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The Importance of Religious
Displays for Belief Acquisition and
Secularization
Jonathan A. Lanman
Version of record first published: 13 Jan 2012.
To cite this article: Jonathan A. Lanman (2012): The Importance of Religious Displays for Belief
Acquisition and Secularization, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 27:1, 49-65
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Journal of Contemporary Religion,
Vol. 27, No. 1, January 2012, 49–65
The Importance of Religious Displays for Belief
Acquisition and Secularization
JONATHAN A. LANMAN
ABSTRACT Both the sociology and the cognitive science of religion seek to explain the
acquisition of religious beliefs. In this article, I offer an account of the acquisition and
distribution of religious beliefs using the findings of both fields. In the process, I seek to
illustrate the potential of interdisciplinary dialogue for improving our understanding of
religion and its absence. More specifically, I present a prima facie case—based on
existing work in the social and cognitive sciences, exploratory online surveys, and
participant observation—that witnessing actions attesting to religious claims is one of
the most crucial variables determining whether or not an individual will explicitly believe
such claims. Further, I argue that the connection between action and belief can help
produce an improved account of secularization and non-theism, defined here as the lack
of explicit belief in the existence of non-physical agents.
Introduction
There had never been a time when John had not sat watching the saints rejoice
with terror in his heart, and wonder. Their singing caused him to believe in the
presence of the Lord; indeed, it was no longer a question of belief, because they
made that presence real. . . Something happened to their faces and their voices,
the rhythm of their bodies, and to the air they breathed; it was as though
wherever they might be became the upper room, and the Holy Ghost were
riding on the air. (Baldwin 14–15)
Both the cognitive science and the sociology of religion address the acquisition of
explicit religious beliefs. Cognitive scholars of religion such as Pascal Boyer,
Justin Barrett (Why), Scott Atran (In Gods), and Jesse Bering (God) have focused
on the role of pan-human cognitive pre-dispositions in making explicit beliefs
in non-physical agents compelling. Sociologists of religion such as Pippa Norris
and Ronald Inglehart, Darren Sherkat, Steve Bruce, and Phil Zuckerman (Society),
by contrast, have focused on the impact of environmental variables on religious
affiliations and beliefs and offered arguments concerning why religious beliefs
have declined in particular environments.
Below, I will outline a theory of the acquisition and distribution of religious
beliefs based on the theories and findings of both these fields as well as my own
anthropological research. In the process, I hope to illustrate the potential
of interdisciplinary dialogue for improving our understanding of religion and
its absence. The cognitive science of religion can be enriched by examining
how different environments affect pan-human cognitive mechanisms in the
ISSN 1353-7903 print/ISSN 1469-9419 online/12/010049–17 ß 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2012.642726
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production of religious beliefs and the sociology of religion can be enriched by
critically examining the psychological assumptions underlying theories of
religion and secularization.
More specifically, I will present a prima facie case—based on existing work in
the social and cognitive sciences, exploratory online surveys, and participant
observation—that witnessing actions attesting to religious claims is one of the
most crucial variables determining whether an individual will explicitly believe
such claims. Further, I will argue that the connection between action and belief
can help produce a psychologically and ethnographically responsible account of
secularization and non-theism, defined here as the lack of explicit belief in the
existence of non-physical agents. I argue that this evidence provides strong initial
support for my hypothesis and justifies further research.
Cognition, Environment, and the Acquisition of ‘Religion’
My hypothesis concerns the question how human beings acquire what have
traditionally been called ‘religious beliefs’ and can, I argue, help us understand
the presence and distribution of non-theism in the world. Given critiques of both
‘religion’ (Smith; Asad) and ‘belief’ (Needham; Pouillon; Ruel) as useful
categories about which to theorize,1
however, I will state upfront that I am
specifically concerned with explicit beliefs in the existence of non-physical
agents.2
While I recognize the legitimacy of numerous other phenomena that
might be relevant in the acquisition of ‘religion’ and that beliefs are not
central to identity in most religious traditions and while I am not attempting to
reduce religion to non-physical agent beliefs, my focus remains. Whatever the
linguistic and ideational histories of our terminologies, the empirical pattern of
non-physical agent belief is real and deserves an explanation.
According to the biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins, children acquire
religious beliefs from their parents through the combined influence of
indoctrination and an evolved tendency to believe the statements of authority
figures (Dawkins 174–6). Children are not born believers, only born gullible.
Conversely, numerous philosophers and theologians, such as St. Paul and John
Calvin, have claimed that human beings possess an innate belief in the existence
of God.
