to church is that we are involved in
church activities more than we need to go to work. The rest of the time, we are involved
in the lives of the people, care group, shepherding … The value I always teach is that you
are first a Christian, then you are a nurse. You are not a nurse and by chance you are a
Christian. Because you carry the name of Christ, you serve God fully first.
Usually, my commitment is being tested when it comes to major decisions in my life. For
example, in my career path. Am I going to follow the worldview or the Biblical view? The
view of the worldly man or the view of the Christian? In terms of career, I receive less here
in Singapore compared to what I will receive in the UK or US. Four-fold, five-fold our
salary. But what made us stay? Because we know that what we are doing for the Lord is
more valuable. If you love God, you view the things around you differently.
74 Religion and the Individual
Here, personal ambition is subjected to the greater calling of ‘building the Kingdom
of God’. With this consciousness, many of the lay leaders recognize the necessity of
evangelism beyond Singapore, as when Sheila, who sees herself involved in church-
planting in the future, says:
enthusiasm for evangelism in my unit is incredible. And it will not stop. If your heart is
for evangelism, you will continue doing it. So we would saturate all these MRT [train]
stations. But granted that you have invited everyone, would you stop? God said, all
nations. So one nation after another.
The value attached to personal profitability has clearly been transferred from
one’s personal economic gain to the life-conversion of another person. Moreover,
witnessing behavioral transformation not only motivates older members to
carry on. The ‘joy of seeing lives changed’ refocuses one’s response to personal
dilemmas. Leaving the congregation, either when tempted by opportunities abroad
or when compelled by internal conflict, becomes a costly choice because of the
investments made in relationships therein. This, interestingly, is an extension of
Kanter’s proposition that ‘commitment should be stronger … if investment and
its irreversibility are emphasized’ (1968, 506). Furthermore, the irreversibility is
reinforced in how violations of this norm among leaders do not go unchallenged. A
unit leader explains her conviction:
If they want to leave Singapore for another country, ultimately they need to check their
heart motive. Is this really about continuing the work God has placed in their hands or
because they want to pursue their career? If they are leading people here and they want
to serve God, why do they have to go there? Unless they are going on a mission, and that
is the purpose. So when they go there, it’s not really for God, it’s for their career. And we
have a lot of people who did that who eventually turned away from God.
The flexibility in doing church, as when one conducts Matthew Care Group or sports
evangelism, points to my contention that cultural relevance is an achievement at
Hope Filipino. Such openness to new practices explains why Miller (1997) considers
new paradigm Christianity a postdenominational movement, in which rigidity gives
way to relevance.
It is this flexible environment that provides space for individuals to be comfortable
with the process of life-transformation. Eventually, the individual may assume greater
responsibilities in the congregation, which leads to the possibility of commitment-
formation as reorganization of worldview, whereby lay participation becomes
spontaneous and ‘commitment to a particular ministry grows out of an individual’s
personal experience’ (Miller 1997, 138). Such postconversion (or postalternation)
lifestyle informs Hope Filipino’s congregational identity.
For this, I argue that commitment-formation that places the Kingdom of God
central value at Hope Filipino serves as its congregational identity or idioculture
which becomes a valid outcome within the flexible institutional space of new
paradigm Christianity. Hope Filipino’s ability to reorganize one’s worldview is
New Paradigm Christianity and Commitment-formation 75
achieved as a result of its engagement with the practical concerns of the migrant
Filipino, the presence of high-demand mechanisms of accountability overseen by lay
leaders and the opportunities for participation whereby one’s attention is transferred
to another, making the Kingdom of God a tangible reality.
The possibility of commitment-formation in new paradigm Christianity highlights
the conceptual limitation in Becker’s (1999) congregational models, which, as he
admits, does not include the phenomenon of megachurches. Arguably, new paradigm
Christianity is in itself a unique congregational model in terms of its openness to
continuous re-appropriation given different environments around the world. Lyon
(2000), for instance, briefly contrasts American churches with Korean megachurches
in terms of their perceptions of wealth. To identify congregational idiosyncracies,
empirical focus is called for. Although Becker proposes to drop the particularistic
view of congregations in favor of identifying institutional commonalities, Guest
(2004) argues for a balance by including in the analysis local contexts to understand
congregational life. This becomes even more necessary in trying to understand new
paradigm churches given unique contexts, as in the case of the present inquiry’s
newly emerging congregation of overseas workers in an Asian setting.
Commitment-formation at Hope Filipino needs careful analysis. On one hand, one
may expect such worldview reorganization only in sectarian religious organizations.
Tipton observes that alternative religions such as the millenarian Christian sect
he studies in the US unify ‘private life, work, and interpersonal relatings within a
single system of moral meanings’ (1982, 239). Its members who came out of drug
addiction, for instance, are building a physical structure where everyone will relocate
in anticipation of Christ’s Second Coming.
But on the other hand, the continual reinvention of practices in new paradigm
Christianity to appeal to contemporary society may be seen as a largely loose
spiritual environment that potentially breeds divergence. Guest (2004) argues for
this when he observes that in a Church of England congregation that has embraced a
contemporary evangelical spirit, sustained attendance is achieved as a result of public
tolerance for various evangelical leanings, from the liberal to the conservative. Strict
moral discourse is limited in private interactions so as to ‘suppress forces which have
previously provoked disinvolvement’ especially among the ‘elective parochials’
whose affiliation with the congregation is temporary because of labor force mobility
(2004, 83). With this, Guest (2004, 82) reminds the reader that ‘beliefs and values
are often heterogeneous, even within so-called “evangelical” congregations’ among
which he includes successful megachurches.
While this chapter does not provide representation of global new paradigm
Christianity, I argue that a closer look at new paradigm congregations is necessary to
comprehend its distinctiveness as a religious phenomenon. It is rather dismissive to
assume, as suggested in Guest (2004), that new paradigm Christianity’s propensity
for reinvention and its greater concern for tolerance over divergence, are the only
bases for its success. Neglected in the local analysis are opportunities for life-
transformation and greater involvement, signifying levels of strictness with regards
to faith issues that inform behavioral expectations. With this, one may locate new
paradigm congregations such as Hope Filipino in the middle of Tipton’s and Guest’s
propositions presented above because of their ability to offer cultural relevance and
76 Religion and the Individual
discipleship mechanisms. The strength and future of new paradigm Christianity,
which is arguably an extension of Charismatic Christianity (Percy 2003), lies in its
ability to balance strictness and appeal.
One may articulate the uniqueness of new paradigm Christianity through the
framework of detraditionalization within the religious milieu. Woodhead and Heelas
(2000) describe new paradigm Christianity as less radically detraditionalized in
the sense that it balances individual experience with biblical authority. Individual
experience speaks of the engagement with the issues of the people. Miller (1997,
184–185) argues that the American new paradigm churches are addressing the deficit
in ‘human community’ largely among the baby boomers whose countercultural
values rally against the conventions of mainline denominations. Picking up Guest’s
(2004) proposition about the importance of local contexts, which becomes more
important given the flexible environment within new paradigm Christianity, one sees
the distinctiveness of commitment-formation at Hope Filipino.
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Chapter Six
A Peaceable Common:
Gathered Wisdom from Exemplar
Muslim and Christian Peacemakers1
Kevin S. Reimer, Alvin C. Dueck, Joshua P. Morgan and Deborah E. Kessel
The Holy Prophet Mohammed came into this world and taught us: That man is a Muslim
who never hurts anyone by word or deed but who works for the benefit and happiness of
God’s creatures.
Abdul Ghaffar Khan
Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that
goal.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
1 This work was generously funded by the United States Department of Justice. The
Interfaith Conflict Transformation grant was awarded to Fuller Theological Seminary and
Salaam Institute of Peace Studies.
2 For several decades the work of Lawrence Kohlberg dominated the field of moral
psychology, focused on the efficacy of justice in moral reasoning. This paradigm virtually
ignored the real-world behaviors of people commonly considered to be morally outstanding.
Colby and Damon’s (1992) study of care exemplars identified this gap with great effect,
subsequently altering the course of investigation for many researchers in the field.
80 Religion and the Individual
mediation. Exemplar participants were from distinct religious traditions, yet we
found their stories to demonstrate a significant number of similarities; a peaceable
common of shared moral conviction.
Our main goal was to study how exemplar peacemakers from religious
backgrounds understand peace as both attitude and practice. To this end, we
implemented a mixed-method research design in two complementary moves. In
the first move, we summarize findings from a qualitative analysis of narrative
responses from exemplar Muslim and Christian peacemakers (Dueck et al. 2007).3
For this aspect of the study, we solicited nominations of notable peacemakers from
a network of scholars engaged in a project on conflict transformation between
Muslims and Christians. Criteria for nomination included demonstrated commitment
to exceptional peacemaking practices and open identification with either Muslim or
Christian faith. While a few exemplars were involved in peacemaking activity of
global prominence, the majority laboured quietly in the trenches with local groups,
tribes or parties. A number of participants were engaged in conflict mediation in
the Middle East or Asia, including politically volatile regions such as Kashmir.4
Thirteen exemplars from each faith tradition were interviewed. Questions were
open-ended and included items from the Life Narrative Interview (McAdams
1997).5 Peacemaker narratives were subsequently analyzed using grounded theory
(Strauss and Corbin 1998). A well-known qualitative research technique, grounded
theory is used to identify general themes that emerge from subjective coding of
individual response data. This process was undertaken with the assistance of a
coding software program, resulting in a total of 163 codes that were distilled into
five themes.
The second move used a computational knowledge model known as latent
semantic analysis (LSA).6 Combined with two multivariate statistical procedures,
LSA was used to provide an empirical analysis of similarity and dissimilarity
between Muslim and Christian themes identified through the first move of the study.
LSA offered two advantages as a complement to the initial qualitative move. First,
the model helped provide an objective check on qualitative themes. If the conceptual
process that precedes identification of themes is robustly defined and consistently
applied across response data, we expect that themes represent similar meaning
3 A detailed report of qualitative findings from the study may be found in Dueck et
al. (2007 The qualitative research summary provided in the present chapter is purposefully
aligned with a second, quantitative methodology. This mixed-method approach attempts to
answer a research question not previously considered in publication.
4 Identifying information was removed or altered for all exemplar participant quotations
in this chapter. We are purposefully vague in describing the specific contexts and activities of
participating peacemakers in the interest of maintaining confidentiality.
5 The Life Narrative Interview is a qualitative instrument that elicits responses related
to personal identity and self-understanding.
6 LSA is one of several programs in the field of computational linguistics that attempts
to mimic human knowledge distribution, retrieval and association. The mathematical
architecture of the model is similar to factor analysis in multivariate statistics. An excellent
preamble to LSA is found in Landauer et al. (1998). Additional information and publications
on the LSA method may be obtained at http://lsa.colorado.edu
Gathered Wisdom from Exemplar Muslim and Christian Peacemakers 81
for Muslims and Christians alike. By providing a similarity comparison between
narratives, LSA offers an empirical yardstick to measure knowledge embedded in
participant responses. Second, LSA can be used to ‘map’ distributions of peacemaking
knowledge. It is entirely possible that, while much peacemaking knowledge is
shared between Muslim and Christian exemplars, there are subtle differences in the
way that knowledge is distributed. Differences in meaning distribution may reflect
nuanced interpretations particular to religious traditions. In this manner we report
integrated findings from two different methodologies applied to the same narrative
response data.
We hung in there for about a year. The whole idea was to come open-minded, to represent
our points of view, to listen to theirs and to find the areas where we disagreed and could
not come to agreement, and the areas where we had flexibility. And like I said, we were
able to do that up to a certain point, when we got to redline issues for both sides. But we
couldn’t resolve the redline issues. So we felt that instead of trying to force each other
to change views, we would instead just continue in the spirit of friendship and dialogue
without trying to resolve these major issues beforehand.
I will not say the conflict was resolved, it was just we were able to make one positive step
and so in that way it was a success. But in that particular case our strategy was twofold
– one was that we wanted to listen to them and have face-to-face exchange. In many Asian
relationships this is very important and so we wanted to establish face-to-face relationship
and in that setting to listen to them and try to break down some of the stereotypes and
accusations which can be made at a distance but which take on a different form when
you are face-to-face. The second strategy was that in our earlier talks we had called for a
ceasefire among all the indigenous groups.
The ideological commitment theme reflects those perspectives, opinions and beliefs
directly informed by the religious faith of exemplar peacemakers. This theme was
larger than philosophical anecdotes or existential reflections. Instead, ideological
commitment underlined the force of religious convictions directed toward the
greater goal of peace. Peacemakers readily integrated ideological language into their
responses, suggesting that religion was significant to their continued motivation to
work with others. In a Christian exemplar’s narrative:
When people have a conflict about a moral issue that means there is at least two or
three different perspectives. Often people are on one side that does not have a good
understanding of the other perspective. But they are morally obligated to try to understand
the other perspective. In this environment, it is not going to be an easy thing. But I think we
have something to offer. As a Christian, I see peacemaking as the core of New Testament
teaching with the politics of Jesus as the core of peacemaking.
Being mature in your faith is not worrying about what other people think or say about you.
It’s that you’re at peace with yourself and your relationship with God. And then you can
move from that place of peace into bringing that to other people. And then your life is in
service of God, seeking the pleasure of God. And the way I look at it, too, God describes
faith as light, which is a theme that exists in all the texts of religion and spirituality.
You bring that light to the world so that when you’ve achieved that peace and sense of
maturity, you’re a source of light in other people’s lives. We never get to that point of
completion because human beings are not perfect. But you’re emerging all the time and
moving towards that. When you say mature, it almost sounds like you’re finished, but no
one is ever finished.
Theme 3: Pragmatism
We have a Jewish partner who initiated a play. The children wrote the play. It’s a hit here
in our city. It’s going to go national. Then we’re building interfaith homes. We’re planning
on building homes next year. President Carter is going to come work on it. See, that’s
where my effort has switched now. Before, it was prayer service and dialogue. Now the
effort and focus is doing things together, building homes, doing a play with the kids, doing
blood drives, practical things. When we do things, we build confidence; get to know each
other better.
Basically, they try to be a nonviolent presence in the middle of the conflict. They take risks
themselves. They make sacrifices for the purpose of trying to reduce the level of violence
between the two communities. If they have to physically stand between the two groups
they will do that. If they need to accompany a child from one place to another, say from
home to school or if they need to accompany a farmer going to his fields, they will do that.
They will be a presence to reduce the violence to reduce the conflict.
Theme 4: Personalization
I genuinely wanted to be able to have a more open dialogue with the Jewish people on
campus. I do not want them to think I am anti-Semitic. They have told me before that they
84 Religion and the Individual
think I am anti-Semitic and I want to explain that I do not dislike them, that I have nothing
against them. I just have a different view on this conflict.
Well, as the person who runs the mosque and promotes it, I felt particularly responsible
for this guy being allowed in. And I try to advertise so that only people who we know and
trust know about the mosque. I felt kind of responsible. But mostly, what was important
was the safety of other members and keeping the space safe.
Theme 5: Community
The community theme indicates relationships and group affiliation that empowers
peacemakers to do their work. Community describes the interpersonal environment in
which the peacemaker lives, emphasizing the value of a reliable support system. The
community theme reflects many groups identified by peacemakers, including faith
community, mentor figures, family and peer associations or personal friendships.
For one Muslim exemplar, community took on a civic flavor consonant with newly
acquired citizenship:
I remember the day I was sworn in to be a US citizen. I was so happy. I had my wife, my
child and my in-laws all around me as I raised my hand for the first time in my life ever
to be a citizen or to be recognized. I was never a citizen of any country. I was a refugee
and now to be a citizen, to pledge to protect the country in non-combatant ways and to
be someone, it was something I don’t think I can find words to describe; in a simple act
of extending citizenship to someone you are restoring human faith and telling that person
you are someone not just as a number or known as this, you are somebody, you count and
you are one of us. It just was overwhelming to me.
Community looked somewhat different for a Christian exemplar who underlined the
importance of therapy and close attachments through a particularly difficult time:
I was very depressed, and I needed to go see a counselor mostly because I had no direction.
I did not know where I was going. I realized that God had not called me to church ministry
as I had thought. At that time also, I was in between relationships. I had hoped to be
Gathered Wisdom from Exemplar Muslim and Christian Peacemakers 85
dating someone and I was not. Since then I have got married, and that helped a lot. Yeah,
I even had some thoughts of suicide at that time. I do not know if there were really a lot
of specifics. I guess you could say I have lived somewhat of a boring life that did not have
anything positive or negative. I had a couple of close friends at the time that talked me
into seeing a counselor. The counseling experience was not extraordinarily good or bad. I
guess I was looking for a purpose in my life.
In summary, the purpose of the first methodological move was to explore thematic
content describing peacemaking attitudes and practices. The richly lived experiences
of those Muslim and Christian exemplar peacemakers interviewed for this study
suggest that peacemaking flourishes when participants maintain a posture of open-
mindedness. Open-minded embrace of other perspectives is modeled by exemplars
as both virtue and invitation to peacemaking dialogue. Like the participants from
Colby and Damon’s work, peace exemplars manage the ambiguities of their efforts
with highly practical strategies designed to mobilize the assets of involved parties.
This practical bent is designed to garner local ownership of projects that creatively
engage individuals in a manner that fosters trusting relationship. Exemplars identify
themselves with communities of support that nurture, challenge and reinforce core
religious commitments. For the combined sample group, moral identity related to
peace and conflict mediation is extended from cherished religious principles. By
their own testimony, it appears that exemplars would not likely continue their
peacemaking efforts in the absence of their religious convictions.
The second methodological move included the use of LSA to analyze the five
themes identified above. It was our intention that LSA would provide an empirical
comparison of knowledge reflected in themes outlined through the first move.
As a cousin of artificial intelligence, LSA is able to compare the similarity and
dissimilarity of knowledge within texts such as peacemaker narratives. Additionally,
we wanted to use LSA to map peacemaking knowledge in a manner that would
facilitate comparison between religious traditions. We hoped that this additional step
would clarify the manner by which exemplars think about their own peacemaking
86 Religion and the Individual
practice. LSA offered an opportunity to assess peacemaking attitudes and practices
that are latent or otherwise unobserved in participant responses.
For the present study, we wanted to consider peacemaking knowledge on the basis
of similarity and dissimilarity in peacemaker narratives. The analysis was premised
upon the five themes as found in Muslim peacemaker narratives and the same five
themes in Christian narratives. Taken together, the ten narratives were compared to
77 survey item stems from the Just Peacemaking Inventory, a self-report instrument
of peacemaking principles (JPI).7 The rationale for including JPI item stems was
to provide a domain that would serve as a peacemaking ‘knowledge yardstick’ for
comparison of the ten narratives. By triangulating religious peacemaker narratives
with a survey of peacemaking knowledge, we expected to gain an understanding of
similarity or difference between narratives by religious tradition. Multi-dimensional
scaling (MDS) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) were used to map and cluster
narrative themes, respectively. The MDS map with HCA clusters are provided as an
integrated presentation in Figure 6.1.
Ideology (Christian)
Community, Autonomy)
1.0
Community (Christian)
0.0
Personalization (Christian)
-0.5 Pragmatism (Muslim)
Personalization (Muslim)
Methodology (Christian)
Pragmatism (Christian) Methodology (Muslim)
-1
-2 -1 0 1
Cluster 1 =
Cluster 2 =
Cluster 3 =
Cluster 4 =
Cluster 5 =
MDS maps variables in any space where the basis for comparison is unknown
or undefined. The interpretation of MDS dimensions is subjective, based on how
variables are arrayed from positive to negative poles. Dimension 1 corresponds with
the horizontal axis in Figure 6.1. Our interpretation of Dimension 1 is based on
the horizontal distribution of theme variables across the map by religious tradition.