Recent cognitive approaches have partially supported each of these views
and produced more nuanced accounts of the bases of non-physical agent
beliefs. Cognitive psychologist Jesse Bering, for instance, offers a theory
reminiscent of Calvin’s Sensus Divinitatis by arguing that we all possess an
innate, though implicit, belief in the existence of a social contract between the
self and some vague non-physical agency, such that misfortune is intuitively
viewed as punishment and good fortune as a reward or sign of favour (‘‘Folk
Psychology’’; ‘‘Cognitive Psychology’’). This intuitive belief makes explicit
discourse about non-physical agents believable. Pascal Boyer, Justin Barrett,
and others, however, argue that human beings do not automatically produce
intuitive beliefs in the existence of non-physical agents. Rather, they naturally
develop a set of intuitive ontologies early in life that influence what concepts they
find easy to learn and remember (Boyer and Ramble) as well as a hyper-sensitive
agency detection device (Guthrie; Barrett, Why Would 31–44) and a tendency to
50 J. A. Lanman
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see purpose in the natural world (Kelemen; Barrett, Why Would 84–5). All
these individual intuitions together, through what Boyer calls ‘‘aggregate
relevance’’, work to make explicit discourse about non-physical agents
believable (298–9).
The mechanisms identified by cognitive scientists of religion may well be
working to make explicit religious discourse memorable and believable, but
they are not sufficient to produce explicit beliefs in non-physical agents; if they
were, we would all be explicit believers (Gervais and Henrich). It should be noted
that cognitive scientists of religion are not arguing that these mechanisms
automatically produce explicit religious beliefs in all individual minds.
Consequently, the existence of non-theists is not in and of itself a significant
problem for these accounts (Geertz and Marku´sson; Barrett ‘‘Relative’’).
However, if these universal cognitive mechanisms were the primary factors
responsible for explicit religious beliefs, we should see a relatively even
dispersal of theism and non-theism around the world. This is not, however,
what we find.
What we find are particular nations, such as Sweden and Denmark, with high
proportions of non-theists and other nations, such as the United States and India,
with very low proportions of non-theists (Zuckerman, ‘‘Atheism’’ 56–7; Norris
and Inglehart; Gill and Lundsgaarde). These data imply that environmental
variables are quite important in the production of explicit religious beliefs. One
of the most important environmental variables emerging from this work is
‘existential security’—the degree to which individuals feel that their survival
and well-being can be taken for granted.3
The more existentially secure an
environment is, the less likely individuals within it will acquire religious beliefs.
Among cognitive scientists of religion, Barrett stands out in his recognition
that some environments, such as urban environments, may inhibit explicit
religious beliefs (Why 115–18). While this hypothesis has the advantage of tying
environmental variables to particular cognitive mechanisms, such as hypersensitive
agency detection devices, urbanization appears to be less important
than welfare spending and existential security in explaining cross-national
differences in religiosity (Gill and Lundsgaarde).
An opportunity exists then to connect the work in the cognitive science of
religion, which demonstrates the importance of universal cognitive
mechanisms in making particular types of explicit beliefs compelling, with the
work in the sociology of religion, which demonstrates the importance of
existential security. Below, I outline a hypothesis which connects the two fields
of study in order better to account for the presence and absence of explicit beliefs
in non-physical agents. If correct, my account would help explain why particular
nations, such as Denmark and Sweden,4
have such low levels of theism, while
other nations, such as the United States, have such high levels of theism, and it
would do so in a way consistent with the findings of the cognitive sciences.
Credibility Enhancing Displays (CREDS)
I hypothesize that one of the most important variables determining whether
an individual explicitly believes in non-physical agents is his/her degree of
exposure to religious action, that is behavior that indexically signals to others
Religious Displays, Belief Acquisition & Secularization 51
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that one actually believes in non-physical agents. Following Durkheim’s theory
on the effect of collective ritual performance on belief (220), anthropologists
William Irons (‘‘Religion’’) as well as Richard Sosis and Candice Alcorta
and religion scholar Joseph Bulbulia (‘‘Religious Costs’’) have argued that
hard-to-fake expressions of religious commitment signal commitment to
particular groups and a disposition to cooperate with in-group members. Such
expressions of commitment include not only ritual participation and ascetic
practice, but also, in a manner similar to signalling romantic commitment,
facial expressions and vocal inflections (Irons, ‘‘Why’’; Bulbulia, ‘‘Free Love’’;
Schloss).
While these scholars focus on the effects that such displays have on
cooperation, they have been less concerned with their effects on the acquisition
of beliefs. Recently, however, evolutionary anthropologist Joseph Henrich has
formulated a version of signalling theory which focuses specifically on the
effects of such actions, which he labels ‘‘credibility-enhancing displays’’ or
‘‘CREDs’’, on the beliefs of observers. Contra Dawkins, Henrich presents
evidence from both developmental and social psychology suggesting that
human beings are not simply prepared to believe what authority figures
tell them about the world and non-physical agents, but instead possess a bias
towards believing the propositions of others to the extent that they ‘walk the
walk’ and not just ‘talk the talk’ in relation to those propositions.
Research in developmental psychology indicates that children will not eat
substances offered to them by strangers until those strangers eat the food
themselves (Harper and Sanders) and that they more readily believe in
intangible but behaviorally salient entities such as germs, which produce the
CRED of hand washing, than similarly intangible but less behaviorally salient
concepts, such as the Tooth Fairy (Harris; Harris and Koenig; Harris et al.).
Further, evidence from social psychology demonstrates that adults are more
convinced by an argument if the person offering it stands to lose something if
the argument is accepted (Walster, Aronson and Abrahams).5
In this case, the
CRED is stating an opinion that goes against one’s own self-interest, as it is
difficult to explain why an individual would argue against his/her own
interests unless s/he is committed to the opinion professed.
As individuals mature, they receive a degree of exposure to CREDs concerning
people’s commitment to concepts of non-physical agents. Do parents,6
religious
leaders, members of religious groups, and others in the individual’s environment
‘walk the walk’ by sacrificing time and resources? Do they abide by the religion’s
rules? Do they express commitment to their beliefs through facial and vocal
expressions? Or do they believe but not belong, believe but not practise? The
implication of work on signalling and CREDs is that individuals who are exposed
to fewer CREDs of non-physical agent beliefs will be less inclined to adopt those
beliefs.
The Relevance of CREDs in Explaining Non-theism
There exists a small but growing body of evidence which suggests that whether
an individual comes to explicitly believe in the existence of non-physical agents
depends on the extent to which that individual is exposed to relevant CREDs.
52 J. A. Lanman
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Rather than mere professions of belief and ‘indoctrination’, evidence indicates
that actions are needed to encourage explicit beliefs in the existence of nonphysical
agents.
In his study of adolescent members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the
United States, Roger Dudley (‘‘Alienation’’) found that alienation from religion
was positively correlated with perceived insincerity and lack of compliance with
church standards among religious teachers. In his longitudinal study (‘‘Youth’’),
Dudley sent surveys to the same individuals to investigate how the answers they
gave as teenagers might predict their apostasy as adults. He found that the best
predictors of who would remain a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church
(besides a direct question of whether or not they planned to become apostates)
were the church attendance of the individual’s mother and father and the
frequency of their worshipping together as a family.
Social psychologist Bruce Hunsberger (‘‘Reexamination’’, ‘‘Apostasy’’)
examined a university student sample of various denominations in order to
investigate the differences between apostates and religious believers. He
found strong differences in the degree to which religious beliefs and behaviors
were emphasized in their homes and that the degree of emphasis was one of
the best predictors of apostasy. This finding suggests that such CREDs as
frequent church attendance and following religious rules drive retention and
apostasy.
The work of Dudley and Hunsberger is suggestive, but it focuses on
disaffiliation from a particular religious tradition, not on belief in non-physical
agents. Hunsberger’s later work, which he carried out with his colleague Robert
Altemeyer, partially addresses this issue by surveying self-identified atheists,
who scored quite low on measures of religious emphasis.
In 2008, in an attempt to develop a better descriptive and explanatory account
of ‘atheism’ in the West, I engaged in multi-sited, multi-method anthropological
research. I used participant observation with atheist, humanist, and rationalist
groups in the US, the UK, and Denmark (countries which lie on a continuum
in terms of their proportional populations of non-theists) and with the largest
discussion groups for atheists, agnostics, and non-theists on the social
networking sites Facebook and MySpace, in addition to following the most
visited and subscribed atheist web sites, including richardawkins.net,
friendlyatheist.com, and scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/. I also conducted an
online survey for both theists and non-theists, for which I recruited over
2,000 participants from both the face-to-face and online groups of which I was
a member and from several additional online forums. Further, I conducted
structured interviews with 41 non-theists, using the survey questions. Given
that my survey involved a self-selected sample and given that I employed
convenience and snowball sampling for my interviews, as most anthropologists
do, my results may not accurately reflect non-theists in general. However,
my findings and experiences provide supporting evidence for the claim
that exposure to CREDs for non-physical agent beliefs is a crucial factor in
determining whether an individual will acquire such explicit beliefs.
Perhaps the strongest evidence I found was the significant and substantial
difference between theists and non-theists in the amount of exposure to CREDs
of non-physical agent beliefs they had witnessed while they were growing up.