We found the cross-cultural work of Richard Shweder to be particularly helpful
for interpreting MDS dimensions of narrative meaning in peacemaker responses
(Shweder et al. 1997).8 Shweder et al. outline experiences of suffering in the morality
of indigenous peoples from India and other cultures. Much peacemaking activity
occurs in morally charged circumstances that involve suffering and injustice. Shweder
et al. provide a culturally and religiously sensitive appraisal of these issues along
with an awareness of local conflicts and moral imperatives to mitigate suffering.
Shweder’s theory offers a broad horizon for attitudes and practices appropriate to the
present sample of Muslim and Christian exemplar peacemakers.
In the MDS map, the distribution of Dimension 1 variables resembled cultural
explanations and resolutions for suffering as outlined by Shweder et al. As a
result, we labeled Dimension 1 ‘Restitution of Suffering’. Shweder et al. propose
three culturally defined bases for coping with suffering, including (a) moral, (b)
interpersonal and (c) biomedical. We trace our discussion of Dimension 1 with the
use of these categories spread across arbitrary boundaries for positive pole to include
points to the right of 0.5, midrange to include points between 0.5 and –0.5, and
negative pole to the left of –0.5. Consonant with the exploratory nature of LSA
analyses, our discussion is deliberately suggestive and descriptive.
Positive Pole: Moral Restitution Shweder et al. outline moral restitution in terms of
‘confession’ or ‘sacrifice’ upholding a sense of personal responsibility for suffering.
We observed that the positive pole of Dimension 1 included themes in Muslim
Personalization, Christian Community and Christian Ideology.9 The element of
personal responsibility is illustrated through several Muslim peacemaker narratives,
notably in one individual’s concern for the local mosque and its public reputation
(Personalization).10 Similarly, Christian narratives of Ideological Commitment
demonstrated moral obligation to understand the perspectives of others, realized
in part through the politics of Jesus Christ (Christian Ideology). Finally, Christian
narratives reflecting upon community influence described specific moral influences
encouraging peacemakers to place personal needs and agendas aside for the sake of
the greater good (Christian Community).
A critical question in the cultural study of religion and morality includes the manner
by which people organize moral standards with the guidance of internal and external
reference points. From their intercultural work on the Indian subcontinent, Shweder
et al. arrive at their ‘big three’ interpretations of Moral Order. These include (a)
divinity, or moral reference to the transcendent realm, (b) community, or moral
reference to group norms for behavior and (c) autonomy, or individual locus of moral
agency and responsibility. We trace the big three aspects of moral order through
our interpretation of Dimension 2. As with the descriptive approach taken with
Gathered Wisdom from Exemplar Muslim and Christian Peacemakers 89
Dimension 1, we located the positive pole to include points above 0.5, midrange to
include points between 0.5 and –0.5, and negative pole below –0.5.
Midrange: Community There can be little doubt that group norms and community
obligations constrain moral functioning in cultures around the world. Filial duty
to one’s community and kin is consummated through recognition of hierarchies
that promote order. Several themes were distributed across the midrange section
of Dimension 2, including Christian Community, Muslim Community and Muslim
Pragmatism. We observed that the Christian Community narratives included
references to intimate relationships reflecting close support. Several of the
Muslim Community narratives reached even further into social bases for moral
self-understanding, upholding a morality derived from status as world citizen.
Similarly, Muslim Pragmatism narratives emphasized community volunteerism as
peacemaking.
A primary reason for using LSA with narrative themes was to provide an unsupervised
comparison of Muslim and Christian exemplar attitudes and peacemaking practices.
Cluster analysis provides a way to identify latent statistical relationships between
variables as identified through LSA. In addition to the visual map provided by MDS,
cluster analysis offers an improved picture of what narratives share knowledge
(similarity) or represent different knowledge (dissimilarity). For the present study,
the HCA solution favored a five-cluster interpretation. Figure 6.1 presents clusters in
graded order as indicated by the thickness of boundary lines around variables. Cluster
1 included both Muslim and Christian Community themes. Cluster 2 added Muslim
Personalization to Cluster 1. Cluster 3 combined Muslim Pragmatism with Christian
Personalization. Cluster 4 enclosed Muslim Methodology and Christian Pragmatism.
Finally, Cluster 5 encompassed Muslim Ideology and Christian Ideology themes.
The cluster analysis raised interesting issues in our effort to cross-validate
qualitative coding while looking for nuanced differences in Muslim and Christian
exemplar responses. First, we note that Cluster 1 and Cluster 5 combined the same
themed narratives from both religious traditions. This validates the conceptual
robustness of the two themes as understood in terms of latent meaning through
peacemaker narratives. When combined with clustering, the LSA move suggests
that community and ideological commitment themes are prominent in the shared
attitudes and practices of exemplar peacemakers. The dimensional location of the
clusters underlines the significance of moral restitution in exemplar attitudes toward
the alleviation of suffering in peacemaking practice (Dimension 1), a perspective
that potentially originates through moral sensitivities identified in divinity and
community (Dimension 2). One interpretation for these findings is that the moral
impetus of peacemaking practice is deeply rooted in religious commitments. The
relationship between morality and religion is complex, with a truncated empirical
history in the psychological research literature (Walker and Reimer 2005).11
Nevertheless, it does appear that moral exemplarity (of which the Muslim and
Christian peacemakers in the present study are a case) is conjoined with religious
commitment. If moral functioning grows in and through social cues afforded by
context, then the prominence of community and ideological commitment themes in
the present study implies that effective peacemaking is larger than any individual.
Exemplars approach peacemaking venues and conversations backed by a hidden
community of religiously oriented support. Individual exemplars at the negotiating
table represent larger communitarian and ideological objectives ratified by their
religious traditions. Effectiveness in peacemaking practice affirms a peaceable
Conclusion
It was our goal to consider how peacemakers from Muslim and Christian religious
traditions construct meaning regarding peacemaking attitudes and practices. While
participant experiences offer hints rather than prescriptions for effective peacemaking,
we do believe that study observations are useful to peace education both within
and between religious traditions. Interpreting the complex meanings endemic to
12 Walzer (1996) argues that morality is imbued with cultural referents derived from
the anthropology of Clifford Geertz. Morality reflects both ‘thick’ dimensions of ethnic and
religious tradition and ‘thin’ discourse typical of the democratic public square.
92 Religion and the Individual
peacemaker responses is not an easy prospect. Recognizing the importance of religious
and cultural context in this discussion, we offer two summary observations.
First, a peaceable common between Muslim and Christian peacemakers
begins with religious tradition and ends with practices characterized by openness
and perspective-taking. At one level this suggests that effective peacemakers are
comfortable with their own religious beliefs and committed to the practice of
religious principles. Belief supports underlying moral commitments inherent to
peacemaking. Research on moral exemplarity points to transcendent belief systems
beneath the commitments of many exemplars (Colby and Damon 1992; MacIntyre
1991).13 Yet exemplars do not manifest religious beliefs with the express intent of
imposing values on others in conflict dialogue. Instead, religion for these individuals
appears to function as a form of moral sustenance. Particular beliefs may play into
exemplar peacemaking interventions but only as an invitation for others to resource
their own religious traditions toward the goal of building bridges under the auspices
of peace. It should be noted that religion is not a necessary prerequisite to moral
functioning. Where religion does exist, however, it can be leveraged toward moral
goals that are expressed in openness and perspective-taking potentially able to
transform previously intractable situations. Exemplars proved to be masters of this
complex and socially delicate balancing act.
Second, a peaceable common between Muslim and Christian peacemakers
upholds the importance of multi-lingual capability in the public forum of conflict
mediation. While exemplars might easily default to their own religiously-informed
moral categories in peacemaking discourse, they expend considerable effort to
locate ethical language that is commensurable, understood by everyone present. In
situations where Western priorities of democracy and individualism are operative,
exemplars demonstrate a marked fluency in deontological and utilitarian moral
language. Perhaps more impressive, exemplars are able to adjust discourse to fit
the particularity and traditions of local groups. This requires an ability to learn and
make meaningful associations between exemplar peace priorities ensconced within
indigenous rubrics. Exemplars are not only willing to learn local moral dialects
but expend considerable energy to this end. In this manner, peacemakers become
fluent in many languages of moral sensitivity. We recognize that this may indicate a
unique suite of giftedness in exemplar peacemakers that isn’t readily transmissible
to others. However, exemplars in the present study would be the first to admonish
us against an overly individualized interpretation of their activities. The majority
of exemplar peacemakers indicate that their primary identity is one of front-line
representation for their religious communities. Multi-lingual peacemaking reflects
the diverse religious constituencies that animate ongoing efforts of exemplar
peacemakers.
We are struck by the fact that peacemaker skills, strategies and attitudes
powerfully reflect relational priorities. For peacemakers from both traditions,
13 Colby and Damon (1992) noted a surprise finding in that the majority of moral
exemplars in their work identified religion as a core framework for motivation and ongoing
commitment. It is worth noting that the Colby and Damon study coincided with philosophical
arguments for a different view of religious particularity in moral exchange.
Gathered Wisdom from Exemplar Muslim and Christian Peacemakers 93
relationship seems to be a core religious precept embodied in their view of the world
and divinity. Without an authentic commitment to relationship with others, peace
is unlikely to become a lasting fixture between tribal leaders or warring political
factions. Peacemakers seem to have arrived at this knowledge on their own, through
processes we can only indirectly ascertain. Given their narratives, we believe that
one way of applying study findings is to consider educational interventions that
foster a process of self-reflection such that pragmatic strategies become coherent,
personalized schemas resilient to failure. Social support networks are an important
complement to the growing wisdom of the peacemaking exemplar, suggesting
that interventions should be intentionally situated within communities capable of
understanding the purpose and practice of peace. Based on the common wisdom
revealed through exemplars, peacemaking arises from within religious tradition-
contexts, finding its deepest expression in relationship structures that respect, honor
and validate the perspective of the other.
Bibliography
Brown, Steve, Kevin Reimer, Alvin Dueck, Richard Gorsuch, Robert Strong and
Tracy Sidesinger. 2008. ‘A Particular Peace: Psychometric Properties of the Just
Peacemaking Inventory.’ Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 14:
1–18.
Colby, Anne, and William Damon. 1992. Some Do Care: Contemporary Lives of
Moral Commitment. New York: Free Press.
Dueck, Alvin, Kevin Reimer, Joshua Morgan and Steve Brown. 2007. ‘Let Peace
Flourish: Descriptive and Applied Research from the Conflict Transformation
Study.’ In M. Abu-Nimer and D. Augsburger, eds, Conflict Transformation.
Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox.
Landauer, Thomas, Peter Foltz and Darrell Laham. 1998. ‘Introduction to Latent
Semantic Analysis.’ Discourse Processes 25: 259–284.
McAdams, Dan P. 1997. The Stories We Live By. New York: Guilford.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1991. Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopedia,
Geneology, and Tradition. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Shweder, Richard, Nancy Much, Manamohan Mahapatra and Lawrence Park. 1997.
‘The Big Three of Morality (Autonomy, Community, Divinity) and the Big Three
Explanations of Suffering.’ In A. Brandt and P. Rozin, eds, Morality and Health.
Florence, KY: Routledge. 119–169.
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Edition: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Newbury
Park, CA: Sage.
Tangney, Judith, and Deborah Mashek. 2004. ‘In Search of the Moral Person: Do
You Have to Feel Really Bad to be Good?’ In J. Greenberg, ed., Handbook of
Experimental Existential Psychology. New York: Guilford. 156–166.
Walker, Lawrence J., and Kevin S. Reimer. 2005. ‘The Relationship Between
Moral and Spiritual Development.’ In P. Benson, P. King, L. Wagener and
94 Religion and the Individual
E. Roehlkepartain, eds, The Handbook of Spiritual Development in Childhood
and Adolescence. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. 265–301.
Walzer, Michael. 1996. Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad.
South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
Chapter Seven
Introduction
Spring Harvest is the largest contemporary British annual ‘Bible week’, where
the ethos is not only symptomatic of a cultural shift in conservative religion, but
has been influential in further reshaping, intentionally and unintentionally, the
subculture of those who attend. This tradition of a religious holiday week could
perhaps have its origins traced obliquely to the medieval pilgrimage, but is more
directly a development from the early nineteenth-century Methodist revivalist camp
meetings in the United States. The longest lasting British event of this kind is the
Keswick Bible Convention, founded in 1875 (Price and Randall 2000). By the late
1970s, traditional evangelical Bible weeks faced a double cultural dislocation:
unsure what to make of the rising prominence of charismatic renewal and hidebound
in traditional formalities of presentation and hymnody. In reaction against this
increasing subcultural isolation, Spring Harvest held its first annual event at Easter,
1979 and 2,800 attended. Its growth was remarkable: in 1984, 21,000; in 1989,
70,000. From 1990 to 2005 annual attendance was sustained at 60,000–80,000. The
venue has been Butlins holiday camps, which are self-contained holiday villages,
the first of which opened in 1936. Particularly popular after the Second World War,
Butlins provided low-cost family holidays in somewhat Spartan chalets (http://www.
butlinsmemories.com/ Accessed 19/12/06).
This wide range of attendance in more recent years is explained by the organisers
as a variable plateau, determined by the amount of accommodation that Butlins
holiday camps can provide each year. By the early 1990s Spring Harvest had stopped
growing, having reached a saturation point – not only for Butlins, but within the
evangelical market, according to Alan Johnson, Spring Harvest’s Chief Executive,
in interview. In 2001, publicity for the event downgraded annual attendance claims
from 80,000 to 60,000 (Warner 2007), tacitly indicating either a decline that Spring
Harvest’s leaders denied in interviews with me, or a greater realism and precision
replacing previously overenthusiastic promotion. Moderated claims in publicity may
indicate an actual decline in average attendance, masked by being presented as a
plateau. Nonetheless, in the first decade of the new century Spring Harvest continued
to be, by a significant margin, the largest annual Bible week in Britain.
96 Religion and the Individual
British Bible week attendance, 20011
Entrepreneurial Exceptionalism
The long-term patterns of decline in attendance and public influence for institutional
Christianity are well documented. (Gilbert 1980; Brown 2001; Bruce 2002;
Brierley 2000; Brierley 2006). However, the entrepreneurial type of evangelical,
in late-twentieth-century variant typically Pentecostal/charismatic in experiential
orientation, has shown a distinct capacity for self-reinvention and resultant durability.
As David Edwards (1987) observed:
... there will still be a large place in worldwide Christianity for the tradition which can be
called Evangelical. Like Roman Catholicism, it changes because it lives … the Evangelical
future will include many Christians who are very simple in their interpretations of the
experience of accepting Jesus as Saviour – but the leadership and the theology will be
increasingly open to a changing world.
Dissolving Conservatism
Unintended Autonomy
The reflexive project of the self, which consists in the sustaining of coherent, yet
continuously revised, biographical narratives … because of the ‘openness’ of social life
today, the pluralisation of contexts of action and the diversity of ‘authorities’, lifestyle
choice is increasingly important in the constitution of self-identity and daily activity.
(1991, 5)
Autonomous Conformism – the Paradox of Entrepreneurial Protestantism 105
The ‘religious bricolage’ of constructing an authentic, individual Christian
identity, or perhaps a customised fabric of religious recreation, is practised
increasingly in the home church (or churches), and not just at an event that has
subverted its own conformist ethos with an emphasis upon the autonomous religious
consumer. This bricolage within boundaries may in time dissolve or at least diminish
those boundaries’ homogenising plausibility. In a climate of pragmatic acculturation,
the subcultural capital of conservative conformism (Thornton 1995), at least among
moderate evangelicals, is being dissolved from within.
The implicit elevation of personal autonomy and the consequent relativising of the
diverse certainties of preachers with homogenising aspirations combine to establish
within Spring Harvest an unintentional climate of heterogeneity and provisionality.
In the creative play of the reflexive project of the religious self, the consumer of
experiential and therapeutic religion is given freedom, however unintentionally, to
nurture ironic detachment from the conformist projects and the impassioned rhetoric
of imminent advance on offer in the religious marketplace of the entrepreneurial
evangelicals. Implicit hybridity, cultural and theological, emerges for the autonomous
religious consumer. Residual conservatism, detraditionalised experientialism,
therapeutic individualism and autonomous self-reinvention all coalesce in a transient
and contingent provisionality. If early and broad evangelicalism is conceived as a
form of pre-critical, conversion-oriented Protestant orthodoxy, the enlightenment
foundationalism of the later conservative evangelicals can be interpreted as a
form of cultural imperialism. Post-conservative evangelicals, whether departing
intellectually from enlightenment-bound presuppositions or departing from
traditionalist conformism in the culturally consonant mode of autonomous religious
consumption, can thereby be interpreted as an unexpected instance of cultural
hybridity (Bhabha 1994), reconfiguring experimental (and, perhaps, often unstable
and transient) fusions of the traditional and the contemporary.
The paradox of autonomous conformism exhibits disparate emphases. We have
identified the inflated rhetoric of entrepreneurial conservatism, allegedly mobilised
for advance, which in its cognitive dissonance becomes a form of illusory consolation
for a semi-conservative remnant, a ghetto on holiday. This leads to the conclusion
that entrepreneurial conservatism appears constitutionally incapable of facing the
realities, however contested, of secularisation, which condemns its larger aspirations
to unreality. We have also explored the new religious zeitgeist of autonomous
consumerism, in which the delegates become purchasers of religious recreation, with
the consumerist ethos subverting the residual conformism of modified conservatism,
in doctrine and in ethics. The preachers do not express pluralism, contingency and
irony: it is the participants who exercise the freedom to choose between competing
sets of certainties or to free-float among them. For some religious consumers, it is
plausible that an increasing proportion of their religious convictions and emphases
may mutate into provisional allegiances from their former status as non-negotiable
and permanent, formative and essential.
Contrary to Hunter’s thesis (1983;1989), we conclude that cognitive bargaining
is symptomatic of a transitional era, rather than the key dilutant within conservative
religious transitions. Pragmatic acculturation that legitimates autonomous
consumerism inevitably subverts entrepreneurial conservatism and inculcates in its
106 Religion and the Individual
place, however unintentionally, postmodern bricolage and hybridity, nascent and
diverse. The durability of these emergent trajectories remains uncertain. Experimental
formulations are likely to be contested, tentative and may remain unreflexive in their
theological repositioning, while adhering with superficial loyalty, but underlying
ambivalence, to the symbolic boundaries, increasingly porous and implausible, of
conventional, modernist evangelical orthodoxy.
What we have identified is the accidental postmodernism of entrepreneurial
evangelicalism, constructing an ethos that legitimates the autonomous consumer,
pluralistic conceptions of contemporary orthodoxy, and the bricolage within
broadening boundaries of a reconstructed and provisional religious identity. This is
ironic and unexpected when the public face of this religious tradition is late-modern,
conformist and unitary, insisting upon adherence to a theological framework that
is systematic, non-negotiable and permanent, and combining this with a similarly
conservative and inflexible socio-political ethic. Spring Harvest may therefore
have become the last redoubt of conservative entrepreneurialism, traditionalist and
sometimes even pre-critical in its formulaic theology and ethics, but pragmatic and
unreflexively contemporary in its praxis. The tail has wagged the dog. Late-modern
evangelical leaders, aspiring to neo-Constantinian social influence, have legitimated
postmodern quest, liberty and irony among the cohorts they have assembled.