In the online survey, I created a specific measure for exposure to CREDs of belief
Religious Displays, Belief Acquisition & Secularization 53
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in non-physical agents (such as God, gods, and supernatural forces). I asked both
non-theists and theists a set of questions regarding such actions on the part of
their parents or guardians and another set of questions regarding such actions on
the part of leaders and members of any religious congregations, groups or camps
in which they had participated.7
The difference between non-theists and theists
on CRED exposure was both significant and substantial (non-theist mean
score ¼ 10.43, SD ¼ 11.56; theist mean score ¼ 20.21, SD ¼ 12.95, t ¼ À4.36,
df ¼ 672, p 5 .001). This significant difference was observed even after limiting
the analysis to individuals whose parents believed in God, gods or some
supernatural agency (non-theist M ¼ 11.80, SD ¼ 11.62; theist M ¼ 21.00,
SD ¼ 12.57, t ¼ À4.00, df ¼ 596, p 5 .001), which suggests that children of
believing parents who witness higher levels of CREDs are more likely to
acquire explicit beliefs in supernatural agents. While this finding cannot on its
own establish causality and relies on non-representative samples of theists and
non-theists, it provides preliminary support for the claim that observing CREDs
is of critical importance in the acquisition of explicit beliefs in non-physical
agents.
In addition to the quantitative data, the importance of CREDs manifested itself
frequently in the discourse of both non-theists and theists. When asked about
the religious beliefs of their parents, many non-theists described not only their
parents’ beliefs, but also the extent to which these beliefs were evident in
their actions. For these non-theists, a discrepancy between the stated beliefs
and actions of their parents was relevant enough to be mentioned, despite the
question not asking for that information.
A 21-year-old female atheist from Washington, for instance, responded:
My mother has said she is a Christian and doesn’t seem to like my Atheism,
but to my knowledge, she doesn’t pray, and she doesn’t go to any kind of
services or talk about her religion. It’s hard for me to believe that she actually
believes it, but she has no reason to deny it, as I suspect she’s the only Christian
in my immediate family.
Similarly, a 37-year-old male humanist from Denmark wrote that his parents
were ‘‘everyday, non-practicing Lutherans’’, a 20-year-old male atheist from
Australia said that his parents were ‘‘non-practicing Christians, in that they
believe in a Christian god but do not attend church or having [sic] any
involvement with any particular denomination’’, and a 27-year-old female
atheist from North Carolina described her mother as a ‘‘Christmas and Easter
Christian’’.
Moreover, many non-theists name hypocrisy as an important element in their
rejection of religion. Here, it is not merely a matter of a lack of exposure to
CREDs, but a noticeable disconnection between word and deed that affected
these future non-theists and in several cases instigated their more critical
appraisal of religious beliefs.
In response to the question of how he came to be a non-theist, a 54-year-old
British man replied: ‘‘A build-up of dissatisfaction with religious hypocrisy,
followed by a considered decision of non-belief once the scientific alternative
was available to me.’’ Similarly, a 44-year-old atheist from New York
responded that she was ‘‘brought up a religious Jew and found the leaders
to be hypocritical in every way, which led to thinking about religion and how
54 J. A. Lanman
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it is organized and why it is bullshit’’. A 31-year-old male secular Humanist from
Germany quipped, ‘‘I’ve always been allergic to hypocrisy’’, while a 34-year-old
male non-theist from the UK stated, ‘‘The hypocrisy of theists when my mother
died caused me to question the founding assumptions of my belief, whereupon
I realized that they were flawed.’’
Finally, the experiences of some theists, and my own experiences in the field,
convinced me of the power of CREDs. While anecdotal evidence is of limited
value in rigorous social science, field experiences are an important foundation
of anthropological insight. Consequently, while the following cannot constitute
conclusive evidence for the CREDs hypothesis, it can provide an insider
perspective of the power of CREDs on our beliefs and experiences.
Suzanne, a 42-year-old Christian from Missouri, attended a Pentecostal church
as a child. When asked whether she had ever doubted the existence of God, she
responded that, if she had such doubts, they would be eliminated during
every Sunday service when she saw her family and many others looking up
with expressions of pain and joy, weeping and calling out ‘Hallelujah’ and
‘Thank you, Jesus’.
While my research mainly involved attending atheist and humanist meetings
and reading atheist and humanist publications, I also sought out groups of theists
to ask questions, for comparison and to investigate their opinions of atheists.
This led me to attend a conservative Bible study group in the St. Louis
metro-east, where I had my own experience of the power of CREDs.
At this women’s Bible study, I heard numerous stories from the 20 attendees of
the suffering of others, including a local child with drug-addicted parents and no
permanent home. Discussing the plight of this child in a halting voice, one
woman said how happy she was that she would share the ‘good news’ with
this young girl, to let her know that, in the midst of all of the pain and
uncertainty she was going through, Jesus loved and cared about her.
I could see in her face and in those around me a sincere conviction that the best
way to help this child was to ‘bring her to Jesus’; the facial expressions, the
cracking voices, and the squeezed hands as we gathered in a circle to pray for
the young girl all worked to convince me of the participants’ sincerity. I was then
amazed to find that in the midst of the groups’ prayer, standing in a circle,
holding hands, praying for a better life for this young girl—and several
months before I read Henrich’s article on credibility enhancing displays—I
suddenly believed in the existence of God. For a few short minutes, I felt the
reality not just of the power of this group of people united in the face of suffering,
but of some non-physical agent who could work in the universe in such a way as
to relieve the girl’s suffering directly. After the prayer circle and study session
had ended, I went outside and the belief faded, leaving me to wonder about the
nature of my beliefs and experiences.
While there are a variety of potential explanations for my momentary explicit
belief in the existence of some non-physical agency, I distinctly noted at the time
how much attention I had paid to the women’s facial and verbal expressions.
If my experience was indeed a product of their CREDs, it suggests that such
displays have the potential to produce immediate notable effects.
Specifically designed experimental studies, as well as more rigorous,
representative surveys, need to be conducted to test this hypothesis. Even in
the absence of such rigorous studies, the case for the importance of CREDs
Religious Displays, Belief Acquisition & Secularization 55
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appears strong, suggesting that without sufficient exposure to the necessary
actions, non-physical agent concepts such as gods, ghosts, and ancestors are no
more believable than Mickey Mouse or Superman.
Of course, exposure to CREDs of non-physical agent beliefs is not the
only factor to consider in explaining non-theism. A substantial minority of
non-theists, throughout history and today, have rejected religious beliefs and
practices as a result of moral judgement, finding some or even all religious
beliefs to be immoral and harmful to society (Taylor; Turner). The CREDs
hypothesis is not meant to discredit this account but to supplement it, as it
cannot be explained why the United States remains so theistic, while
Scandinavia has become so non-theistic, by referring to the moral and social
rejection of religion. Most Danes and Swedes, for instance, do not wish to be
identified as ‘atheists’ and do not have a moral objection to religion (Zuckerman,
Society).
Implications for Secularization
I hope to have demonstrated the benefits that an examination of the sociology
of religion can bring to the cognitive study of religion. Considering the effects of
particular types of stimuli (CREDs concerning non-physical agents) on universal
features of our cognitive systems can improve the ability of cognitive accounts
of religion to account for non-theism. Below, I hope to demonstrate the benefits
that an examination of the cognitive sciences can bring to the sociology of
religion.
I will offer a theory of religion and secularization, which is based on the
connections between CREDs and belief. This theory—which I call the Threat
and Action theory of religion—holds that the connections documented by
sociologists between existential security and the diminishment of religion are
not the result of a lessening need for the comforts of religion, as Norris and
Inglehart hold, but rather the result of the effects that ‘Threats’ have on
‘Actions’ and the effects that ‘Actions’ have on beliefs.
Many Western countries have seen the proportion of their populations
professing religious beliefs and/or attending religious services sharply decline
since the Second World War (Bruce; Norris and Inglehart). Further, according to
Norris and Inglehart (62–3) and Gill and Lundsgaarde, a clear pattern emerges
which helps to explain this trend: ‘existential security’. The freer a nation is from
threats, such as constant warfare, rampant disease, unemployment, infant
mortality, and economic inequality (and the more resources a nation puts into
social welfare policy), the lower the proportion of theists and religious
participants that a nation will have. All the individual methodologies used can
be questioned, but the overall picture is quite stable: existential security accounts
for the variance in degree of non-theism in a country above and beyond the
influence of education, urbanization, and religious plurality.
Unfortunately, while this account of secularization makes a compelling
sociological case for the particular environmental conditions responsible for
producing widespread non-theism, it does not make a similarly compelling
psychological case as to why this should so. Instead, Norris and Inglehart
employ a familiar and problematic psychological theory of religious belief: the
56 J. A. Lanman
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‘Comfort’ theory. According to this theory, people acquire and maintain religious
beliefs because these beliefs alleviate anxiety and suffering and assure those
holding them that ‘‘everything will turn out well, in this world or the next’’
(19). People supposedly find these comforting religious ideas more convincing
when placed in environments where there are more social, economic, and
personal threats. Conversely, when modernity and strong social welfare states
provide more comfort and security, people have less need for the comforts of
religion.
The problems with the ‘Comfort’ theory are both anthropological and
psychological. Anthropologically, non-physical agent beliefs in places we might
view as most in need of comfort, such as sub-Saharan Africa and Melanesia, are
far from comforting. Instead of benevolent deities assuring people that
‘everything will work out’ we find capricious and vengeful ancestor and forest
spirits as well as the constant threat of witchcraft (Boyer 19–21; Keesing;
Middleton). Surely these entities are not believed in because they provide
comfort and assurance. Further, we find the most comforting religious
beliefs in the affluent West, where many Christian denominations have set
aside notions of hell fire and supernatural punishment and where New Age
discourses of personal importance, empowerment, and universal unity
proliferate (Heelas). There is thus no positive correlation between insecurity
and comforting religious beliefs.