Postmodern methods have begun to subvert late-modern ideology. Once the dominant
culture of autonomous consumption is endorsed, conformism becomes increasingly
nominal, and the rhetoric of imminent advance drifts towards enthusiastic vacuity,
or formulaic and even escapist religious entertainment. The entrepreneurial leaders,
pragmatic and acculturating, deliberately sought to change ‘from above’ the external
presentation of evangelicalism; the autonomous consumers were thereby legitimated
to deconstruct ‘from below’ conformist allegiances previously considered self-evident
and inherent. Under the impact of postmodernity and as a consequence of their own
pragmatic experimentation, the subcultural capital that sustained conformism among
moderate evangelicals appears to have been breaking down.
Bibliography
One of the fundamental ways people relate to others is through religious or spiritual
lenses. Religions evolve in a community of believers, which brings warmth,
belonging and security to its members. Besides purely personal or psychological
gains associated with religiosity, there exists a social reward as well. By being active
within the social institutions of a belief system or internalizing its rhetorical as well as
doctrinal perspectives and by following its worship rituals people do not only derive
a subjective individual psychological gain. They also derive a social return to their
investment, in a sense into their religion that helps them achieve personal as well as
public objectives. My ensuing arguments below are built upon a newly burgeoning
literature on religious or spiritual capital which resembles in many respects to the
rather well-known social capital literature. Field (2003), Putnam (2000) and Uslaner
(2002) provide reviews of the vast literature on social capital. Iannaccone (1990),
Stark and Finke (2000) and Finke and Dougherty (2002) present the arguments upon
which the religious/spiritual capital concept is built.
One critical element in any religion that exemplifies the cooperative spirit with
the community of believers concerns the level and different forms of philanthropic
giving. My objective in this essay is chiefly to present an empirical picture of the
state of philanthropic giving in the predominantly Muslim population of Turkey. I
build my arguments upon a conceptual link between religiosity of individuals and
their abilities to relate to other fellow human beings. The main question I want to
address is the relative weights of social as opposed to spiritual/religious capital (SRC)
in shaping various forms of philanthropic giving. Following a short discussion of
conceptual foundations I operationalize the measurements of these rival concepts
with the help of nationally representative survey data from Turkey and describe
their basic properties. Next, I will use these measurements to explain variations in
individuals’ support for philanthropic giving.
112 Religion and the Individual
Social vs. Spiritual/Religious Capital
Social Capital
In its simplest form, the social capital (SC) argument asserts that long-term
maintenance of good working relationships geared towards working together for a
purpose render many otherwise unattainable objectives practicable with much less
difficulty. In their attempts to achieve objectives that are individually difficult if not
impossible to attain individuals use their social relationships and networks wherein
a series of common values develop and thus render cooperation easier. To the extent
that they use these networks as a resource such relationships become a resource or
capital (Field 2003, 1).
Several empirical observations that can be generalized for many countries of
diverse backgrounds underline the importance of SC. Family meals, a long-time
practised ritual, has become one of the national endangered practices in modern
times (Feldstein and Sander 2001, 45). since the early 1970s there is also a noticeable
downward trend in the percentage of people who report that others can be in general
trusted. Less trusting individuals also tend to trust their governments less and less as
well. As a consequence of declining trust, people tend to engage in social activities
relatively less over the past few decades. Putnam (2000) notes that Americans are
‘bowling alone’ and are becoming much less active in mainstream civic organizations
concomitantly participating in political and organizational activities at a much lower
rate. More relevant for our purposes is the estimate that overall share of philanthropic
giving as share of the national income has also been declining. In other words, more
isolated individuals, who are interacting less and less with one another for a shared
objective, less trusting and less caring in general, tend to cooperate and work less
with strangers.
The massive empirical regularities from a large number of comparative contexts
seem to have necessitated the introduction of a distinction between two forms of
SC. The bonding type refers to parochial interpersonal solidarity that exists in small
localities wherein exclusive long-term communal socialization develops. Bonding is
similar to Durkheim’s (1915) notion of solidarity and is more likely to occur within
homogeneous small communities. Similar to Durkheim’s account, bonding acts as
SC in so far as it provides emotional support, fellowship and camaraderie. While
bonding promotes in-group trust and focuses on members’ needs and interests, any
one from out-group tends to be viewed with suspicion and mistrust. The bridging
type of SC is however less intimate and personal. In line with Granovetter’s (1973)
conception of ‘weak’ ties, the bridging type of SC is advantageous in building
relationships across different groups of heterogeneous nature and thus fostering a
larger cooperative society. Wuthnow (2002, 670) notes that ‘compared with bonding,
bridging is perhaps more difficult to generate and sustain because it requires that
people look beyond their immediate social circles and depends on institutions
capable of nurturing cooperation among heterogeneous groups’.
Explaining Philanthropic Giving in a Muslim Setting 113
Religious/Spiritual Capital
Building on the work of human capital by Gary Becker (1964), for Laurence
Iannaccone (1990) the very process of religious practice and the production of
religious satisfaction therein creates a distinct new form of social skill accumulation
which he calls religious human capital (RHC). His definition of RHC was based on
social skills and experiences that specifically originate from one’s religion. These
religion specific skills and experiences can be gained in the process of obtaining
information and be reflected in one’s doctrinal knowledge about his or her religion.
Or they may be specific to experience in religious rituals and practical traditions.
Iannaccone’s RHC concept is intimately linked to the work carried out in the
field of religious psychology which views religion as a human response to a series of
stimuli from the social and the natural environments. These stimuli may be internal
to the psyche of the individual facing the natural and social realities or just as well
be external impositions of the natural or social environment. As people age, for
example, their reactions to the external stimuli coming in from their own or their
loved one’s health, or simple disastrous events are inherently different compared to
their youth. This observation alone is enough to point out that external and internal
are constantly at play in shaping and reshaping the self-conceptualization as well as
social imposition of what it means to be religious for a given individual.
The concepts of religiousness or religiosity as opposed to spirituality have
often been used interchangeably. Vaughan (1991) and Argyle and Beith-Hallahmi
(1975) underline that religiousness involves subscription to institutionalized
beliefs, doctrines and practices of worship. Spirituality on the other hand, is seen
as a subjective individual experience with the sacred world. It involves ‘that vast
realm of human potential dealing with ultimate purposes, with higher entities, with
God, with love, with compassion, with purpose’ (Tart 1983, 4; quoted in Zinnbauer
et al. 1997, 550). It seems that for all practical purposes religiosity is a subset of
spirituality which over-encompasses individuals’ subjective dealings with the sacred
unknown world. Spirituality then need not involve with the organized religions of
any form and remain in its nature a mostly individual subjective experience. Putnam’s
distinction regarding the bonding as opposed to bridging type of SC accumulation
also helps us distinguish spirituality from religiousness. While religiousness tends
to bonding with its focus on exclusionist identities, spirituality tends towards
bridging, by remaining relatively autonomous from organized religion, and thus
from social motivations and pressures, and by staying focused primarily on the
individual experiences related to the sacred world and its larger questions of purpose
and meaning. Such focus on the subjective evaluations of the ultimate questions of
purpose and meaning in sacred dimensions of human existence do not necessarily
tend towards exclusionist evaluations of identity. Just as there is an inherent tension
between bonding and bridging, spirituality and religiousness coexist; one pushing
people towards conformity to an exclusionist identity and the other pulling people
towards the unknown humble acceptance of an inclusionist divinity.
What differentiates religious or spiritual capital from its rivals or complementary
concepts could still be its intimate and direct link to one’s fundamental identity
definitions. Clues of this perspective on spiritual or religious capital can actually
114 Religion and the Individual
be found in the dark-side interpretations of social capital on which Uslaner (2002,
87–88, 138–139) provides a thorough discussion. While the bright side of social
capital is all inclusive; that is, it evokes trust in all people irrespective of their race,
social class, religion, ethnicity and the like, the dark side of social capital underlines
its exclusivist nature. If one does not share a common identity with the other, then
cooperative links are severed and accommodating and supportive social interaction
is then denied to the outsiders. While SC’s bright side promotes abolishing the
distinction between ‘we’ and ‘they’, its darker side underlines it. Almost by definition
identities create cognitive distortions about the ‘in’ as opposed to the ‘out’ group
members. Out-groups are homogenized and approached with prejudice and thus
discriminated against, while in-group members benefit from favoritism (Fiske and
Taylor 1991).
In short, the ‘good’ or ‘brighter’ side of social capital describes the all-inclusive
cooperative networking amongst individuals while the darker side emphasizes the
exclusionist identity based interaction between members of the same identity group
as opposed to between individuals of different identity groups. Since the brighter
side is all inclusive by definition, it need not incorporate any notion of identity.
However, the darker side is built upon the need for identity formation. Once the
need for an identity is justified on rational grounds then the question as to why
people cannot possibly live with only the brighter side of social capital becomes
self-evident. People form identities that demarcate in-group from the out-group
simply because such a demarcation benefits members. If it benefits members then
such identity-based capital accumulation deserves investing in for future use of the
in-group networks. If such an investment takes place in the realm of religion then
religious – as opposed to spiritual – capital concepts become useful.
The central argument in the above discussion for our purposes here concerns
the consequences of SC and RHC. It is anticipated that, after controlling for the
effects of other relevant factors – such as social capital, income and attitudes towards
philanthropy – the impact of religious capital on donations will be expected to be
positive. The data used in the ensuing analyses were collected as part of a series of
surveys on philanthropic giving conducted in Turkey during Spring 2004 among
household members of voting age as well as foundation administrators. The nature
of the sample and basic measurement strategies followed for my key variables
can be found in Çarkoğlu (2006). Below I present basic characteristics of SC and
RHC and formulate a multivariate explanatory model for testing their impact upon
philanthropic giving.
The questionnaire included three interrelated modules that tackle the issue of trust
and social capital. The simplest and most widely used index is adopted from a
Survey Research Center (1969) module on trust in people and uses three separate
questions aggregated in an additive way to form a scale ranging between 0 and
3. In all three questions respondents are asked to choose one of two options, one
of which indicates tendency to trust. An individual who chooses the trustworthy
Explaining Philanthropic Giving in a Muslim Setting 115
responses in all three questions scores the highest score of 3, indicating a high level
of trust.1 We see that nearly 60 per cent of the sample chose non-trusting answers in
all three questions and only a small minority of 2.9 per cent chose trusting answers
in all three. The relatively low level of the Cronbach’s alpha of 0.5 indicates the
low reliability for the scale, which suggests that these questions touch on different
dimensions of trust phenomena and thus those who give a trusting answer to one
question will not necessarily do so to another, so creating low correlations between
the three questions.
In operationalizing the concept of spiritual or religious capital it is difficult
to attain a distinction between religiosity and spiritual or religious capital unless
the measurements were obtained or designed specifically for this purpose. I only
attempted to obtain measures of religious capital that reflect the majority Sunni/
Hanefi school in the Turkish context rather than the other minority schools, such as
the Alevis, whose religiosity as reflected in their practices need not coincide with
the measures used here. I follow my earlier criticism of this approach in Çarkoğlu
(2005) and treat the Alevis separately from the Sunnis in the ensuing analyses. I
accordingly worked with multi-dimensional religiosity measurements. Following
earlier works by Glock and Stark (1965), Hassan (2002), Çarkoğlu and Toprak (2000)
and Çarkoğlu (2005), I devised faith, religious attitudes and religious worship or
practice dimensions of religiosity. In addition, respondents’ self-evaluations of their
own religiosity are used in explanatory analyses.2 For the details of these measures
see Çarkoğlu (2006).
These measures only partially succeed in grasping the conceptual needs
underlined above. The faith dimension of religiosity clearly reflects doctrinal
elements in Sunni Muslim faith and thus reflects little degree of ‘spirituality’ as
we conceptualized it. However, to the extent that they are voiced openly in social
life, the attitudinal positions taken should bear some significance in the way our
respondents relate to their fellow community members and as such should entail
some degree of religious capital. Like-minded individuals with regards to religiously
1 The questions used for this index are as follows: (1) Generally speaking, would you
say that most people can be trusted or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?
– Can’t be too careful, Most people can be trusted*, (2) Do you think that most people would
try to take advantage of you if they got the chance or would they try to be fair? – Take
advantage, Try to be fair*, (3) Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful,
or that they are mostly just looking out for themselves? – Look out for themselves, Try to be
helpful*. (* = Trustworthy responses.)
2 The ideological or faith dimension emphasizes the set of fundamental beliefs with
which the individuals are required to comply. A number of core doctrinal beliefs are used to
identify this dimension: belief in God, in sin, in heaven and hell, in the existence of spirit,
in the afterlife and in the existence of the devil. Attitudinal differences on issues related to
religion have been addressed by providing the respondents with statements which they are
required to evaluate by providing their degree of agreement with them on a five-point scale.
The dimension of ritualistic or religious practice comprises acts of worship through which
believers are expected to show their devotion to their religion. Amongst a large number of
rituals in Islam, only five were included in the questionnaire – mosque attendance, zekat and
fitre payments, lamb sacrifice, making the Hajj.
116 Religion and the Individual
significant attitudinal positions are expected to form social communities that relate
more easily and intensely with one another. One might be tempted to think that
such attitudinal positions might be less easily observable in social life compared
to religious practices. However, my reading of the above reported results suggests
otherwise. While the Cronbach alpha measure of reliability is about 0.6 for the six
items of attitudinal evaluations, it remains low for the practice indices. Thus, while it
is comparatively easy to predict someone’s attitudes on the basis of just one of these
evaluations, it is relatively more difficult to predict one religious practice on the
basis of another. In other words, while agreement or disagreement on an attitudinal
evaluation (say, that an individual approves of closing of restaurants and coffee
houses during the month of Ramadan) is a good predictor of evaluation in another
(such as objecting to one’s daughter marrying a non-Muslim), it is not equally easy
to predict someone’s practice. Findings about mosque attendance, for example,
would not necessarily predict zakat payments or lamb sacrifice. One of the reasons
why this may be so is that attitudes expressed in a survey setting are in all likelihood
homogenously constrained. Muslim religious practices are constrained first by context
(for example, those who do not have to pay zakat or are exonerated from performing
Hajj on the basis of their income or wealth) as well as the practicality of community
pressures (for example, mosque attendance in devout Muslim communities is less of
a matter of choice compared to less religious communities). This complexity renders
predictability of practices on the basis of just one religious requirement less likely
than it is the case for attitudinal evaluations.
Our wording of the question concerning self-evaluation of religiosity clearly
indicates that in answering this question the respondent should leave the level of
religious practices aside and concentrate on the remaining aspects of religiosity. As
such, we come closer to an individual evaluation of spirituality. Especially in the
multivariate context of our analyses below this variable concerning self-evaluation
of religiosity should grasp the spiritual influences rather than social or religious
capital accumulation processes.
Focusing on Donations
Direct Giving
Respondents were asked whether and to what degree the respondent individually and
directly provided help to others in need. About 44 per cent of respondents responded
affirmatively. Cash aid is by far the most common form of giving to relatives.
Respondents reported giving less in cash assistance to neighbours than to other
needy people. Food aid to neighbours is repeatedly more common than other types
of aid. This may be because in close-knit family circles of a typical Turkish village or
neighbourhood, in-kind aid to relatives, in the form of clothing and food, could very
well be situated within tradition, and therefore might not be considered aid per se
but part of traditional generosity. It is noticeable that individual-to-individual giving
as a share of household income is quite low. However, these figures reflect only the
portion of individual giving that is not institutionalized and only partially motivated
Explaining Philanthropic Giving in a Muslim Setting 117
by religious considerations, therefore constituting only one segment of total giving.
Nearly 56 per cent of the total reported direct aid targeted relatives followed by other
needy individuals who were not neighbours (31.2 per cent). The fact that the ‘other
needy individuals’ category gathered the second largest sum points to a potential for
more diverse forms of giving.
Zakat Payments
Zakat, which originally meant ‘purity’, is the third of the Five Pillars of Islam and
refers to expending a fixed portion of one’s wealth for the poor and needy in the
society. There are two main types of zakat: zakat on self (zakat-ul-fitr) is a per head
payment equivalent to a relatively small cost of living attached to the main food of
the region (wheat, dates or rice, depending on the place) paid during the month of
Ramadan by the head of a family for himself and his dependents; zakat on wealth
(zakat-ul-mal) comprises all other types of zakat paid as a 2.5 per cent levy on
most valuables and savings held for a full year if their total value is more than a
basic minimum known as nisab (Robinson 1999, 111–16). The rates of zakat are
not uniform. Different commodities attract different rates and the computation on
various types of properties can be complicated (Denny 2005).
In this study people were asked whether they paid their zakat on self and on
wealth (fitre and zekat respectively in Turkish) over the last year. Nearly 40 per cent
reported they had paid their zakat while about 80 per cent reported so for their fitre.
Then open questions were asked regarding the recipients of these payments and how
much was paid. We found that, when questioned about to whom they made these
payments, respondents indicated that needy acquaintances or relatives comprise
28.8 per cent for zakat payments and 40.9 per cent for fitre payments.
Findings
3 Note here that religious practice does not include any involvement in fitre-zekat
payments but it does include fitre-zekat payments for the case of other donations.
Explaining Philanthropic Giving in a Muslim Setting 119
increment. This suggests that strict believers in doctrinal aspects of Sunni-Muslim
faith are significantly less likely to make donations to associations which may not
be close to their ideological standing. The fact that such a negative impact appears
after controlling for the expected positive impacts of other religiosity variables is
surprising and may be the reflection of a dual approach towards associations on the
basis of religious doctrinal differences.
If we look at other types of donations some patterns catch the eye. One concerns
the impact of age on donations. It appears that older people are more likely to make
donations to associations (20 per cent more likely for every additional 10 years of
age); however, the precise opposite is observed for donations to street beggars. One
reason for this might be the fact that younger people are tend to spend more time
out and about streets and encounter street beggars more often. Rural area residents
are also more likely to make donations to street beggars (44 per cent more likely
than an urban area resident). Residents from smaller provinces of Inner Anatolia
appear to have a significantly higher likelihood of making donations to associations,
street beggars and direct informal donations. Level of education is only significant
in relation to direct donations and as the level of education increases so does the
likelihood of making donations. This might be a reflection that, even after controlling
for the impact of income and ownership status, better-educated people face more
opportunities and requests to donate, or are more often under pressure to help close-
by needy people directly.
Among the significant variables the one that has the highest impact upon the
probability of making a direct donation turns out to be evaluation of prospective
economic conditions. When an individual expects that the next year will be
economically bad for the whole country (not for the family) then s/he is nearly
2.35 times more likely to make direct donations. A similar level of impact is also
observed on the non-religious organizations. This is hardly surprising, suggesting
that prospective evaluations act as a predictor of need for individuals who respond to
such perceptions by making direct informal donations or donations to non-religious
organizations.4 In other words, people seem to make a judgement about the future
needs of their community and act accordingly. If their perception of need in the
future rises they become more likely to act so as to meet those needs with their own
direct donations to the needy.
4 Details of the explanatory power of the models are not reported to save space. The
explanatory power of the model is not the same across different types of donations. It is
noticeable that, for the case of fitre-azekat payments only, the model predicts about 87 per
cent of the observed donors. In the case of direct informal donations this ratio is only about
47 per cent, for street beggars 33 per cent, for associations 21 per cent and for non-religious
organizations 4 per cent. However, the overall correctly predicted donors and non-donors
range between about 69 per cent and 94 per cent. Nagelkerke R-square is 0.29 for fitre-zekat
payments, 0.31 for donations for associations, 0.22 for non-religious organisations, 0.28 for
direct-informal and 0.15 for street beggars.
120 Religion and the Individual
Conclusions
The main conclusion to be drawn from these results is that, while religious capital
indicators reflected in religious practices, faith and attitude measures appear to
be closely linked to philanthropic donations, social capital measures are not as
consistently and as dominantly related to donations. Interestingly, individuals
who happen to worship more – and who thus invest more in religious capital as
Iannacone (1990) would suggest – tend to donate more for all different types of
objectives.
Higher levels of, not belief or faith, but rather of practice, or worship seem to be
more effective in shaping people’s likelihood of making donations for different causes.
As suggested, perhaps it is because people tend to put less emphasis on materialistic
values and incline towards spiritual or pious ends that they tend to help others by
being active in the community and to donate for philanthropic causes (see Rokeach
1973; Lam 2002; Regnerus et al. 1998). The evidence above cannot determine if this
is the dynamics of motivation that leads to the observed outcome. However, we do
observe that, more than social capital, it is religious capital that shapes donations.
This seems very much in line with the Islamic doctrine; believers seem to give of
themselves in the form of fitre and zekat. We should note here that the total sum
of all donations – that is religious, formal institutionalized as well as informal and
direct – is only a tiny fraction of our respondents’ reported total household income.
Nevertheless those with more religious capital tend to be distinctly more generous
and open-handed when it comes to helping others.
I should note at this juncture that, while measurement of social capital has a
long established literature, the same cannot be claimed for the case of religious
capital. I basically adopted the framework of religiosity dimensions in forming a
measure of religious capital. Although it comes close to the conceptual discussions
of Iannocone and others, we still have little knowledge of the meaning people attach
to their religious investments. Our questions do not address, for example, the issue
of whether or not, and to what extent, people tend to function in their social lives
within the religious networks that they form and maintain. To what extent are these
networks all-inclusive or alternatively closed and exclusive? Unless such information
is collected we have very little basis for judgement as to the bridging or bonding
nature of religious capital accumulation.
The only piece of information about this actually comes from an indirect
observation. I have underlined above that, in the Turkish case at least, donations
tend to be predominantly directed to close-by needy. I called this parochial giving.
As noted, such giving is directly influenced by religious capital. If religious capital
shapes the philanthropic giving in a parochial, thus bonding nature, then little can
be found in these activities that suggest a series of interactions that may lead to the
brighter side of the social capital literature. As such increasing religiosity that would
be expected to bring about a higher level of giving to the needy will not also lead to
increased levels of social capital in Turkish society.
The anecdotal evidence for the darker-side interpretations of social and religious
capital can be found in the most recent natural disasters of the 2004 tsunami in
Indonesia and the neighbouring areas of Thailand and India, and the 2005 earthquake
Explaining Philanthropic Giving in a Muslim Setting 121
in Pakistan and India. Despite Turkish government efforts to stimulate a mass
response to the call for assitance in the disaster-stricken areas, the philanthropic aid
that could be gathered from Turkey for these areas remained quite low. In spite of
the openly religious rhetoric adopted in these fund-raising efforts, only very limited
amounts came to flow and most strikingly this flow predominantly was directed
towards the Muslim areas. A strictly bonding-type exclusionist aid-giving seems to
have arisen in this situation.
The question is still with us: do religious people tend to isolate themselves
from the ‘others’ who are more likely to be infidels, disbelievers? Such bonding at
the expense of the bridging type of social and religious capital accumulation may
depend on the degree of religious homogeneity and the way state relates to religion
in a given setting. In the Turkish case, for example, individuals are very unlikely
to meet non-Muslims in their daily lives. Infact, there are many more non-Muslim
tourists in the country than non-Muslim native minorities. The only element of
heterogeneity brought into the Turkish religious scene originates not from outside
Islam but from within. The sectarian minorities such as the Alevis, as opposed to the
Hanefi-Sunni majority, help shape the religious identity of the masses and divide
them into categories that mimic the Muslim-non-Muslim divide in other settings. As
I argued elsewhere, overlapping with the Alevi-Sunni divide to a great extent is the
pro-Islamist vs. the secularists divide (see Çarkoğlu 2005). To what extent do these
apparent sectarian and political cleavages tend to be reflected in the fundamental
perceptions of the people concerning other fellow human beings who may be of
the same sect as themselves or may not be strict observant Muslims as they see
themselves to be? To what extent are people from the other sect seen as ‘sinners’ and
thus to be avoided? Given perhaps a common sect, do people perceive the believer
pro-Islamists, as opposed to the secularists, from a political perspective as clear
signals of moral decay embedded in their representatives and thus as people not to
be trusted and rather to be avoided? Such questions need further examination at both
the conceptual and the empirical levels.
Bibliography
In the emerging globalized world, the pooling together of cultures has left in its wake
the increasingly enigmatic task of defining one’s own identity (Erikson 1975; Lifton
1999). ‘Who am I?’ has become an archetypal quest for Westerners lost in a sea
of replicated interstate exits and branded chain stores. Consumerism has certainly
not squelched the desire for a meaningful identity. Despite century-old predictions
that religion would fade away, most individuals still report that religion is one of
the most important parts of their identity. If so, how does it become so important?
This chapter highlights the need for greater precision in the conceptualization and
possible measurement of religious identity with the goal of offering a formative
beginning for researchers and scholars with what has long been a relatively unknown
aspect to religion.
Erik Erikson’s original emphasis on the ego’s achievement of identity highlighted
the importance for each individual to be able to make meaning of one’s own self.
He located this task in the adolescent years as part of a psychosocial framework in
which the sociocultural milieu (ethos) is integrated with the biological development
of the human being (soma) (1950, 1968, 1997). Erikson’s concept of identity first
sparked the interest of his college students in the 1960s and helped stimulate a
‘discursive explosion’ in identity research through the ensuing decades (Friedman
1998; Hall 1996). As part of this movement, James Marcia developed one of the
most popular research models in identity in which he described four identity statuses
in the process of identity formation – identity diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium,
and achieved (1966); since then, his work has established an empirical foundation
for psychometric measures of identity.
Two important developments have since characterized identity research. First,
this ‘explosion’ in identity research has been plagued by a lack of conceptual clarity
as in both the humanities and the social sciences scholars use the term ‘identity’ in
widely varying models (Coté 2006). Researchers from multitudes of backgrounds
and theoretical assumptions have amassed nearly 20,000 research articles dealing
with identity in just the last decade (research database PsychINFO). Secondly,
within the research on identity development, there is good evidence that a person
is composed of identity domains, such as ethnic, sexual, or religious – each with
their own potentially differing identity statuses (Griffith and Griggs 2001; Pulkkinen
128 Religion and the Individual
and Kokko 2000; Bartoszuk 2003; Meeus 2002; Hunter, 1999; Pastorino et. al.
1997; Kroger and Green 1996; Robertson 1995). Both of these developments are
significant in the conceptualization of religious identity. Out of the exponential
attention to identity, the term ‘religious identity’ has increasingly appeared,
especially in work rooted in the humanities. However, it has lacked theoretical
precision and empirical validation. Ethnographic scholars of religion may employ
religious identity to describe isolated phenomena in small cultural groups, and
social statisticians may refer to religious identity as social capital. Rarely do these
researchers consider religious identity beyond a one-dimensional labeling of one’s
self. Within psychological circles, the growing understanding of identity domains
and differing identity statuses has stimulated research per each domain; yet, the
scholars have been reticent to work with the domain of religious identity. In fact,
although dozens of psychology research articles have been published measuring the
separate identity domains of vocation, gender, and ethnicity, none have considered
religious identity as a potentially separate and measurable cognitive domain. The
first presentation for the possibility of a psychological construct for religious identity
(empirically measurable and separable from other identity domains) was given at the
2006 American Psychological Association’s Division 36 Conference (Bell 2006). In
this vein this chapter argues for a theoretically sharper understanding of religious
identity development – one that necessitates a reframing of the research, moving from
the question of how religiosity influences identity to the question of how religious
identity is an empirically unique component of identity and should be included as an
important measure in sociological and psychological measures of religion.
The lack of attention to religious identity within psychological research has been
somewhat surprising. Among domains of identity, religious identity seems to be the
most unstable in our current sociocultural context. More than ever, individuals are
aware of their own choice and possibility within a relative marketplace of religious
identities. In America, it is common for people to refer to themselves as ‘shopping’
for a church and denomination. Despite this instability, individuals consistently
rank religiosity very high in their own sense of purpose and subjective well-being.
From my experience in teaching the psychology of religion to college students, the
domain of religious identity appears to be of great concern and anxiety. ‘Who am
I?’ is inextricably related to ‘What do I believe?’ This chapter details the theoretical
background to a research project that is constructing a psychological measure of
religious identity. It is hoped that the project will benefit researchers in the social
sciences and humanities, as well as clinical practitioners and religious educators. By
offering greater precision to the religious identity domain, researchers may better
understand the process of identity development, domain interaction, and religious
development. Further, psychologists of religion may be able to discern a facet of
religiosity that has been overlooked and falls outside of the common psychological
measures for extrinsic and intrinsic religiosity. In practice, such a construct could
inform the clinical use of Life Review therapy popularized by pastoral counselors;
likewise, religious educators would be able to use a construct of religious identity to
investigate which types of behavior facilitate development of the religious self.
Development of the Religious Self 129
Reviewing Identity and Religiosity Measures
Erikson’s original model of eight psychosocial stages laid the foundation for future
work with the conceptual notion of identity (1950). As the primary ego task of
adolescents in the fifth stage of identity vs. role confusion, individuals reshape
their simpler identifications from childhood by bringing them into a coherent whole
marked by internalized integration. Evidenced by the groupish nature of adolescents,
Erikson saw teenagers struggle by challenging previous identifications and trying
on new identity roles in order to have a sense of balance between the self and
the other. However, this is not a fixed achievement, and this integration could be
unraveled later in life. In Erikson’s clinical work with war veterans, he witnessed
a disintegration of ego identity – a breakdown of one’s ability to incorporate a role
and purpose that was and is incomprehensible, such as in battle for soldiers (1950).
Unfortunately, a precise definition of identity eluded Erikson. In one of his more
concise statements, he described a ‘sense of identity [as] the accrued confidence
that the inner sameness and continuity prepared in the past are matched by the
sameness and continuity of one’s meaning for others …’ (1950, 261). As part of an
epigenetic model of development, Erikson (1997) described the organic biological
development of the person (soma) in relationship to the cultural organization (ethos)
needing to be organized by ego synthesis (psyche). In this way, identity is related to
the bio-evolutionary breaking away from parents with the integration of both social
roles for production and biological needs for intimacy and procreation. Snarey and
Bell (2003) mapped out this framework as a functional developmental model, as
opposed to structural models (focused exclusively on cognitive structure) on one
side and sociocultural models (focused on the cultural construct of developmental
age periods) on the other side. The theoretical balance between the biological/
structural development of identity with the sociocultural influence on identity roles
and expectations has also been similarly described as developmental contextualism
(Lerner 1993). In essence, the psychological study of identity must always keep in
mind the essential functional nature of people as biological needs for self-definition
can only be met in historically relative cultural contexts. Thus a fuller picture of
religion and the individual is encapsulated when both the cognitive structure of
identity and the sociocultural contexts of religion are theoretically integrated.
One of the problems with the ISI has been the difficulty of having trained coders
and blind coders for the interviews. In response, Adams remodeled the ISI into a
64-item scale with no need for interview coding. The Measure of Ego Identity Status-
II (EOMEIS-II) breaks down Marcia’s four identity statuses and has been validated
through comparison with the ISI (Adams 1999; Adams et al. 1989). The EOMEIS-
II includes eight items on religion, but only as a component to the overall identity
status with little ability to tease out different levels of analysis per dimension. In
another effort, the Ego Identity Process Questionnaire (EIPQ, 32 items) (Balistreri et
al. 1995) measures the separate dimensions of commitment and exploration in eight
areas: Occupation, Religion, Politics, Values, Family, Friendships, Dating, and Sex
Roles. The coadjuted identity domains were not methodologically constructed for
separate statistical analysis but extensive validity analysis may support such results.
Both of these measures were designed to analyze a ‘global identity’ – a sense of
overall identity formation in each individual. But over the last decade, researchers
have challenged the notion of just one identity and have moved towards measuring
the identity status of different identity domains.
This is the most important development in identity research to date. Reflecting
a postmodern turn with a thicker description of identity complexity, many scholars
are now seeing global identity as a collection of different identities which may not
coalesce within the same identity status for one person. In other words, an individual
may have an achieved sense of vocational identity, and yet a diffused sense of the
ethnic or cultural self (De Hann and Schulenberg 1997; Skorikov and Vondracek
1998). In response, dozens of articles have pursued isolated domains of ethnicity,
gender, and vocation. But, as mentioned previously, the domain of religion has
been completely overlooked. However, some promising research has pointed to
this possibility. For example, a recent study included religious identity as a separate
domain with measures of Marcia’s four statuses (Fadjukoff et al. 2005). Working
with Finnish adults, the authors found religious identity to commonly be diffused
for men and foreclosed for women, even when the individuals were rated as identity
achieved overall. The authors concluded that neither political nor religious identity
seemed to be salient in the overall achievement of identity. While still assuming that
an individual has a sense of overall global identity achievement, the authors saw the
identity domain of religion as unimportant since it did not match their measures and
results for the overall identity status. Yet, this also suggests that religious identity
may be understood separately from other domains of identity.
132 Religion and the Individual
There are two further caveats to this study. As the authors point out, Lutheran
religion in Finland is not perceived as an important entity in that cultural context.
How would North American adults differ in their perception of the importance of
religious identity? In the functional framework presented in this chapter, it is not
claimed that religious identity is important in largely non-religious cultures. Although
it is of scholarly interest to consider alternative responses to possible transcendental
and spiritual needs in nonreligious societies, the purpose of this essay is to sharpen
the notion of how we perceive religious identity when it is an accessible and readily
available resource in one’s culture. As a second caveat, the research was conducted
through an open-ended question: ‘Do you have a personal relationship to religion?’
This method lacks a theoretical sharpness that a carefully constructed religious
identity scale may be able to provide.
In another study, De Haan and Schulenberg (1997) found that political identity
formation does not commonly reach an achieved status until the mid-twenties,
whereas religious identity was often achieved in the late teens and early twenties.
Further, adolescents in junior high school were typically in foreclosure in the religious
identity domain, moving through diffusion in high school, and then moratorium or
achieved statuses in college. This would be unique among identity domains, since
other identity domains typically begin in diffusion and move towards the other three
statuses. The typical pattern of religious identity formation moving from foreclosure
towards diffusion is complemented by a general decline in religiosity from early
to later adolescence (Francis and Pearson 1987). This generates several questions.
Why is the religious identity domain so unique? Is religious identity formation
affected by different religious backgrounds, such as Protestant vs. Catholic? Is there
an increased anxiety for individuals who are in religious identity moratorium or
diffusion? De Haan and Schulenberg’s findings were limited by using the EOMEIS-
II which only asks eight questions in the religious identity domain; thus only two
questions are asked per the four identity statuses of religious identity. Further, the
authors understood religiosity as fairly uniform and did not break down results for
religious backgrounds, even though the sample was nicely divided (49 per cent
Protestant; 36 per cent Catholic). The only other study that has measured religious
identity status independently from overall identity found that religious identity lagged
behind vocational identity among adolescents (Skorikov and Vondracek 1998). This
leaves researchers and counselors with a plethora of unanswered questions. How do
denominational factors influence religious identity formation? Is religious identity
achievement as stable in adulthood as in other identity domains?
Religiosity Measures
In regard to identity, scholars in the psychological study of religion have most often
been interested in how established and measurable variables of religiosity (that is,
‘extrinsic’ and ‘intrinsic’ religiosity, ‘quest’ measures) interact with an individual’s
overall identity development status (Allport and Ross 1966; Gorsuch and McPherson
1989). The most common measure in religion is for (I) intrinsic religiosity (inwardly
motivated) and (E) extrinsic religiosity (outwardly motivated, possibly for social
gain) (Allport and Ross 1966). The measures are not on a continuum, and you could
Development of the Religious Self 133
score high on both I and E, low on both, or mixed scores. Using these measures,
researchers have investigated how they influence the status of an overall identity.
Intrinsic religiosity has been linked with identity achievement and extrinsic religiosity
with identity diffusion (Fulton 1997). Identity foreclosure has been associated with
indiscriminates (low I and E, or high I and E) and extrinsics (Markstrom-Adams and
Smith 1996). Differing from some of the assumptions in identity research, many of
these research projects find religious orientation to be quite salient in the statuses of
identity development. Overall, religion has been positively associated with identity
achievement but researchers know little of the mechanism or specific interaction in
this positive association. King (2003) has suggested that religion uniquely provides a
rich nexus of ideological, spiritual, and social resources which prove quite helpful in
reaching identity achievement. A significant problem with this correlational research
is that many identity status scales are confounded by their amount of religious content
(Adams et al. 1989). Thus, the higher one’s religiosity (I or E), the more likely an
individual has explored his/her own religious identity. Given the domain uniqueness
and the confounding religious content in identity scales, Spilka et al. (2003) suggest
that researchers should construct an independent measure for religious identity.
Commitment
Absent Present Absent Present
A 28-item questionnaire has been designed, using the eight previous questions
from the EOMEIS-II, and adding twenty more questions (a total of seven per religious
identity status), in order to better get at the complexity and formation of religious
identity. Results are being correlated with demographics, religious backgrounds
(including denominational differences), and religious practices and beliefs. Construct
validity is partly established by consistency among status questions, test-retest
variation, and statistical similarity to the previously validated EOMEIS-II questions.
The questionnaire is constructed for the internet, and results will be weighted to
consider selection biases (those with a computer may be younger, ethnically
homogenous, and better educated). The n goal is 1000. In general, as with other
identity domains, it is expected that individuals will typically move developmentally
from religious identity diffusion (RID) and foreclosure (RIF) towards religious
identity moratorium (RIM) and then to religious identity integration (RII) through
the adolescent years into early adulthood. However, it is also expected that adults
may have situational events and cultural factors that could unravel RII into RIM
at any point in the lifespan, or they may become non-religious and move into a
RID status. One major problem with developmental models is the presumption that
people should end up at the end of the model. This Religious Identity Statuses Scale
is not a measure that esteems one status over another, saying how individuals should
integrate religion into their identity. Instead, it is understood that each of the four
statuses, albeit reflecting development, may move in any direction and that each
136 Religion and the Individual
status is perfectly acceptable. One goal of the research is to see these patterns of
movement and to correlate them with age, religious practices, and cultural contexts.
Religious identity diffusion (RID) It has been assumed that children inherently
begin in identity diffusion. Prior to adolescence, they have little psychological need
for constructing identity. They are not interested in defining themselves. RID would
not only describe children, but also adults who are disinterested in religion, and
possibly those who are extrinsically oriented towards their religion (self-serving
motivation for religious involvement1) (Griffith and Griggs 2001). They have made
no commitment to a religious community or set of beliefs, nor have they felt any
crisis in regards to this lack of commitment. Thus, RID includes two sets of people.
One group is largely disinterested in identity overall and have not yet experienced
any search for internal meaning. A second group has searched for meaning and may
have found purpose in identity resources other than religion.