Psychologically, while there is evidence for ‘motivated reasoning’,8
this
evidence is limited to self-evaluations, such as attractiveness and ability, and to
seeking and noticing information in line with already held views (Kunda; Miller;
Bar-Hillel and Budescu). The evidence does not in any way suggest that we
believe in the existence of an entity simply because we would find it
comforting if it existed. Consequently, while Norris and Inglehart, together
with others who subscribe to the ‘Comfort’ theory of religion, may be correct
in arguing that many religious beliefs provide comfort to those holding them,
they are unjustified in claiming that comfort constitutes an explanation of why
those beliefs are acquired in the first place or why the number of people holding
such beliefs declines over time, but not immediately, when threats are reduced.
Given the inadequacies of the ‘Comfort’ theory in explaining the link between
existential security and non-theism, I propose the ‘Threat and Action’ theory of
religion as an alternative. This theory holds that threats increase religious actions
and that these actions, as CREDs, instill religious beliefs in each new generation.
Conversely, when threats are reduced, so, too, are religious actions and,
subsequently, levels of belief in subsequent generations.
Threatening stimuli result in more religious action in a variety of ways:
1) increased commitment to in-group ideologies (including religions), 2)
increased motivation for extrinsic religious participation, and 3) increased
‘superstitious’ behavior. I shall explain each further in turn.
Increased Commitment
Many scholars have noted that the importance people attach to in-group
identities and the extent to which they commit to them is positively correlated
with the degree of perceived threat to those identities, such as the presence of
other ethnic groups and competition with them over resources (Barth; Comaroff;
Religious Displays, Belief Acquisition & Secularization 57
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Wallerstein; Eriksen; Eriksen, Bal and Salemink). These claims are supported by
quantitative studies in political, social, and evolutionary psychology, where
threats to social identity, personal safety, and sense of control have been
demonstrated to increase commitment to in-group ideologies.
For instance, Jeff Greenberg et al. have demonstrated that considering one’s
death increases commitment to one’s in-groups, including religious in-groups.
Evolutionary anthropologists Carlos Navarrete and Daniel Fessler have argued
that these effects are the result of an evolved cognitive system which is more
strongly committed to coalitions in the face of threats, in order to receive
coalitionist support. Navarrete and Fessler support their argument with a
series of studies in the United States and in Costa Rica, which show that it is
not only thoughts of death that produce these effects, but thoughts of a variety of
threats, including theft and social isolation (Navarrete et al.).9
Further, political
scientist Karen Stenner’s work on authoritarianism and threat demonstrates, in
line with the claims made by Thomas Eriksen and others, that it is not only
threats to an individual that can cause this effect, but also ‘normative’ threats
to the integrity and future prospects of the group itself.
The implication of this body of evidence is that the reduction of personal,
economic, and normative threats results in the decline of commitment to
in-group ideologies, such as nationalism, ethnic identities, and religions.
Naturally, when people are less committed to their beliefs, this decline
manifests itself in fewer displays of such commitment, such as less frequent
attendance of religious services, not following rules as closely, and mentioning
religious ideas less frequently in conversation.
Increased Extrinsic Participation
Threatening stimuli can also lead people to participate in religious groups and
rituals to obtain social insurance. While it is difficult to discern the personal
motivations of individuals joining and participating in religious groups,
research by Daniel Chen on the financial crisis in Indonesia in the late 1990s
suggests that extrinsic motivations are frequently at work. Chen shows that
individuals who were more strongly affected by economic scarcity were much
more likely to join the local Islamic community, attend more communal Koran
meetings, and send their children to more expensive Islamic schools. Crucially,
Chen shows that this difference in religious action did not occur in communities
where low-cost credit was available, which strongly suggests that many people
were motivated to perform the CREDs of affiliation, participation, and sacrifice
in order to obtain socio-economic benefit.
Increased ‘Superstition’
Evidence from both anthropology and psychology indicates that individuals are
more likely to perform ‘superstitious’ behaviors, some of which could be
classified as religious by virtue of their use of religious artefacts or explicit
basis in beliefs in non-physical agents, in response to threatening stimuli.