Religious identity foreclosure (RIF) This status reflects individuals who have made
a commitment to a religious tradition and its set of beliefs and practices. RIF’s are
distinguished from RII individuals by their lack of flexibility and their strong desire
for conformity. Overall foreclosed individuals tend to be authoritarian and need the
approval of their peers. They can quickly become defensive about their faith and
are correlated with conventional moral reasoning (Kroger 2004). They are marked
by a pattern of accommodation and inherit their religious identity with little critical
reflection. As stated above, De Hann and Schulenberg (1997) reviewed findings
that showed early adolescents in the RIF status, and then moving into a RID status
– opposite of more typical patterns of other identity domains. In highly religious
societies, it may be that teenagers have ample opportunities to unquestionably adopt
a religious identity for sake of ease and comfort. If we had data for pre-adolescents,
we may find that they move from diffusion earlier than other identity domains, as
many adopt a solidified style of religious identity (RIF) by the age of 13. That this
is out of sync with other identity domains establishes further evidence that religious
identity functions in cognitively unique ways for many individuals. Are religious
symbols and belief systems more salient resources for identity commitments at an
earlier age than other identity resources? If so, why has some research pointed to a
move from RIF to RID as the teenager gets older? Further, in that some churches
encourage critical reflection on their beliefs and others renounce such efforts, we
could imagine that denominational backgrounds would be strongly influential in
moving masses of people into RIF, or towards RII.
1 Although overall identity diffusion is related to extrinsic religiosity, Allport and Ross’s
(1966) measures of intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation are problematic in that the
measure applies negative value to extrinsic religious motivation. Thus, those more motivated
by the liturgical practices and fellowship in a religious community are deemed less religiously
mature than those who are more intrinsically motivated by personal belief systems.
Development of the Religious Self 137
some anxiety about their religious identity, or may simply be reflective and attentive
to this identity domain. They have a strong sense of willfulness and self-esteem
while resisting demands for conformity. These are the religious seekers, those who
are open to different religious identities and score high on the Quest measure of
religiosity. Their religious identity is in flux and may stay in this status for weeks or
for a lifetime. From clinical experience, these are the individuals who feel greater
stress and seek out pastoral counselors and clinical psychologists. In regards to
those in overall identity moratorium, individuals report that Marcia’s identity
status interview gives them insight into their situation (Kroger 2004). Such clinical
application could be sharpened with a clearer perspective on the individual domain
of religious identity, especially for spiritual caregivers and pastoral counselors.
Religious identity integration (RII) The word integration is used instead of Marcia’s
word achievement in order to remove the implicit valuing of different theologies and
traditions of religious identity formation. Those who are foreclosed can be quite
satisfied with their religious identity; it may serve them and their tradition well.
Erikson (1950) used the terminology ‘identity vs. role confusion’ to describe this
stage in which an individual takes previous identifications (labels) and integrates
them into a coherent sense of self. Building on Erikson’s original conceptualization,
integration better describes this process in religious identity formation in which
a person critically reflects upon his/her culture’s religious belief systems and
traditions. They then choose for their own sake, and not just for others, to integrate
a particular faith system into who they are and how they define themselves. Having
made a commitment to a religious identity, RII individuals have a strong sense of
self-esteem and autonomy. However, they also remain flexible, even playful, with
religious practices and beliefs.
These four qualitative statuses of religious identity are a first offering towards a
conceptually sharper understanding of religious identity and religious identity
development. Given the recently understood complexity of identity domains, there
is ample evidence that individuals negotiate qualitatively different religious identity
statuses. This taxonomy could provide religious educators and clinical practitioners
with a helpful tool to better understand how religion works in the mind. In clinical
practice, such a scale could help determine more specific and informed interventions
(per domains) which could (1) offer validation and allow room for religious identity
moratorium status, (2) prompt possibly delayed individuals (diffused religious
identity in adulthood) with presenting symptoms into some integrated sense of
and search for religious identity, (3) enable foreclosed religious identity clients
with related presenting problems to become less religiously stagnate via an earned
religious identity. And as stated before, it could enable theory and practice in
religious education as statuses of religious identity could be correlated with types of
religiosity (denominations, faith practices, religious orientations).
138 Religion and the Individual
Religious Identity Salience Measure
The second component to the measure of religious identity is the Religious Identity
Salience Scale. This simpler Likert-type measure will ask individuals to self-rate
the importance of different identity domains. With potential sub-domains of implicit
and explicit religious identity, the individuals will not be aware at first that the scale
is aimed specifically at religious identity. If added to comprehensive psychometric
inventories of religiosity, it could help understand the social psychological predictors
and psychological effects of an individual’s high or low salience in religious identity.
When psychologists of religion employ measures of overall religiosity and religious
orientation, the measures overlook the very important psychological role of religious
identity. One anecdotal illustration: an adult subject raised in a Catholic home who
currently does not practice (low extrinsic religiosity) and is not internally motivated
by a belief system (low intrinsic religiosity) would be labeled non-religious.
However, the individual may explicitly consider her/himself as Catholic, a religious
identity; this identity may actually be very important to the subject and hold more
value than a simple labeled identification. How does this religious identity operate?
Why, if it does not influence daily internal decisions nor external behavior, is it still
important to an individual? Some scholars have dismissed such religious identities
as not really ‘religious.’ However, it is likely that this religious identity satisfies
some need for a transcendent identity – a ‘fall-back’, if you will, providing security
and the ability to pull from internalized resources which are paradoxically outside
of the self.
When conducting psychological research in religion, scholars should not only
analyze extrinsics, intrinsics, and questors (the most common measures), but the
degree of salience of religious identity, both implicitly (not prompted for religion)
and explicitly (subsequently prompted for religion and ranks identity domains
including religion) held by the subject. An explicit religious identity refers to an
individual who consciously identifies with a religious community and/or supernatural
entity. A person who has an implicit religious identity may be largely unaware of the
attachments to a religious community. For instance, a young adult who has moved
away from her/his family’s religious background and consciously assumes little
connection to this religious tradition may still harbor strong unconscious identity
attachments to this religion. Neurologically, identity works both in the explicit and
conscious construction of the self, and in the unconscious long-term autobiographical
memories stored in the temporal cortex and cerebellum. Likewise, an individual
may show little implicit religious identity, and yet explicitly (likely for contextual
approval) state that religious identity is important to her/his sense of self. The
research model is designed to look at religious identity which may operate separately
and yet importantly in the subconciousness. The first results of the Religious Identity
Salience Scale are being statistically compared with Allport and Ross’s measure for
extrinsic and intrinsic religious orientation. A cross-tabulated taxonomy shows such
possibilities in Figure 9.2
Development of the Religious Self 139
low Religious Identity high low Religious Identity high
In practice, a scale for implicit and explicit religious identity salience may show
how religious identities tend to sustain individuals through periods of dissonance.
For instance, an implicit religious identity may be the primary factor sustaining
overall religiosity when an individual is confronted with conflicting belief systems
and observed reality, or when an individual’s religious community encounters a
crisis (the individual relies on religious identity until a new community is found, or
returns to the previous one). In short, individuals may not practice religion nor even
hold salient religious beliefs, and yet their religious identity may continue to push
and pull upon them throughout adulthood.
The search for identity is rooted in finding meaning. As adolescents, we often find
meaning in not being our parents. As we turn to peers and institutions, we are given to
unwavering ideological allegiance. Soon, however, in early adulthood, we may learn
to question our allegiances and may struggle with the ways in which these questions
and doubts upset what we thought we knew. After some time, we form and re-form
commitments into patterns that best fit our identities. Erikson first wrote about this
pattern and found his most favorable audience in his own college students (1950;
1968). It helped them articulate their experiences. Marcia’s four identity statuses
attempted to measure this patterned growth of identity. However, by including
religious content, the statuses confounded those who chose to be non-religious and
privileged only those who struggled with their belief systems.
Identity research is now being revolutionized with the new tools of neurological
modularity and identity domain specificity. This research in religious identity
development uses a functional model which balances cognitive foundations of
autobiographical memory with the contextual reality in which religion operates.
There is growing evidence that religious identity develops in a way unique to other
domains of identity. However, the research is likely to prompt many more questions
than it answers.
The importance of sharpening our understanding of religious identity cannot
be understated. As forms of globalized modernity settle across distant countries,
individuals undergoing the normal process of identity formation are confronted with
contrasting belief systems for the first time in their cultural history. Interestingly, the
140 Religion and the Individual
religious beliefs and religious actions appear to be secondary to the importance of
the religious identity. For many, a radicalized and unquestioning allegiance (religious
identity foreclosure) to a religious identity provides personal stability at the cost
of ripening the likelihood of distanced conflict. This conceptualization of religious
identity is one that both offers insight into one’s own religious self and may garner
even more important insights into cultural movements.
Possibly the most interesting aspect of the research has been the growing
evidence that religious identity may form the core of religiosity for individuals.
Once an attachment or commitment have been made, religious identity seems more
fundamental than religious beliefs or religious practices. Individuals can stop going
to religious services, stop reading sacred texts, and possibly even stop believing in
core tenets of their faith tradition, and yet their religious identity still remains with
them across their lifespan. With the weight of most research in religious beliefs and
practices, it may be that religious identity research unlocks a key to understanding
religion and the individual.
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Chapter Ten
Introduction
In this chapter I consider the continuing presence of two recurring and apparently
antipathetic terms, ontologies, means of understanding, in the history of religions: the
individual and the social (or ‘agency’ and ‘structure’). I begin with an interrogation
of the dominant meanings of these terms and the uses to which they are commonly
put in religious contexts. Apart from representing what is probably the archetypal
dualism in the social sciences, together they continue to express perhaps the most
vital tension present not only in the history of religions but also in accounts of
the quotidian, of the vernacular, of the religious faith and practice experienced by
adepts in their daily lives. However, my primary aim here is to present, through an
examination of the faith and practice of Quakers in Britain, an alternative approach
to the social/individual dichotomy, an approach which eschews any account which
represents social interaction in inherently dichotomous terms, whatever those terms
might be. Building on earlier work in which I have attempted to model religious faith
and practice, in terms of individual, vernacular and canonic narrative, I introduce
a complicating factor, the plane of ‘secular discourse’. I show how the terms
‘religious’ and ‘secular’ represent a second dichotomy which, if we are not careful,
contributes fundamentally to our misunderstanding of religious contexts. The point
of this paper is not to argue against the social and structural in order merely to revert
to its opposite – methodological individualism, but rather to restore the balance and
make room for the individual agent. Fortunately, individuals experience the world
with little regard for the dichotomous theorizing of social scientists. I intend to show
that the dichotomies individual/society and religion/secularity damage our attempts
to understand the everyday experience of individuals by chronically underestimating
the complexity of human life.
144 Religion and the Individual
The First Dichotomy: Individual/Society
The theme of the conference at which I presented a first draft of this paper – ‘religion
and the individual’ – is teasing. The social sciences (and I would argue the study
of religion) rarely considers the individual apart from society: the formulation is
almost always presented in fundamentally binary terms: agency /structure, micro/
macro, individual/society, congregant/congregation. In fact, the individual is often
marginalized in accounts of religious faith and practice and sometimes entirely
invisible as a source of agency. It is also the case that the social (structure) has tended
to overwhelm the individual (agency) in accounts which attempt to accommodate the
two and I would argue that this is equally true of anthropology, sociology, religious
studies (and, for what it’s worth, theology). It is this dualism that characterizes
all major theoretical paradigms in the social sciences: functionalism, structural
functionalism, French structuralism, post-structuralism, symbolic interactionism,
ethnomethodology and so on and so forth. And it is both interesting and somewhat
perplexing theoretical edifices which have achieved the greatest success in terms at
least of academic influence have been those which look first to social structures in
attempting to explain social phenomena.
In the study of religion, the emphasis has always been on social structural factors,
in explanations of human life. In sociology and anthropology this is mainly a result
of the influence of three extraordinarily influential theorists: Marx, Durkheim and
Weber. Marx had little to say about religion, but what he did say has had major social
and theoretical repercussions. Marx (Marx and Engels 1957) placed religion securely
within the realms of ideology: it has been religion perhaps more than anything
else that has enabled the powerful in each society to retain power and dominance
(Giddens 1970, 206–16). In Medieval Europe, for instance, it was never a matter
of the feudal lord foisting religion on the peasantry with the clear and conscious
idea of subjugating it. No, the crucial facet of ideology is that it is understood as
the God-given truth by all classes, regardless of their place in the social hierarchy.
The function of religion, throughout the ages, is to maintain the status quo –- ‘the
rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate’. Religion is dealt with in entirely
structural terms.
However, individuals have sought, throughout the ages, and with considerable
success, to differentiate, diverge and diversify. For instance, although Roman
Catholicism endured for many centuries as the orthodox European worldview,
individuals, alone and together in groups, have perpetually found ways to invent
alternatives. Taking the European case, think, for example, of the Mozarabs,
Templars, Vilgard, Leutard, the ‘apostolic movements’ of the twelfth century, the
Petrusians, Humiliati, Tondrakians, Paulicians, Messalanians, Waldenensians and
Cathars in Medieval Europe; the Ranters, Fifth Monarchists, Muggletonians and
Quakers on the brink of the modern in England; and the dizzying diversity of New
Religious Movements in the contemporary world.1 These groups, sometimes led
1 For medieval sects see Lambert (2002); for the Ranters and other English mid-
seventeenth-century religious sects see Morton (1970), McGregor and Reay (1984). For a
brilliant case study dealing in depth with the faith and practice of a single individual dissenter
Modelling the Parameters of Discourse in ‘Religious’ Contexts 145
by charismatic individuals and sometimes not, themselves demographically and
theologically diverse, called into question the pervasive worldview – often in the
certain knowledge that persecution would follow. Sometimes this questioning led to
schism, sometimes not. And, of course, the Roman Catholic Church has itself never
been entirely unified and homogeneous: because people act as though they believe
the same thing that does not mean that they believe the same thing.
Social structural approaches, such as that delineated by Marx, ignore such
accounts, even though they date back at least to Augustine’s Confessions (written
in the seventh century). There is plenty of evidence that indicates the tendency of
pre-modern people to question the validity and viability of their inherited faith and
practice, to escape the determining power of structural factors. While Marx admits
that religion has some positive use – in nursing the industrial proletariat through
exceedingly hard times for instance – on the whole it was a Very Bad Thing, which
all good Communists should work to eradicate (though no communist society has
managed this completely). Durkheim (1995 [1912]) has an altogether more positive
attitude towards religion: in worshipping God, the group is consolidating society
– but once again the individual is entirely lost in his theoretical framework, brilliant
though it may be. Durkheim (1984 [1893]), the reader will recall, posits two forms of
society (or ‘the social’): characterized by either mechanical or organic solidarity. In
the former, the presence of religion is centrally important in ensuring the successful
functioning of society. It is in religion, and more specifically in religious ritual,
that the conscience collective is generated – this being the very glue that holds
society together. In such cases, far from being the scourge of the downtrodden (as
in Marx) it is their saving grace. Where a society demonstrates an organic solidarity,
connectedness is not due to the alikeness or replication of composite units (whether
individuals, groups of institutions) but to their difference. In modern society it
is specialization that connects us – because we each become expert in one small
part of the economy. Think of the production line – one person places the nut on
the line, the next person fits it onto the correct bolt, the next tightens it, and so
on – we depend on each other to ensure our continued well-being. Peasants are
generalists – when one ceases to function another will simply take their place. In
modernity, we are all specialists – when one fails to function, the process grinds to
a halt. But organic solidarity generates only a partial sense of belonging. Religion is
both a cause and an effect of the march of modernity – because religion ensures the
continuance of the conscience collective – the result of its diminution and eventual
disappearance is anomie and a sense of disconnectedness. But the religious life has
not disappeared. ‘Institutional religion’ diversifies in ever more interesting ways,
and, while mainstream Christian churches decline, non-Christian faiths thrive.
Clearly, individuals respond in various ways to the march of modernity, but the faith
and practice of individuals remain of little interest to Durkheim and his followers.
Mention of ‘decline’ brings us, appropriately, to ‘secularization’ – and Max Weber.
see Ginzburg (1980). For the Mormons see Cornwall, Heaton and Young (1994), and for the
Shakers see Stein (1992); for New Religious Movements see Arweck (2006) and Dawson
(2006).
146 Religion and the Individual
Weber (1930; 1965) takes an exceedingly pessimistic view of modern society.
Weber argues consistently throughout his writings that the world is steadily
becoming a more rational place: rather than one class coming to dominate all others,
it is the steady advance towards an ever more bureaucratic society that causes his
gloomy prognostication. In modern society we are, whether we like it or not, in
thrall to the Enlightenment. Science comes to replace religion as the dominant
ideology and efficiency becomes our daily watchword. There is no place for the
religious, the mysterious, the intangible in modern society – and apparently equally
little room for individual agency. In order to increase our efficiency we need to be
able to quantify the outputs of our actions. This poses an interesting challenge for
British NHS hospital chaplains, some of whom are experiencing a sense of double
bind, resulting from the clash of religious beliefs and occupational responsibilities.
Different chaplains respond to this challenge in different ways – largely depending
on their own, personal trajectory. Certainly, some manage to resist the encroachment
of ‘rational systems’ on their role with extraordinary inventiveness.2
It is true to say that the ‘masters’ have influenced sociologists and anthropologists
alike. The dominant paradigm in anthropology has been structural functionalism
– deriving primarily from Durkheim and developed ingeniously by figures such as
Radcliffe-Brown, Evans-Pritchard and Mary Douglas: despite their strengths, all
contributed to the eclipse of the individual in favouring social structural ‘forces’.
However, merely arguing whether one should foreground either the individual
or the social is largely fruitless. There are scholars, however, who have made
concerted attempts to transcend individual/society dualism. Although these
developments have explicitly eschewed the temptation to foreground one or other
of the terms – their authors tend merely to claim their demise while inadvertently
inviting one term or other in through the back door. For example, the earlier
synthesis of Talcott Parsons, Norbert Elias’s figurational sociology and, more
recently, the development of structuration theory by Giddens and others. It is likely
that Goffman was attempting to build the same kind of bridge in developing his idea
of the ‘interaction order’.
Probably the most energetic and compelling attempt to transcend the obstructive
duality individual/society is to be found in the work of Pierre Bourdieu, who strove
throughout his long career to provide analytical tools which are ‘good to think with’.
And in carrying out this mission he develops a series of concepts which, he claimed,
generate a theory which obviates the need for unhelpful dichotomies: doxa, symbolic
capital, strategy, practice and habitus. While he was extraordinarily persistent in his
use of these terms, Bourdieu’s consistency in their use was less apparent and this is
especially true in the case of his central concept: habitus. The habitus, he argues, is a
‘structuring structure’, which is embodied, that, is located squarely in the material body
of the individual. This would seem to be the epitome of a thoroughgoing structural
determinism: individuals think and act as they do entirely because they are entirely
socialized, –that is, the individual is the society writ small. Each one does what s/he
does because it is what everybody else does. However, although Bourdieu would seem
Let us turn now to the empirical. This paper is part of a continuing attempt to describe
and understand a Quaker Meeting in ‘Dibdenshaw’ in the north of England.4 During
The greatest charm of ethnography is, perhaps, that once its simplest rudiments have
been acquired and its specific methods grasped, one’s daily life takes on a new aspect.
Some trifling little isolated fact, or some chance remark overheard in passing, because one
perceives its links with an entire network of beliefs and customs, can conjure up a whole
world of analogies and memories. (cited in Belmont 1979, 58)
The isolated little facts with which I was bombarded during fieldwork became
increasingly meaningful as I discovered that they comprised networks, that they
could always be contextualized within a narrative framework. It is worth spelling
out what I mean here. First, I propose a strong theory of narrative: we are storied
beings in a storied world. Jerome Bruner (2002) has argued persuasively that our
very selves are constructed through and of narrative. He writes:
A self-making narrative is something of a balancing act. It must, on the one hand, create
a conviction of autonomy, that one has a will of one’s own, a certain freedom of choice, a
degree of possibility. But it must also relate the self to a world of others – to friends and
family, to institutions, to the past, to reference groups.5
More explicit: Two Quakers meet in the meeting house on Sunday morning:
Quakers often blatantly told one another such stories, which are easy to spot (at least
in conversation) with a bit of practice. They become a part of extended narratives,
in this case relating to holidays (and simultaneously to other narrative threads no
doubt).