Malinowski famously linked superstitious ritual to conditions of uncertainty
and potential threat, when he reported that fishing in peaceful and plentiful
lagoons in the Trobriand Islands required little or no ritual performance,
58 J. A. Lanman
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whereas fishing in the dangerous and inconsistent ocean did. This work has been
extended by several researchers who examined the role of superstition in baseball
(Gmelch; Burger and Lynn), leading to the formulation of the ‘uncertainty
hypothesis’, which holds that the more people attribute outcomes to
uncontrollable forces, the more likely they are to turn to superstitious actions
in an effort to gain control and obtain a desirable outcome (Burger and
Lynn 71). Further, in focusing specifically on the role of threat and danger in
generating superstitious responses, anthropologist Richard Sosis (‘‘Psalms’’) has
provided evidence that the threats engendered by the Second Palestinian Intifada
caused both religious and secular Israeli women in Tzfat to increase their
frequency of psalm recitation.10
All these actions count as CREDs for the
supernatural ideas underlying them and, in the cases of prayer and psalm
recitation, for some non-physical agency.11
The ‘Threat and Action’ theory of religion—according to which threats increase
commitment to in-group ideologies (including religions), extrinsic religious
participation, and superstitious behavior and all of the resulting CREDs make
religious discourse convincing for subsequent generations—can better account
for the data which link existential security and religiosity than the ‘Comfort’
theory. Below I provide evidence of its utility in explaining the relationship
between threat, action, and belief in different parts of the world, including
Scandinavia and the US.
Over the course of the twentieth century, Denmark and Sweden instituted and
supported extensive social welfare policies that greatly reduced personal and
economic threats. Moreover, Danes and Swedes were already living in nations
with extraordinarily low levels of normative threat, due to their high degree of
ethnic and religious homogeneity (Jespersen 213; Kent 238). With all these threats
diminished, commitment to religious beliefs and practices, nationalism, and other
ideologies diminished, too.12
Further, Scandinavians have had little need to
participate in religious groups for the purpose of socio-economic insurance.
When I asked what they would do in the event of losing all their money
and their jobs, most Scandinavians dismissed the concern, saying they were
not worried and that the government would provide.
Without sufficiently high levels of religious commitment and without extrinsic
reasons for participation, the number of credibility-enhancing actions performed
by Scandinavians declined in the second half of the twentieth century. Numerous
individuals who may have still held religious beliefs no longer had the
commitment to keep up their practices. Consequently, many became ‘everyday,
non-practising Lutherans’. The children of these non-practising Lutherans were,
consequently, born into a world where religious beliefs were present but not
embodied. This resulted in the percentage of theists dropping, between 1947
and 2001, from 80% to 46% in Sweden and from 80% to 62% in Denmark
(Norris and Inglehart 90).
By contrast, nearly the entire history of the United States, including the period
1947–2001, has been characterized by economic inequality, a lack of strong social
welfare policy, and extensive normative threat, as immigrants from numerous
nations, forced and unforced, have sought to carve out secure lives for
themselves, whether on the dangerous frontier or in multi-ethnic, highly
unequal, and often equally dangerous cities. Consequently, ideological
commitment—whether to political philosophy, ethnicity or the White Protestant
Religious Displays, Belief Acquisition & Secularization 59
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identity which became synonymous with ‘American’ identity early in the nation’s
history (Albanese)—has consistently remained high. Further, numerous
individuals, throughout history and today, have had to rely on religious
participation or religious charity organizations for socio-economic support in
difficult times.
With the continued high level of commitment to religious and nationalist
ideologies and with continued extrinsic reason for participating in religious
groups for the purpose of socio-economic insurance, the number of credibilityenhancing
actions performed by Americans has remained high. That is, the lack
of a strong social welfare policy and the high level of ethnic and religious
diversity in the United States have ensured that religious Americans continue
to ‘walk the walk’ of their beliefs. Consequently, the proportion of the American
population holding beliefs in non-physical agency has remained high, as shown
in a variety of polls and surveys. Over 90% of Americans remained theists in the
period 1947–2001 (Norris and Inglehart 90).
This explanation of the differences between the US and Scandinavia fits both
the socio-historical data provided by Norris and Inglehart and our understanding
of psychology. Findings from a variety of sub-disciplines in psychology
document that religion can and sometimes does provide comfort, but they do
not demonstrate that the need for comfort causes religious belief. Rather, these
findings support the idea that threatening stimuli increase a variety of religious
actions and the idea that religious actions make religious concepts more
believable to others.
Conclusion
Interdisciplinarity is now fashionable in the academy and with good reason,
as the world is not neatly divided up into anthropological, psychological, and
biological domains. Interdisciplinarity, however, should not be an end in itself but
a means to increased understanding of particular phenomena and the enrichment
of each discipline.
In this article, I have attempted to demonstrate the potential benefits of
interdisciplinary research of religion and non-theism. I have argued not only
that the cognitive study of religion can be enriched by considering the effects
of particular environments on universal cognitive mechanisms, but also that the
sociological study of religion can be enriched by critically examining the
psychological assumptions it employs in connecting particular environments to
patterns of belief and practice. Specifically, I have presented a prima facie
theoretical and empirical case for the importance of CREDs in the acquisition
and international distribution of non-physical agent beliefs. While this account
requires further research in several respects, I hope to have made a case for such
research and for the potential of interdisciplinary investigation to improve our
understanding of religion and its absence.