Less explicit: Two Quakers look out over the meeting house garden:
5 For more on Bruner’s influential mode of narrative analysis see also Bruner (1986,
1991).
Modelling the Parameters of Discourse in ‘Religious’ Contexts 149
This short exchange forms a part of a narrative thread on gardening, developed over
the years by several participants in the Meeting. Identifying implicit narratives such
as these is challenging and requires long-term participant observation. As Carrithers
argues, ‘narrative thought can be evidenced and conveyed in forms of speech which
are not marked as stories at all’ (1995, 261). Harder still to identify are those narratives
that develop beyond the realms of speech and are made material: the cherry tree
planted to celebrate the birth of a new child, the small watercolour painting near
the entrance, the table in the library. The difficulty in identifying narrative threads
is due partly to the intermittent character of narrative. The plot (‘gardening’, say)
is made manifest, brought to life as it were, on occasion, and continued most often
and obviously by particular individuals who have developed a talking relationship
(Rapport 1993). One has to be among the same group of people over a long period
before one can identify such story lines.
Finally, the narratives I recorded in and around the meeting house can be thought
of as implying three ‘spheres’ – as represented in Figure 10.1.
canonic narrative
Quaker discourse
individual vernacular
narrative narrative
Looking through my field-notes I found that all social interaction in and around the
Quaker Meeting could be plotted within this triangular space – which is, in fact, a
model of that social interaction. The model suggests that (Quaker) discourse can
be understood entirely as narrative: the model emphasizes meaning-making and
temporality – present discourse develops from previous discourse; and that there are
three spheres of narrative (individual, canonic and vernacular). It also indicates that
150 Religion and the Individual
social interaction can only be understood in composite terms, that is as a precipitate
of the prototypical, the canonic and the vernacular.
In talking about narrative spheres I am primarily describing the scale (or ‘reach’)
of social interaction – either real or imagined. Exemplar cases are marked by the
points of the triangle and represent discourse relating entirely to the individual
(individual or protypical narrative), to the vernacular (local narrative), or to the
canonic (national narrative). It is probably impossible to locate any discourse
precisely at these points; I found that Quaker meeting narratives always contained
something of the individual, the vernacular and the canonic, though one sphere or
other might predominate (Collins 2003).
This model effectively occludes dualisms such as ‘individual/social’ or ‘agency/
structure’. It remains true, however, that individuals make meaning. This is an
assumption I can make at least in relation to the Quaker Meeting, because it is an
expectation that Quakers themselves take for granted, summed up in the canonic
question put by George Fox who is reported to have said, whilst preaching in the
parish church in Ulverston in 1652, ‘You will say, Christ saith this, and the Apostles
say this; but what canst thou say?’ (Quaker Faith and Practice, para 19.07).
What canst thou say? The question assumes that we are all conduits of the Spirit
but are necessarily interpreters of that Spirit. Just to add, that there must have been
a moment when Fox uttered these words or experienced their meaning in some more
direct sense, and at that point the narrative was predominantly ‘individual’; the
question at the moment it was uttered became a part of local or vernacular discourse.
Later, Fox went on to write the question down and circulate it among Friends, and
it became increasingly canonic (its audience grew) as the decades and centuries
passed. It is regularly quoted in published ‘introductions’ to Quakerism, as well as
appearing in the widely read Quaker Faith and Practice.6 The point here is that
narrative threads can take various forms at different times and in different places. In
these terms, there is no point in attempting to conceive of discourse entirely in terms
of either ‘the individual’ or ‘the social’, of agency or structure.
6 Quaker Faith and Practice (1995) is the current version of the Quaker Book of
Discipline, a volume of extracts from Quaker writing. The Book of Discipline was first
published in the eighteenth century and is revised every 25 years or so. The book is available
in every meeting house, it is often presented to new members, and is widely cited during
spoken ministry and in various other contexts.
Modelling the Parameters of Discourse in ‘Religious’ Contexts 151
during meeting for worship, there is a group of older women who always sit in the same
chairs … (belonging, faith and practice, sharing gender, age, beliefs, friendship, place,
etc)
Sunday morning handshakes upon entering the meeting house, everyone receives a
handshake from the door-keeper even toddlers and babies
nail varnish
Why does Serena make her opening remark here? Serena is a friend of Dora’s and
knows that her bluntness is likely to be tolerated and might even be found amusing.
The two have, over the years, developed a ‘talking relationship’ (Rapport 1993),
which is more often than not a joking relationship. Dora’s reply to Simon, who
is married to Serena, contributes a further joking comment alluding to the Quaker
testimony to the plain (and implying that nail varnish is not ‘plain’ and therefore
not ‘Quakerly’). Serena concludes the conversation by apparently denying the
relevance of the testimony to plainness, preferring to celebrate her friend’s boldness
and individuality. Despite what might be assumed to be an obviously ‘religious’
context, such storied discourse transcends accepted dualist analysis: here is social
interaction which is simultaneously religious and secular, sacred and profane. As
such, it typifies meeting house discourse.
152 Religion and the Individual
During fieldwork, the countless ‘little isolated facts’ and ‘chance remarks’ that
I recorded remained an awful muddle until the penny dropped that these were not
isolated phenomena, just the opposite of that, they were moments in a temporal
sequence. The continuity of Meeting, I suggested, amounted to a weave of narrative
threads. This is what I recognized first and foremost – not that this data was sacred
(or religious) and that, secular. Indeed, my point here is that the distinction cannot be
made with reference to the practice I recorded.
As I indicated in Figure 10.1, all meeting house talk can be plotted within a triangle
the points of which indicate the discursive limits of the canonical, the vernacular and
the individual. Given that the meeting house itself demarcates ‘Quaker space’ and
that attendance at meeting similarly demarcates ‘Quaker time’ (Dandelion 1996: xii),
all discourse enacted within this specific, temporalized place will to some degree be
constituted by each of these modes of discourse. A remark might be interpreted (by
any or all of the actors – including the participant-observer) as more or less grounded
in the canonic, the vernacular or the individual and it is important to understand that
none of these categories of discourse is ontologically or epistemologically prior to
the others. To simply cleave ‘the religious’ from ‘the secular’ is an entirely artificial
dichotomization of practice that does not recognize such a process.
The kind of questions one might legitimately ask at this point might be: is this
religion? Are we dealing here with the religious or the secular? Rather than attempting
an answer, I would argue that these are misleading questions – they are not the
right questions. I mean by this that such questions cannot properly be answered and
that furthermore they lead us down a blind alley. This is one of an almost infinite
number of conversations undertaken by Friends in meeting houses up and down the
country every Sunday morning. In some cases they will engage in explicitly canonic
discourse, as represented, for example, in the book Quaker Faith and Practice,
referring, perhaps to a paragraph dealing with prayer, clerking a business meeting or
the sacraments. Or they might refer primarily to what we might call ‘the life of the
Meeting’, that is, vernacular concerns such as the need for a new roof, relations with
the parish church or the health problems of a member’s daughter. Or the talk might
revolve around the individual speaker’s own concerns and interests: their attempts
to grow a particular type of rose, their involvement in a local choir, their inability to
pray. What is ‘secular’ here and what is ‘religious’?
Discussing how to reduce the cost of a weekend retreat, Chris commented:
What about pledges? [Several people nod and mumble agreement] You know someone
agrees to offer some work and the recipient contributes to the Weekend Away fund … I
heard about this on the Archers [one or two whispered conversations about the Archers]
I have become more aware of a crucial limitation of the model represented in Figure
10.1. This was a model applicable to an enclave, to a group that I have characterized
as rather too neatly bounded. A useful development of the basic model would be to
include a further dimension to Quaker discourse – genre
Modelling the Parameters of Discourse in ‘Religious’ Contexts 153
canonic
discourse
Religious
Secular discourse
discourse
individual
discourse
vernacular
discourse
Based on observations presented above, the second (revised) model (Figure 10.2),
accommodating ‘genre’ as a further dimension, allows for the impossibility of finally
distinguishing the sacred (or religious) and secular in Quaker discourse. This three-
dimensional model is bounded by two planes: the front plane representing the notional
limit of ‘religious discourse’ and the rear plane the notional limit of ‘secular discourse’.
All ‘meeting house talk’, for example, can be plotted within this three-dimensional
space, defined now by not one but two criteria: the ‘reach’ of the discourse (canonic/
vernacular/individual), and the genre – toward the ‘religious’ or toward the ‘secular’.
The key implication of this model is the fundamental complexity of all discourse.7 All
‘religious’ discourse has elements of what we think of as the ‘secular’ and vice versa.
All discourse has elements of the canonic, the vernacular and the individual – though
weighting or emphasis will vary – and it is this weighting or emphasis that the model
allows us to plot. Plotting Quaker discourse is always bound to be approximate and
more or less contentious. I recorded interaction in the Quaker meeting that could not
easily be forced into the essentializing categories ‘religious discourse’ or ‘secular
discourse’. Quakers will construct (and reconstruct) narratives which cannot easily
be understood either as ‘religious’ or even as specifically ‘Quaker’; and at the same
7 Note that the model appears static due entirely to the limitations of print media –
discursive acts are dynamic and processual. Narrative threads may be in perpetual development
– though this is not a necessary condition – they seem to wax and wane and may lie dormant
for shorter or longer periods of time apparently disappearing until brought back to life, as it
were, by a chance remark, for example.
154 Religion and the Individual
time, these narratives will, on occasion, be taken up by those who are non-Quakers
(‘others’) and subsequently retold or reframed as primarily secular stories.
Envoi
I have tried to show the theoretical limitations of accepted dichotomies which are
pervasive in the study of religion and particular those of ‘individual/social’ and
‘religion/secularity’. Drawing on my analysis of social interaction in a Quaker
meeting house, I suggest a model of discourse that frees the analyst from the
oversimplification and latent determinism of such crude dichotomies.
A significant theoretical gain in adopting the model in Figure 10.2 is that it
encourages the posing of old questions in new ways. For example, are Quakers more
likely to draw on ‘other discourse’, during some periods rather than others? What
might this tell us about the permeability of boundaries? Are there times (and or
places) when the narratives of individuals are accorded greater practical authority
than, say, canonic narratives? So long as we remember that narratives are dynamic,
the model can be used to map the trajectory of narratives in a particular context and
thus help us gain a purchase on changing loci of power and authority. Furthermore,
it can be used to generate comparisons between faith groups, or between different
manifestations of the same faith group.
The model I have presented avoids the misleading dichotomous analysis,
perpetuated in the dualisms identified at the start of this chapter. Narrative necessarily
incorporates what we think of as the individual and the social, whilst at the same time
bringing into focus the vernacular or local – too often omitted in analyses of religion.
Furthermore, in suggesting that Quaker discourse can be further plotted within a
space bounded by two planes, the religious and the secular, and in this way we
avoid essentializing either genre. The model suggests that no discourse is ‘religious’
without being to some extent ‘secular’ – and vice versa. Islam is sometimes described
not as ‘a religion’ but as a ‘way of life’ – a claim which neatly obviates the religion/
secularity dichotomy. Quakerism is not simply ‘a religion’, either, but whether or
not it is a ‘way of life’ is a problem that can only be solved by attending to Quaker
discourse. The question is whether a model which appears to work well in relation to
Quakerism can be applied more broadly.
Bibliography
Introduction
The question of whether and how religion ought to be defined has long engaged both
sociologists and lawyers (see, for example, Idinopulos and Wilson 1998; Platvoet
and Molendijk 1999). Weber and Durkheim put forward contrasting views as to
the usefulness of a preliminary (or working) definition of religion. Whilst Weber
contended that ‘definition can be attempted, if at all, only at the conclusion of the
study’ (1978, 399), Durkheim argued that a preliminary definition was required in
order to ‘avoid focusing by mistake on ideas and practices that are not religious
or conversely overlooking genuinely religious phenomena’ (2001, 25). Durkheim’s
rationale for a preliminary definition is as persuasive for the practising lawyer as it is
for the scholar (Sandberg, 2006b; forthcoming). In both cases, a definition serves as
a basis of inclusion and exclusion. Certain groups are not studied by the scholar or
denied legal protection on the grounds that they are not religions.
Whilst lawyers and sociologists have often wrestled with the question of defining
religion, most work has been done in isolation. There has been very little sociological
commentary on the various definitions and conceptions of religion found in law.
This is despite the obvious sociological importance a legal definition of religion
has. Legal definitions of religion are often used as filtering devices: they are used
as the means by which the State determines which groups and which activities are
to receive the certain legal benefits and burdens. The juxtaposition of legal texts
with sociological material may reveal the often implicit presumptions and prejudices
present in the law. Furthermore, a social scientific approach is required so that
definitions and conceptions of religion enshrined in law remain in step with the role,
status and position of religion in contemporary social life.
This chapter examines one definitional attribute of religion identified by Durkheim
in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life by reference to state laws on religion.
This examination will begin with the most important of these laws: human rights
guarantees common to many jurisdictions and constitutional provisions unique to
specific jurisdictions. This will be followed by a discussion of particular laws in
England and Wales. This chapter will constitute an exploratory examination of how
sociological works, such as those of Durkheim, may enable a greater understanding
of legal texts on religion. It is part of an emerging discipline, a synthesis of the law
158 Religion and the Individual
on religion, the sociology of religion and the sociology of law, which may be styled
a ‘sociology of law and religion’ (Doe 2004; Sandberg forthcoming).
Durkheim’s Definition
As Edge (2002, 29) notes, throughout the twentieth century, international law
evolved beyond the nineteenth-century focus on the relationship between states
to the elucidation and protection of international human rights guarantees, which
invariably included provisions on religion of various different kinds (see Little 2002,
35). Of these provisions, Article 18 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights
1948 (UDHR) may be seen as a watershed in that it was the first international treaty
which did not conceptualise religion under the umbrella of minority rights (Evans,
Religion and the Individual: A Socio-legal Perspective 159
1997, 172–173). Rather, religion was protected as a general human right. The Article
provides:
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes
freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with
others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice,
worship and observance.
Religion became seen as primarily an individual right. For Evans, under Article
18, freedom of religion became ‘bound up with the development of the concept of
individual human rights as an object of international legal concern’ (1997, 172–173).
There are two separate rights under Article 18. The first right is the internal freedom
of freedom of thought, conscience and religion – known as the forum internum –
this includes the right to hold a religion or belief and to change it. Martínez-Torrón
(2002, 104) contends that, like other human rights, this internal freedom is primarily
an individual right. The second right is the external freedom to manifest religion or
belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance – known as the forum externum
– this may take place ‘either alone or in community with others and in public or
private’. This appears to be recognition of a collective right to religious liberty.
However, it can be argued that all this affects is the exercise of the rights: the right
to manifest is an individual right which may be exercised individually (‘alone’) or
collectively (‘in community with others’). The Article simply recognises the choice
of the individual; it does not recognise a collective right to religious liberty as such.
This perception of religion as primarily an individual matter has been further
elucidated in relation to Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights
(ECHR). Article 9(1) is almost identical to Article 18 UDHR. Evans (2001, 72)
contends that Article 9(1) is an individual right since ‘the emphasis in the interpretation
of Article 9 is on the internal: the private thought, conscience and religion of the
individual’. It does not provide a collective right for religious groups acting as such
to manifest their religious liberty (see Evans 2001, 103). However, despite this,
the European Court of Human Rights has heard cases brought by religious groups.
For example, the Church of Scientology in Sweden claimed that publication of
criticism of their Church violated Article 9 and the International Society for Krishna
Consciousness (ISKCON) in the United Kingdom claimed that planning restrictions
were contrary to religious freedom (see X and the Church of Scientology v Sweden
[1979]16 D&R 68 and ISKCON v United Kingdom [1994] 90 D&R 90). Both cases
were heard by European institutions, though the claims proved unsuccessful.
For Taylor (2005, 225–226), this does not indicate that Article 9 includes a
collective right; rather when such cases are brought it is actually the individual
members who are exercising their individual rights collectively. The European
Commission for Human Rights has held that Churches are entitled to protection
under Article 9 but only through the protection afforded to its individual members,
and based upon their either identical or at least substantially similar views. In X
v Denmark [1976] 5 ECHR 157, the European Commission noted that organised
religious communities are protected in their right to manifest religion through
worship, teaching, practice and observance through the right granted to its members
160 Religion and the Individual
under Article 9 (see Taylor 2005, 138–139). Collective religiosity is only protected to
facilitate the individual’s manifestation of religion. Thus, denying legal recognition
entirely to certain religious groups has been held to violate freedom of religion
(Metropolitan Church of Bessarabia v Moldova [2002] 35 EHRR 306). However,
whilst some commentators have claimed that this means that Article 9 also has a
very significant ‘collective dimension’ (see Martínez-Torrón 2002, 14), it is difficult
to reconcile this view with the jurisprudence of the international bodies. The way in
which Article 9 is framed – as an individual right that which may be exercised with
others – means that any collective dimension derives from the individual right.
Other human rights provisions echo Article 9 ECHR and Article 18 UDHR in
seeing religion as an individual right which may be manifested collectively. For
instance, Evans (2000, 46) contends that Article 18 of the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) ‘permits individuals to act in a fashion which
is in accordance with their beliefs if it is linked to a form of worship, teaching or
observance’. However, the Human Rights Committee in 1993 commented that ‘acts
integral to the conduct by religious groups of their basic affairs, such as, inter alia,
the freedom to choose their own religious leaders, priests and teachers, the freedom
to establish seminaries or religious schools and the freedom to prepare and distribute
religious texts and publications’ were also protected by the Article (Human Rights
Committee General Comment 22 of 1993, paragraph 4). Similarly Article 6 of the
Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination based
on Religion or Belief 1981, in providing a list of freedoms that are included in the
general right to freedom of religion, outlines a number of derivative rights which
benefit collective religiosity. In all these instruments, certain collective rights originate
from the individual right on the face of the Article. However, at an international
level, the legal conception of religion is that of an individual phenomenon. Religion
is a private affair and it is up to the individuals how to manifest their religiosity. If
free practice and exercise of religion is constrained, it is largely up to the individual
whether legal redress is sought.
(1) If a court’s determination of any question arising under this Act might affect the
exercise by a religious organisation (itself or its members collectively) of the Convention
right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, it must have particular regard to the
importance of that right.
Focusing on the law of England and Wales, there are several other areas of law
which rely on a conception of religion as primarily a collective affair. There are a
number of laws in England and Wales which extend legal protection to religious
groups. On the surface, these laws suggest a perception of religion as a collective
activity. An obvious example would be laws which provide special treatment for
religious groups and organisations. Legal preference is awarded to the collective
manifestation of religion. There are a number of criminal offences which outlaw
hostility or hatred towards religious groups. Under the Crime and Disorder Act
1998, a crime is ‘racially or religiously aggravated’ (and consequentially punished
by a tougher sentence) where there is ‘hostility towards members of a racial or
religious group based on their membership of that group’. A defendant is guilty of an
offence under the Racial and Religious Hated Act 2006 if he stirs up ‘hatred against
a group of persons defined by reference to religious belief or lack of religious belief’
(see Hare 2006 for details). In both cases, the criminal law only protects religious
individuals if they are members of a collective. A further example can be found
in the exemptions religious groups enjoy from discrimination law. For example,
under the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, it is illegal to discriminate on grounds of
sex. However, there is an exemption under section 19 where the employment is
made for the purposes of an ‘organised religion’: such an organisation may lawfully
discriminate by requiring employees to be of a particular sex, for example, if that
requirement is imposed ‘so as to comply with the doctrines of the religion’, or
‘because of the nature of the employment and the context in which it is carried out,
so as to avoid conflicting with the strongly-held religious convictions of a significant
number of the religion’s followers’. This is clearly a collective right; although if it
is exercised for the second reason, it is a collective right exercised on behalf of a
‘significant number’ of individuals who belong to the collective. Either way, this
right is exclusively the privilege of a religious collective: the individual believer is
bound by the general law; an organised religion in certain circumstances is not.
A further example of how the law recognises religion as a collective force can be
found in the preferential legal treatment for places of worship. Such privileges for
places of worship cannot be read as rights for individual members or for individual
citizens since the preferential treatment of such buildings does not give rise to an
individual right to use such buildings as places or worship or as buildings of historical
or architectural interest. However, the legal protection of worship does not infer a
perception that religion is a collective force since English law does not distinguish
between collective or individual worship; the House of Lords has recognised that
worship may be communal or personal (R v Secretary of State for Education ex
parte Williamson [2005] UKHL 15). A final example of legal protection of religion
as collective phenomenon may be found in legal statements that underline the
perceived societal benefits of religion. However, although some charity law cases
164 Religion and the Individual
seem to suggest the collective nature of religion by emphasising the public benefit
of religion, this is not necessarily evidence that the courts see religion as a collective
phenomenon since other decisions have stressed that the public benefit derives
from the fact that it beneficial for individuals to have a religion (see, for example,
Gilmour v Coates [1949] AC 426). Although the black letter of the law seems to be
recognising the collective nature of religion, a closer examination shows that it is
simply the recognition of the individual right to religious liberty expressed in close
association.
In addition to these laws, which seem to protect religious groups, there are also
numerous laws in England and Wales which protect religious believers and seem
to infer that religion is an individual matter. Indeed, a recent House of Lords
decision explicitly characterised religion as an individual matter. In his judgment
in R v Secretary of State for Education ex parte Williamson [2005] UKHL 15, Lord
Nicholls commented:
Religious and other beliefs and convictions are part of the humanity of every individual.
They are an integral part of his personality and individuality.
Conclusion
It is clear that the legal evidence represents recognition that religion is both an
individual and collective phenomenon. Although human rights instruments are
phrased as individual rights and are directed at individuals, they have some effect upon
religious collectives. Furthermore, although international human rights guarantees
colour provisions on religion in national constitutions, many such constitutions stress
the collective rights of religious organisations. This is true not only in countries where
there is a State Church, such as England and Denmark, but also in other jurisdictions,
such as Spain and Italy. Laws in England and Wales which defend religious groups
and religious believers indicate that religion is protected both as a collective activity
and as a key element of personal identity. Legal provisions seemingly protecting
religious groups often have the purpose of protecting the individuals who make up
such groups. Provisions which seem to protect the individual are often dependent
on that individual being a member of a collective or designated as religious in some
other way. This lack of a clear distinction between individual and collective rights
may be interpreted as showing that Durkheim was correct. Collectivity remains
a definitional attribute of religion: legal instruments show that States have not
fully embraced the idea that religion is an individual and private affair (although
international authorities seem closer to embracing this notion).
Moreover, the legal evidence supports the Durkheimian premise that individual
cults do not constitute a different type of religion: the legal evidence suggests
an understanding of religion as a phenomenon which has both a collective and
an individual dimension. More broadly, this exploratory examination serves as a
case study to illustrate how the study of law and legal mechanisms may enrich a
sociological understanding of religion by means of a ‘sociology of law and religion’
(Doe 2004; Sandberg forthcoming).
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Religious Discrimination’, Ecclesiastical Law Journal 9 (1). 87–90.
——. [forthcoming]. ‘Religion, Society and Law: An Analysis of the Interface
Between Law on Religion and the Sociology of Religion.’ Doctoral thesis, Cardiff
University.
Say. D. 1991. ‘Towards 2000: Church–State Relations’, Ecclesiastical Law Journal
2. 152–162.
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Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Weber. M. 1978. Economy and Society. Ed. G. Roth and C Wittich. London:
University of California Press.
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Chapter Twelve
Freedom in Chains:
Religion as Enabler and Constraint in the
Lives of Gay Male Anglican Clergy1
Michael Keenan
Constrained in ‘Crisis’
There is at any given time such a thing as the mind of the Church on matters of faith and
life. Those who disagree with that mind are free to argue for change. What they are not
free to do is go against that mind in their own practice. (House of Bishops 1991, 45)
1 This paper emerged from an ESRC-funded PhD study (award number PTA-030-
2003-01724). I would like to thank Dr Andrew Yip and Dr Brian Heaphy for their support
and encouragement throughout the undertaking of this study. An earlier version of this paper
was presented at the 2007 British Sociological Association Annual Conference, ‘Social
Connections: Identities, Technologies, Relationships’ at the University of East London.
2 Jeffrey John, an openly gay celibate man, was nominated in 2003 as Bishop of Reading
in the Church of England. John withdrew from this nomination following a time of intense
and vocal opposition. In the same year, Gene Robinson, an openly gay man living in a open
and active same-sex partnership, was nominated and confirmed as Bishop of New Hampshire
in the US Episcopal Church; again the appointment met with vocal opposition.
3 The Lambeth conference is decennial conference of bishops of the Anglican
Communion. The most recent (1998) conference report committed to ‘listen to the experience
of homosexual persons’ (Anglican Communion 1999, 33).
170 Religion and the Individual
Therefore, although the Church calls for a time of listening and discussion,
this must occur without reference to the stories of sexually active gay clergy, as
these continue to be viewed by the institution as unacceptable stories. In essence,
the institution continues to constrain the public telling of stories of experience,
and attempts to continue to constrain practice through official statement and public
discourse. Such an approach distances not only gay clergy, but also gay believers
from the Church, and buttresses public understanding of traditional Christian faith
as constraining gay believers’ life choices. As one respondent put it, the Church is
seen as ‘life-denying’.
Negotiating Constraint
In contrast to the ‘average’ priest … our respondents seem to have developed a more
personally defined spirituality with regard to sexuality in the near absence of any official
discussion of this issue as it relates to the clergy. (Wolf 1989, 64)
Religion as Enabler and Constraint in the Lives of Gay Male Anglican Clergy 171
Although recognition of such negotiation exists in the literature, discussion of the
process of negotiation is slight. Turning to literature on lesbian, gay and bi-sexual
(LGB) Christians, such discussions have been taken further, and illustrate that non-
heterosexual individuals actively negotiate with belief in order to find connection
between, and meaning for, their sexual and religious selves (Yip 2000; 2002; Wilcox
2003). This research particularly highlights the importance of personal experience,
and access to alternative interpretations of scripture. Within such negotiations
organisational Christianity remains of importance for many individuals. Indeed
O’Brien (2004, 192) suggests that finding connection between gay and Christian
identity is the LGB Christian’s raison d’être.
Wider theoretical discussions within the sociology of religion relate such
negotiations with concepts of ‘individualised belief’ (Bellah 1985; Roof 1999), and
the ‘subjective turn’ (Heelas and Woodhead 2005), which emphasise the central
role of self in the acceptance and negotiation of belief. This situation is eloquently
discussed by Geyer and Baumeister as follows:
Historically, a central and explicit goal of religion and morality in general has been to
restrain the self and to override people’s tendency to act out of self-interested motives.
Now people must find a way to reconcile historical conceptions of morality with the recent
formulation of the self as a source of value with inherently authoritative claims. (Geyer
and Baumeister 2005, 419)
Such discussion does not undermine the feeling of discrimination and constraint
felt by respondents working within the Church of England. Rather, in conjunction
with a sense of constraint and lack of affirmation respondents continued to feel
enabled and affirmed by their identification, both professionally and personally, with
the Christian faith. This was achieved through negotiation with the traditional and
acceptance of the innovational.
The Study
This paper draws on interview data from eight gay male Anglican clergy; this formed
part of a larger study of the negotiations undertaken by gay clergy in managing
the coexistence of gay, Christian and clerical identities. At the time of interview
all eight respondents were actively involved in church ministry in the Church of
England. The respondents were aged between 30 and 65. Of the eight clergy quoted
in this paper three self-defined as ‘out’. All eight respondents were recruited through
advertisement (within newsletters and support group mailings). Interviews took place
between 2003 and 2005. The interviews were semi-structured in nature, undertaken
in a place of the respondents’ choosing (generally vicarages or church offices), and
lasted between 90 and 120 minutes.
All names and identifiable information have been changed.
The first way in which identification with traditional religiosity enabled the
respondents can be seen in terms of Church providing a safe space for individuals
who felt distanced from ‘mainstream’ heterosexual secular communities and
shared experiences. In discussing their life histories the respondents emphasised
the importance of their faith in terms of gaining acceptance, and finding space
to accept themselves. There were two specific ways in which this was discussed
in the respondents’ narratives. Church offered both physical space, and space for
Religion as Enabler and Constraint in the Lives of Gay Male Anglican Clergy 173
individuals to make personal connection between faith and sexuality. The following
quotations illustrate these issues:
I think in that sense I found my own youth club, because the Church, the Church building
and what went on in the building became the bit that I became fascinated with. In that
sense I can see why mother and father used to get really quite perturbed because I was
never away from the place, but it is fascinating, absolutely fascinating. It wasn’t my closet
by any means, because it was a Church that was always busy doing things, and in that
sense they made a wide base of contacts and views I would never have otherwise touched.
(Luke)
I was sent away to public school so I suppose it was school religion. Looking back on
it, I wonder whether chapel and Church offered an alternative because, I mean I didn’t
accept my sexuality, and didn’t understand it in my teen years or even much into my
twenties. I wonder whether that was an alternative group in which I could find friendship
and meaning to the macho sports-playing heterosexual with which I didn’t identify. I’m a
child of the 60s and it was still illegal in the 60s, and the opportunities of groups reaching
out to individuals who were exploring who they were was just non-existent. (Harold)
I think it was a positive factor because on a sort of, what today probably sounds even to
myself a sort of trite sort of basis, I felt that what my faith was telling me was that God
made me and made me what I was. Therefore I wasn’t wanted to deny it, in the way in
which I probably had been. And yes I mean cultural and social things mean that you are
still very careful and very wary. But I didn’t feel that I was right trying to sort of repress
what I was, so I would say it was a positive influence in coming to terms with my sexuality
which is unusual for some people. (Adam)
Within these quotations Church provided space in which respondents could make
connections and gain affirmation. Firstly, as a social space Church was a place where
respondents found acceptance at a time when among their peer group they experienced
a distinct feeling of difference. Luke’s narrative emphasises how he found belonging
within the confines of the Church building. Being within the building, and involved
in Church activities Luke found space to express his creativity. He also found a space
in which he gained acceptance in terms of his evolving sense of self. Church was
his ‘youth club’, a place where he could express himself more fully than he could
in other places. Harold similarly emphasised the community aspect of Church. In
particular he discussed the safety of the Church community and the very specific role
he can see retrospectively that the Church played in his ability to accept himself. He
discussed the Church as being separate from the secular realm of male youth, within
which he felt he did not fit. Though Church was not specifically affirming Harold
as a gay man, it was a space in which he could access affirmation for the ‘type’
of person he felt he was. Traditional Church religion was therefore important for
these men because it was significant in what was their emerging sense of self. The
building, the activities, the views of what an individual should be, all connected with
both Luke’s and Harold’s understanding of themselves.
Religious belief provided a personal safe space that was related to central Christian
teachings of love and acceptance. This gave some respondents the ability to connect
emerging sexuality with emerging belief systems. For Adam, this emerging belief
174 Religion and the Individual
system encouraged him to be more open with himself about his sexuality than he had
previously been. Though Adam’s discussion of the importance of traditional belief
in terms of this acceptance of himself does not refer specifically to the institution,
his discussion of feeling accepted emerged from an understanding of God and
Christianity, which he accessed through institutional experience. For Adam, the god
he was being told about, and the god he connected with was a god that accepted him
as he was, and indeed expected Adam to accept himself. In other words, if God and
his Church are loving and accepting of the individual, it follows that the individual
should be accepting of themself.
The respondents’ discussions of Church providing safe space (whether social or
personal) emphasise how the institutional, or the traditional, enabled the respondents
to accept themselves. By accessing institution the respondents found space wherein
they could connect with their understandings of themselves in a way that they
had been unable to in secular youth culture. Finding Church enabled finding self.
Therefore, although Church was by no means openly accepting of these individuals’
sexualities, it provided a space wherein these respondents felt able to relate more
closely to their emerging sense of self than they had been able to outside of Church.
Despite the constraint of sexuality, feelings of acceptance enabled the respondents
to make connections for themselves, and to gain affirmation – to innovate on the
experienced tradition.
The second area in which continued identification with the traditional was evident
was specifically in relation to respondents’ understandings of their experiences of
sex and relationships. Traditional religious concepts and discussions provided a way
of relating to and accepting experience, which had not been found through purely
secular understandings. The following quotations illustrate:
I do enjoy sex very much, I don’t understand quite what it is about the two becoming one
flesh, but it does seem to me that sexual activity with another person, and sometimes it’s
even true of one night stands, does unite and bond you with another person in a mysterious
way. … I can’t imagine what it would be like not having that as a possibility at least, even
if you are not having it at the time. (Stephen)
I suppose if I’m really honest, the sense of peace I get with somebody I truly love in a
sexual encounter feels like a good experience of God, I would have to say that, so in that
sense there is something of holiness about it in a way, although in perceived wisdom there
can’t be. (Matthew)
If there is a real love between me and somebody else, then that’s God allowing me a
privileged sharing in his love for that person, and because I’m a human being and I don’t
have a vow of celibacy then God has given me a body and a mind and a heart to express
that love, the total expression of it. You know, so I think that’s the ‘me’ that God has
created, the me that seeks to love. (Anthony)
Stephen, Matthew and Anthony all related how their understandings of sex were
intrinsically related to their faith. The sexual experience is imbued with meaning that
Religion as Enabler and Constraint in the Lives of Gay Male Anglican Clergy 175
goes deeper than either physicality or emotional connection. For all three of these
respondents being sexually active was to some extent a spiritual experience. It was
both experiencing an aspect of God’s plan for them as individuals, and also being
able to experience first-hand what an all-encompassing godly love feels like. It is this
view of erotic love which is emphasised in certain aspects of traditional Christianity
with reference to the relationship between two committed individuals of different
sexes. For the respondents, the core of this belief (the spiritual aspect of erotic love)
remained. However, this traditional understanding is innovated upon. For some,
as Anthony illustrates, this belief is innovated to allow the inclusion of a same-
sex partner. For others, as Stephen illustrates, the tradition is innovated to include
multiple partners. Within both of these approaches, however, the core tradition gives
meaning to sexual experience, despite the dominant institutional discourse of sin.
The coexistence of multiple interpretations, however, can mean that such
negotiations are required to be continuous. Alan’s narrative illustrates this:
Two ways of looking at it in my head. There is either the sort of liberal way where it’s all
ok. Whatever you do – that’s absolutely fine. The Harry Williams4 thing about, you know,
sex with a stranger is the closest you can be to god, and all that. That’s one way you can
think about it. The other way you think about it is that it’s all sinful but you do it anyway.
So, a bit like sort of getting angry, or being smart or, whatever, you know? And I shift my
emphasis from one to the other as I would sort of change my socks really! I think probably
because I’d like to think that I could do the Harry Williams thing and just say ‘Oh it’s all
wonderful’ and that’s fine. But there’s something in the back of my mind that I can’t quite
get rid of, that he might not be quite right. (Alan)
4 Harry Williams was a gay Anglican theologian. In his autobiography Some Day I’ll
Find You (1982) Williams discussed how he praised God during sex for the joy he was giving
and receiving
176 Religion and the Individual
faith, God and Christianity. Coming to discussions of sexuality with reference to
traditional Christianity the respondents found ways of accepting gay identity through
traditional theology and belief. The following quotations illustrate:
Basically it’s the way God created me. I can’t see that he is going to sort of perpetrate
some sort of joke. You know? Y’know, the rulebook saying one thing, and then make
somebody something else. (Adam)
If I am made in the image of God, if all things come from God how can this not be? And
I would encourage other people to say who they are, so I can’t not say it myself. I can’t
believe that God likes straight people and not gay people. (Stephen)
People have been given their sexuality as part of their God given-ness. (Keith)
I have to sort of say to God, well you know, you made me this way, this is who I am. If I
have to answer for it one day that’s what I’m happy to do. (Matthew)
The above quotations highlight the use of traditional theological beliefs – God
created everything and human beings are created in the image of God. The respondents
accessed these traditional aspects of theology in order to find an understanding of
their sexuality. Such theological beliefs were understood with reference to traditional
interpretation. However, they were also used more innovatively in terms of applying
such traditional understandings to personal experiences of being gay. As Wilcox
suggests, religious teachings are ‘seeds that sprout plants never anticipated by many
religious authorities’ (Wilcox 2003, 77). For the respondents, as God is creator of
everything, gay sexuality is an aspect of God’s creation, it is given by God, and a
part of the diversity God intended in the sexual realm. Also, Stephen’s narrative
suggests that, because human beings are made in the image of God, his sexuality
is in some sense a reflection of the image of God. In essence, gayness is an aspect
of the entirety of the divine. One important aspect of such reflections is that they
illustrate an understanding of sexuality as something existing beyond the choice of
the individual – it is essential, an aspect of who they are, no matter what choices they
make. But, perhaps even more importantly, this understanding is also something
more than essential. It is what Thumma (1991) refers to as ‘creationist’. Sexuality,
being understood as being created by God, becomes something which the individual
has a duty to embrace, an aspect of their God given-ness, indeed a gift from God.
Refusal to accept being gay within such an understanding goes beyond refusing to
accept the self the individual desires to be. It is refusing to accept the self that has
been given by God through his creation of the individual. Therefore, as Matthew’s
reflections quoted above emphasise, if anyone is to blame, surely it is God, for gay
sexuality is God’s doing.
Such understandings on the part of the respondents again illustrate the importance
of traditional religiosity in the construction of stories of self. Access of traditional
theological understandings provides meaning to the individual’s experience of their
sexuality through their innovations upon it. Understanding is imbued with meaning
through its connection to traditional theology. Here again the negotiation of tradition
Religion as Enabler and Constraint in the Lives of Gay Male Anglican Clergy 177
and innovation within individuals’ belief stories gives meaning to their experiences
as gay men.
The above examples from the narratives of the respondents can, as previous literature
has suggested, be seen as illustrating the powerful and liberating influence of
individualised belief. The innovations undertaken by the respondents in constructing
their personal belief stories give them the ability to make connections and to accept
gay identity. Therefore it is possible to see the distinction between freedom and
constraint as simply a result of the difference between institutional religion and
personal belief. However, the innovations discussed on the part of the respondents
remain firmly connected to the traditional, with tradition remaining as important
an aspect of their belief system as their personal innovation. This importance of
the traditional can be clarified by returning to the discussion of the respondents’
narratives.
The initial discussion concerning traditional belief providing safe space is related
specifically to the importance of institution, organisation, or indeed community. Hibbs
discusses the importance of ‘long-term relationship to the organisational culture’
(Hibbs 2006, 157). For Hibbs, institutional Church is a place where individuals
have grown and felt a sense of belonging through long-term affiliation. Indeed, he
refers to Church as a ‘comfort zone’ (Hibbs 2006, 157). The quotations from the
respondents, given above, reflect this understanding of the importance of institution.
However, the discussions of Luke and Harold go beyond seeing institutional Church
as the basis of faith, it is also shown to some extent as the basis of self-acceptance.