Jonathan Lanman is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Social Anthropology at the
University of Oxford and a Visiting Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Psychology at the
University in British Columbia, after having taught as a Departmental Lecturer in Social
60 J. A. Lanman
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Anthropology (Oxford) and a College Lecturer (Keble) from 2009–2011. He is affiliated
with Oxford’s Centre for Anthropology and Mind and is interested in applying the
theories and tools of social and cognitive anthropology to issues in the study of
religion, atheism, morality, and intergroup relations. CORRESPONDENCE: Centre
for Anthropology and Mind, University of Oxford, ISCA, 51–53 Banbury Road,
Oxford OX2 6PE, UK.
NOTES
1. See Jonathan Lanman for a defence of the scientific legitimacy of the concept of belief.
2. Both ‘religion’ and ‘supernatural’ have been criticized as betraying a strong Western bias. Pascal
Boyer has introduced the term ‘non-physical agent’ to be more precise about the type of agency
under discussion and potentially escape the terminological criticism (Boyer and Bergstrom).
Such agents include gods, ancestor spirits, ghosts, and the variety of other non-physical agents
populating the religious traditions of the world.
3. Norris and Inglehart measure existential security according to various scales of societal health,
including the United Nation’s Human Development Index, the GINI coefficient for income
inequality, per capita GDP, adult illiteracy rate, AIDS cases per 100,000 people, infant mortality
and child mortality rates, doctors per 100,000 people, and life expectancy at birth (62).
4. According to available data, the Scandinavian nations are the least religious nations on earth
(Zuckerman, ‘‘Atheism’’, Society).
5. In the well-known study by Walster, Aronson and Abrahams, researchers found that, after
exposing participants to testimonies by felons and prosecutors about whether the courts
should (or should not) have more or less power to punish criminals, felons who argued that
courts should have more power were more effective in persuading participants of their point of
view than either felons who argued that the courts should have less power or prosecutors who
argued that courts should have more power.
6. Numerous studies in the sociology of religion in the West point to the importance of parental
socialization for religious belief and affiliation (Sherkat; Ozorak; Francis and Gibson) contra
Judith Harris, who argues that peers have much more influence on an individual’s thought
and behavior. It is an open and interesting question whether the special importance of parents
discussed by sociologists of religion would hold in hunter-gatherer societies, where children
spend less time in the exclusive company of their immediate genetic kin.
7. Questions concerning parents or guardians included, among others: How frequently did your
parent(s) attend religious services? Did your parent(s) fast or make other sacrifices for religious
reasons? If yes, did they follow through with their fasting/sacrifices? To what extent did your
parent(s) display emotion (e.g. elation, sadness) in response to religious ideas or in religious
services? Questions concerning groups included: Did the leaders of this organization/
congregation/camp make sacrifices such as celibacy, fasting, funding activities with their own
money? To what extent did group members engage in charitable work together? To what extent
did group members show emotion (e.g. elation, sadness) in services/meetings? (Readers
interested in having a complete list of the questions and further details about the methodology
may contact the author.)
8. Social psychologist Ziva Kunda has described motivated reasoning as the process by which
motivation and desire affect reasoning through ‘‘reliance on a biased set of cognitive
processes—that is strategies for accessing, constructing, and evaluating beliefs’’. When
motivation is to arrive at accurate beliefs, these biases are minimized. When motivation is to
defend existing beliefs, cognitive processes are biased to deliver conclusions which are in line
with these beliefs.
9. Different teams of experimental psychologists have come to similar results about the nature of
threat and in-group commitment, whether the threat is conceived of as loss of personal control
(Kay et al.) or an increase in uncertainty (Hogg, ‘‘Subjective’’, ‘‘Self-categorization’’,
‘‘Uncertainty’’; van den Bos; van den Bos, Amejide and van Gorp).
10. Many Israeli women regularly recite Psalms as part of their religious practices, although it is not
mandated by Jewish law. According to Sosis’s interview data, Israeli women view psalm
Religious Displays, Belief Acquisition & Secularization 61
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recitation as one of the most important actions to take in order to improve matzav or ‘situation’
and, specifically, to protect themselves from a terrorist attack (‘‘Pigeons’’).
11. Some of the phenomena classified as ‘superstitious’ and as products of uncertainty mentioned
here, including prayer and psalm recitation, might also be conceived of as ‘attachment’ behaviors.
Lee Kirkpatrick and Peer Granqvist, Mario Mikulincer and Phillip Shaver have argued that
individuals’ relationships with non-physical agents frequently constitute attachment
relationships (Bowlby) and that, when threatened, individuals attempt to become close to the
attachment figures through prayer and ritual.
12. Even commitment to secularism and atheism is relatively weak in Sweden and Denmark in
comparison to the United States and the United Kingdom: while the majority are non-theistic,
very few self-identify as ‘atheist’ or join specifically atheist organizations, seeing membership in
such group as indicating an unattractively strong stance against religious beliefs and values.
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