As Thumma (1991), and Wolkomir (2001) suggest, affiliation to denomination can
be as important an aspect of identity as sexuality. Although the Church organisations
Harold and Luke refer to did not make pronouncement about the men’s emerging
sexualities, they did show acceptance of these men as people. In essence, Church
accepted the respondents at a time when the secular communities they were a part
of did not. For this reason, breaking connection to the traditional (institutional
Church) could, for many, threaten connections made within personal stories of self.
The traditional Church is a place where individuals find acceptance, welcome and
community. Whilst sexuality may remain unspoken in such situations, it gains silent
affirmation through the individual connecting the acceptance they gain from Church,
to all aspects of their personal identity. That is, the traditional Church institution’s
welcome is innovated to refer to the individual’s sexual identity. The constraining
silence of institutional Church therefore also enables personal acceptance of emerging
sexuality. Despite the distance perceived in public talk between Church institution
and gay sexuality, in personal stories of meaning connection can be made, and the
institution plays an important role in this.
178 Religion and the Individual
Meaning Through Tradition
Concluding Thoughts
The data illustrates the continuing importance of religious beliefs in the lives of a
number of late modern individuals. Although the findings presented here are directly
related to the experiences of a small number of gay clergy, the issues discussed talk
directly to the problems of late modern belief discussed by Geyer and Baumeister
(2005). The stories of the respondents illustrate that faith stories are negotiated with
reference to self-experience, institutional experience and the experiences of others.
These negotiations are not limited to a specific time, place, or event. Rather they are,
and indeed must be, ongoing. Being Christian is not a fixed category, its meaning
must be constantly negotiated, and this negotiation must be contextualised within an
understanding of the experiences of the individual. For this reason, such negotiations
connect life sectors, such as sexual and professional identities, and provide a meaning
framework for individuals.
The lives of many gay clergy are experienced as life circumstances which are
dangerous and forcibly constrained through being situated within the institutional
Church. However, these are balanced by a connection to faith which, through
negotiation of tradition and innovation, gives meaning and affirms the individual.
This thereby gives individuals the ‘freedom’ to be both gay and clergy.
180 Religion and the Individual
Bibliography
Introduction
This chapter reflects upon fieldwork undertaken in recent years with alternative and
non-mainstream religions in Brazil (Dawson 2007) when I had the opportunity to
spend time with members of the Brazilian new religion of Santo Daime. In the course
of my research it became clear through conversations in which talk of the ‘end times’
cropped up that Santo Daime members (referred to as daimistas) were constructing
their religious identities by, among other things, drawing upon a range of millenarian
themes and images most closely associated with more traditional forms of Brazilian
religiosity (see, for example, Levine 1992; Myscofski 1988; Queiroz 1965; Pessar
2004). Regarding millenarianism as a ‘particular type of salvationism’, Cohn argues
that the millenarian paradigm can be identified through its characterization of
salvation as
(a) collective, in the sense that it is to be enjoyed by the faithful as a collectivity; (b)
terrestrial, in the sense that it is to be realized on this earth and not in some other-worldly
heaven; (c) imminent, in the sense that it is to come both soon and suddenly; (d) total, in
the sense that it is utterly to transform life on earth, so that the new dispensation will be no
mere improvement on the present but perfection itself; (e) miraculous, in the sense that it
is to be accomplished by, or with the help of, supernatural agencies. (1970, 13)
On each of these counts, the relevant scenarios, themes and images articulated
by members of the Santo Daime religion qualify as characteristically millenarian.
Whilst variations exist from one daimista community to another, espousal of the
millenarian paradigm usually reflects the ecological preoccupations of the movement
as a whole. According to informants, the ‘time of trial’ about to begin or already upon
us involves some kind of impending environmental ‘catastrophe’ brought on by an
assortment of ‘rampant materialism’, ‘global warming’, ‘pollution’, ‘over-reliance
upon technology’, and ‘alienation from nature’. Although details of post-catastrophic
times often remain sketchy, the new earth scenario envisaged by daimistas involves
the re-establishment of humankind’s relationship with nature, which is to be most
clearly expressed through the use of environmentally friendly means of economic and
social reproduction. One daimista referred to this process as akin to being ‘thrown
back to the stone age’. Given the end of technology as we know it, daimistas believe
that those versed in the processes of natural production will be best placed both to
184 Religion and the Individual
survive the global catastrophe and to exploit the opportunities afforded by the new
dispensation. Consequently, daimista communities are keen for members to develop
a knowledge and skills base conducive to what one informant describes as ‘working
with nature’. To this end, daimista communities are often located in rural settings
or at the semi-rural peripheries of major conurbations. Referred to as ‘our refuge’
or ‘our Noah’s ark’, these non-urban communities are viewed simultaneously as
shelters from the impending catastrophe, training grounds for the righteous remnant
and anticipations of the forthcoming earthly Jerusalem.
Although the origins of the Santo Daime religion lie among the poorer sectors of
the population living in the semi-rural context of north-western Brazil, the daimistas
with whom I was working are actually members of Brazil’s urban middle classes
inhabiting the expanding conurbations of the central-southern states of Minas
Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. The issue I wish to explore here concerns
the fabrication of religious identity by urban middle-class daimistas through their
appropriation of millenarian motifs traditionally associated with Brazil’s rural poor.
To do this, two lines of enquiry may be followed. The first explores the continuity
between the traditional millenarianism most closely associated with Brazil’s rural
peasantry and the new era millenarianism articulated by urban middle-class daimistas.
Comparisons are drawn between the practical-symbolic crises suffered by rural
adherents of traditional millenarian forms and the existential crises endured by urban
professionals espousing new era millenarianism. Like traditional millenarianism
before it, new era millenarianism is held to express subjective experiences of
alienation from and disenchantment with prevailing societal structures.
Unlike the first, the second line of enquiry is one of discontinuity. Instead of
drawing parallels, the second line regards the use of millenarian imagery by
contemporary daimistas as indicative of a range of dynamics typical of the late
modern context within which these urban professionals are situated. Whilst notions
of alienation and disenchantment are not ignored, this second line of enquiry
regards new era millenarianism as primarily expressive of a number of reflexive
preoccupations typical of late modern existence. Before exploring these two lines
of enquiry, it may prove beneficial to say something of the organizational repertoire
within which individual appropriations of millenarian motifs occur.
Santo Daime was founded among the mixed-race, semi-rural peasantry of the
Amazonian state of Acre by Raimundo Irineu Serra (1892–1971). Known commonly
as ‘Master Irineu’, Irineu Serra is held by many to be the reincarnation of the
spirit of Jesus. Based at the community of Alto Santo, Santo Daime emerged as
a recognizably distinct religious movement in the mid-twentieth century (Cemin
2004, 347–82). Subsequent to Irineu Serra’s death a breakaway organization known
as CEFLURIS (Eclectic Centre of the Universal Flowing Light Raimundo Irineu
Serra) was founded by Sebastião Mota de Melo (1920–1990). Known as ‘Padrinho
Sebastião’, Mota de Melo is believed to be the reincarnation of the spirit of John the
Baptist. CEFLURIS is today headquartered at Céu do Mapiá in the state of Amazonas
Religious Identity and Millenarian Belief in Santo Daime 185
(Couto 2004, 385–411). As with Alto Santo before it, Céu do Mapiá is held to be the
location at which the post-cataclysmic New Jerusalem will be founded. On the back
of the organizational expansion of CEFLURIS, Santo Daime reached Brazil’s major
conurbations (for example, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo) in the early 1980s before
spreading to Europe, North America and Australasia.
Santo Daime is the oldest of Brazil’s ayahuasca religions and is also the most
internationally widespread. The word ‘ayahuasca’ derives from the Quechua
language and means ‘soul vine’ or ‘vine of the dead’ (Labate et al. 2004, 21).
When applied to the ayahuasca religions of Brazil (Barquinha, Santo Daime and
the Vegetable Union), the generic term ayahuasca denotes the combination of the
vine Banisteriopsis caapi and the leaves of the shrub Psychotria viridis (Dawson
2007, 67–98). Ayahuasca is a psychotropic substance traditionally consumed by
indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon which passed to non-indigenous communities
through its use among mestiço (mixed-race) communities and rubber-tappers in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Ayahuasca is regarded by daimistas
as an ‘entheogen’, that is, an agent whose properties facilitate the interaction of
humankind with supernatural agents or forces. The ritual consumption of Daime also
symbolizes the union of base matter and supernatural force in which the latter makes
itself felt through the transformation of the former.
The discursive and ritual repertoires of Santo Daime are an amalgam of popular
Catholic, esoteric, indigenous, Spiritist, Afro-Brazilian, and new age beliefs and
practices. The four most important rituals are the feitio (at which Daime is made),
bailado (dance), concentração (concentration), and missa (mass). Both bailado and
concentração usually commence after sunset, with the former lasting anything up to
twelve hours and the latter not normally exceeding three or four. During these rituals
participants face inward towards a central table which is usually laid with a wooden
Cruzeiro draped by a rosary, statuettes of Mary and Jesus, photographs of Master
Irineu and Padrinho Sebastião, candles, flowers, water, and incense sticks. Some
groups may include statuettes of some of the saints and a Bible, whilst others might
also have crystals, representations of Afro-Brazilian spirits and deities, and oriental
icons. Once tied to the lunar cycle, the feitio, which can last anything up to three
days, is increasingly conducted whenever fresh supplies of ‘Daime’ (the emic term
for ayahuasca) are needed. The ‘mass’ is celebrated relative to the anniversaries of
the death of prominent members. The demanding, if not arduous, nature of daimista
rituals is reflected in their designation as ‘trials’ through which the spiritual worth
of participants is tested relative to their physical perseverance. At the same time,
ritual regimes prepare members for the trials and tribulations soon to be unleashed
by forthcoming catastrophes.
Whereas the consumption of ayahuasca is held by daimistas to help generate
the ‘power’ that is essential to their rituals, the singing of hymns is the means by
which this ‘astral force’ is engaged, channelled, and manipulated to form a ‘spiritual
current’ which binds participants vertically with the spiritual plane and horizontally
with each other. Consequently, the ritual repertoire of Santo Daime is organized
around collections of hymns known as hinários. The first and most important of
these hinários is that of Irineu Serra and is known as the Cruzeiro. As with all
daimista hymns, those of the Cruzeiro are set to the rhythms of the march, mazurka,
186 Religion and the Individual
and waltz, and in form reflect Amazonian mixed-race, popular Catholic and Afro-
Brazilian influences (Luna 1986, 174–80; Labate and Pacheco 2004, 317, 330). In
addition to the Cruzeiro and assorted hymnals of organizational and local community
leaders, the discourse and practice of CEFLURIS is orientated by Mota de Melo’s
two hinários, O Justiçeiro (The Just One) and Nova Jerusalém (New Jerusalem).
The figures of the popular Catholic trinity (‘Father’, ‘Jesus’, and ‘the Virgin Mother/
Mary’) appear throughout these hinários, as do the ‘Divine Beings’ who populate
the ‘celestial court’. Astral phenomena are likewise well represented, as are natural
elements and the flora and fauna of the forest. Irineu Serra and Mota de Melo appear
in the guise of ‘Teacher’ entrusted by the Virgin Mother (also referred to as ‘Queen
of the Forest’) with ‘sacred doctrines’ to be conveyed by way of the ‘hymns’ being
sung. Ayahuasca is likewise referred to as a ‘Teacher’ and ‘Holy Light’ whose
consumption engenders ‘truth’, ‘love’, ‘wisdom’, ‘understanding’, ‘force’, ‘power’,
‘cure’, and ‘cleansing’. Members of Santo Daime are constituted as a community of
‘brothers and sisters’ whose consumption of Daime sets them apart from the world
of ‘sin’ and ‘illusion’. Because of their allegiance to ‘Daime’, daimistas are to be
much ‘misunderstood’ by the world at large. They are, however, assuredly on the
‘way’ towards ‘salvation’ and ‘another incarnation’.
Through discursive and practical means, the ritual repertoire of Santo Daime
situates the daimista community and its members within a millenarian worldview
framed by the cosmic battle between good and evil. Irineu Serra is the ‘Imperial
Chief’ of the army of ‘Juramidam’ and Mota de Melo his ‘General’. Reflected in
the use of ritual space, the ‘soldiers’ of ‘Juramidam’ are led by ‘commandants’ and
organized into ‘battalions’ regimented according to sex, age, and marital status. As
if to further underline the martial paradigm, members of Santo Daime who have
consumed ayahuasca a set number of times receive a uniform to wear at official
rituals. The origins of Santo Daime among the semi-rural Amazonian poor go some
way to explaining the presence of millenarian motifs within established discursive
and liturgical repertoires. The millenarian paradigm has long been ‘a fundamental
part’ of the symbolic reservoir drawn upon by Brazil’s rural poor (Da Matta 1996,
5). Acknowledgement of humble beginnings does not, though, readily account for
the continued articulation of millenarian preoccupations by contemporary daimistas
whose urban middle-class status puts them poles apart from those first responsible
for Santo Daime’s appropriation of millenarian themes. Why, then, do middle-
class daimistas adhere to a millenarian worldview whose origins are historically,
geographically and demographically remote from their everyday existence in the
urban-industrial heartlands of Brazil? As indicated above, two possible lines of
enquiry might be followed in response to this question. The first line of enquiry is
one of continuity in that both traditional and daimista millenarian narratives are said
to reflect similar structural conditions and equivalent subjective states. It is to this
line of enquiry that we now turn.
Religious Identity and Millenarian Belief in Santo Daime 187
Line of Continuity
First, whereas it cannot be said that the majority of daimistas suffer under the same
conditions of systemic marginalization as those among whom millenarianism has
traditionally thrived, it might be argued that their status as urban professionals in
contemporary Brazil nevertheless engenders a kind of systemic insecurity engendered
by, among other things, a decreasing standard of living and a steady decline in both
physical and occupational security. Much has been written upon the manner in and
extent to which contemporary urban-industrial society generates both material and
psychological insecurity for its members. Giddens, for example, identifies ‘anxiety’,
‘disorientation’ and ‘insecurity’ as integral components of subjective experience in
late-modern society (1990, 153; 1991, 181; 1994, 89); just as Bourdieu highlights
the ‘generalized subjective insecurity’ experienced by those subject to ‘neo-liberal
policies’ of ‘casualization’ and ‘flexploitation’ (1998, 82–6). In the same vein, Beck
identifies ‘endemic insecurity’ and ‘biographical uncertainties’ as now perennial
features of contemporary existence (Beck and Gernsheim 2002, 3–4); whilst Bauman
talks of the ‘awesome’ and ‘distressing’ ‘insecurity’ and ‘précarité’ engendered by
late-modern capitalism (2001, 41–8, 113–48; 2005, 31–3). Of course, the average
life of the average urban professional is by no means as difficult or precarious as
those of the poor majority in Brazil. Subjective experience, though, is very rarely
a relative state of affairs. Nevertheless, consecutive decades of stagflation (1980s),
neo-liberal reform (1990s) and fiscal redistribution (2000s) have eroded once
secure professional comfort-zones at a time when enhanced global awareness and
late-capitalist ideologies have actually increased urban middle-class expectations
(O’Dougherty 2002; Quadros 2003, 109–35; Pochmann et al. 2007). Combined with
the erosion of social-economic conditions, the shortfall between expectation and
reality serves only to exacerbate the conditions of uncertainty, disorientation, anxiety,
and distress identified by the likes of Bauman, Beck, Bourdieu, and Giddens. As
with the systemic marginalization suffered by the rural poor, the systemic insecurity
experienced by growing sections of Brazil’s urban middle classes discourages
change for the better being expected of current social structures. As such, change for
the better will come from beyond the prevailing system.
Strategic Indifference
Second, whilst it cannot be said that the majority of daimistas experience the same
strategic impotence as those for whom millenarianism has traditionally been a
response, it may be argued that, for some at least, there exists a kind of strategic
indifference to established representative structures and processes of collective
agitation. The cause (or admixture of causes) of such indifference will clearly differ
from person to person. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, for example, maintain that
urban-industrial processes of individualization are responsible for the progressive
‘subpoliticization’ of civil society and a subjectivity of ‘political privatism’ which
manifest themselves in a growing disregard for political processes of representation
and collective mechanisms of agitation (2002, 27, 38). Along the same lines, Castells
blames the contemporary indifference to collective processes of representation and
Religious Identity and Millenarian Belief in Santo Daime 189
action upon modernity’s ‘dissolution of shared identities’ and the resultant loss ‘of
society as a meaningful social system’ (Castells 1997, 355). Arguing that ‘ours are
times of disengagement’, Bauman holds the ‘indeterminacy’ of late-modern life to
have engendered a kind of ‘indifference’ resulting in ‘an incapacity to make plans
and act on them’ (2001, 127). In less general terms, strategic indifference may also be
rooted for some Brazilians in a lack of habit born of the paucity of proper mechanisms
for political representation and civil agitation which lasted from the military coup
of 1964 until re-democratization in the early 1980s. Whatever the particular cocktail
of causation, however, the contemporary context of urban-industrial Brazil is seen
to be characterized by ‘democratic deficit’ and ‘associative alienation’ embodying
both a ‘distrust of’ and ‘disenchantment with’ existing structures of representation
and mechanisms of collective expression (Baquero 2001, 98–104, and 2003,
83–108; Ferreira 1999). Reflecting a lack of subjective investment in prevailing
societal institutions, the implications of strategic indifference are that those desirous
of social change must look for it through means other than established processes of
political representation and civil agitation.
Practical-Symbolic Crisis
Reflexive Strategies
Following this line of enquiry, the appearance of traditional millenarian motifs within
daimista narratives might, for example, be regarded as a reflexive strategy employed
to underwrite the utility value of organizational repertoires. By employing millenarian
discourse to situate the world in the midst of a truly momentous transitional phase,
it could be argued, daimista discourse reinforces its pragmatic worth by offering
itself as a form of practical knowledge well-placed to aid individuals in meeting the
very particular demands provoked by the calamitous times through which we are
passing. The knowledge furnished by Santo Daime, it is claimed, allows individuals
to understand the significance of current calamities and disasters by placing them
in their appropriate cosmological context. At the same time, the practical repertoire
afforded by Santo Daime is said to equip practitioners with a range of techniques
which will enable members to endure successfully the trials and tribulations
associated with the birth of the new era.
In the same vein, the reflexive character of daimista appropriations of traditional
millenarian themes might further be underlined by regarding the espousal of
millenarian motifs as part of a broader strategy to differentiate the Santo Daime
religion from other occupants of the increasingly crowded religious landscape of
Religious Identity and Millenarian Belief in Santo Daime 191
urban-industrial Brazil. In view of the fierce competition for what remains a relatively
small constituency of sympathetic urban professionals, religious production undergoes
a degree of ‘standardization’ as organizational repertoires are progressively tailored
to the same, narrow band of potential members (Berger 1967, 147). In order to stand
out from the crowd, and thereby mitigate the effects of repertorial standardization,
religions such as Santo Daime must find ways of differentiating themselves from
others in their field. Berger calls this process ‘marginal differentiation’ as any
group employing it must be careful not to differentiate themselves so much as to
place themselves outside of the most profitable (and thereby standardized) band
of organizational repertoires (1967, 147). Certainly, the daimista community is no
stranger to the dynamics of standardization and marginal differentiation and has self-
consciously employed its environmental and indigenous credentials to best exploit
these dynamics. Along the same lines, then, the appearance of traditional millenarian
themes within the narrative repertoires of urban middle-class daimista communities
might be viewed as another strategic attempt to marginally differentiate the Santo
Daime religion from its nearest competitors.
Self-Valorization
Instrumental Religiosity
Conclusion
Bibliography