Defining Religion and Exploring the Psychology of Religion
Can we define what religion is? What are the dimensions of religious commitment? Are science and religion incompatible? What is the nature of religious orientation?
Defining Religion
Defining religion is an inordinately difficult task, complicated by the wide range of religions in the world, their complex histories, and their cultural meanings (Pargament, 1997).
One way to define religion is in terms of its functional nature. For example, psychology of religion scholar Daniel Batson and his colleagues (Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993) stated that religion is what a person does to answer the basic existential questions of life (questions having to do with the nature of human beings’ existence). Such questions include these:
•Why am I here?
•What does life mean in general?
•What does my particular life amount to?
•What happens when I die?
Batson believes that people can answer these questions in many ways. Some answers emphasize institutional religious affiliation (such as being a member of the Catholic or Baptist church); others emphasize unique meanings of religion to the individual. Although Batson’s functional, existential definition is instructive, it is inadequate as a comprehensive definition of religion, because many people are religious for reasons not having to do with existential issues. For example, some individuals grow up being taught a specific religion, such as Catholicism or Islam, and believe in their faiths without ever concerning themselves with existential questions. Thus, if we adopted Batson’s definition of religion, someone like this - who practices Catholicism or Islam without exploring existential questions - would have to be labeled “nonreligious” even though they believe in and practice a major world religion.
According to Finnish researcher Kalevi Tamminen (1991), religiousness also involves a conscious dependency on a deity or God. Tamminen argues that this dependency or commitment is reflected in an individual’s experiences, beliefs, and personality, motivating the individual to engage in a variety of behaviors, such as devotional behavior and moral behavior. This definition encompasses individuals’ thoughts and feelings about their beliefs, as well as the beliefs themselves. However, this definition is also somewhat inadequate because not all religions are theistic (a term that means believing in a God or deity), and some psychologists - especially those of a psychoanalytic persuasion - emphasize the unconscious rather than the conscious bases of human religiousness.
The psychology of religion emphasizes the importance of operationally defining the aspects of religiousness that are being studied (Johnson, Mullins, & Burnham, 1993; Spilka, 1993). Anoperational definition
is a statement of what a construct is in terms of the procedures or methods used to assess it. For example, the construct of intelligence might be operationally defined in terms of scores on an IQ test. Aggression might be operationally defined as the number of times a person yells or hits in a specified period of time. There are many ways to operationally define religiousness, including frequency of church attendance, degree of belief in religiously orthodox doctrinal statements (such as statements about the virgin birth, the resurrection of Jesus, the authority of Muhammad, the literality of the Exodus), degree of intrinsic versus extrinsic religious motivation, and degree of spiritual well-being.
In one recent study, the link between religion and sexuality was confirmed (Fehring & others, 1998). In college students, guilt, prayer, organized religious activity, and religious well-being were associated with fewer sexual encounters.
Are religion and spirituality the same or different? Some psychologists of religion use the terms religion and spirituality interchangeably (Spilka & McIntosh, 1996). More often, however, spirituality and religion are teased apart (Emmons & Paloutzian, in press; Wulff, 1997). Two contrasts are common (Pargament, 1997). In the first, religion is defined as the institutional, the organizational, the ritual, and the ideological, whereas spirituality is defined as the personal, the affective, the experiential, and the thoughtful. This contrast includes the idea that an individual can be spiritual without being religious or religious without being spiritual. A second contrast between religion and spirituality involves reserving the term spiritual for the loftier side of life with spirituality - the search for meaning, for unity, or connectedness, for transcendence, and for the highest level of human potential. The term religion is correspondingly reserved for institutionalized activity and formalized beliefs, things that can be seen as peripheral to spiritual tasks. The trend in defining religion is moving away from a broad conceptualization of the institutional and the individual toward a more narrow definition in terms of the institutional side of life. The trend in defining spirituality is to describe it in terms of individual expression that speaks to a person’s highest level of human functioning (Emmons, 1999). Despite such trends, there is still a great deal of controversy about how to define religion and spirituality. Many psychologists of religion still believe that religion can be expressed both institutionally and individually, and that spirituality is a core dimension of the psychology of religion (Pargament, 1997; Zinnbauer, Pargament, & Scott, 1999).
Dimensions of Religious Commitment
Our exploration of the definition of religion suggests that the concept of religion is multifaceted and multidimensional. The dimensions of religious commitment include religious belief, religious practice, religious feeling, religious knowledge, and religious effects (Glock, 1962).
Religious belief
is the ideological dimension and doctrine of religious commitment - the content of what someone believes. For example, one person might believe that Jesus was the Messiah and rose from the dead, whereas another person might believe that the Messiah has not yet come. These individuals’ theologies differ in doctrinal content.
Religious practice
is the ritualistic dimension of religious commitment - the behaviors someone is expected to perform as part of a particular religion. The religious practice could include singing, chanting, scripture reading, going to confession, or bowing to a stick or a stone. It is important to note that these acts are part of what defines religion rather than merely consequences of it.
Religious feeling
is the experiential dimension of religious commitment, which consists of the emotions, states of consciousness, or sense of well-being, dread, freedom, or guilt that are part of a person’s religiousness. For example, the sense of awe that people might feel when thinking about the supernatural, the sense of purpose that individuals might experience when they believe that their life is directed by God, and the sense of guilt persons might feel when they violate religiously taught moral requirements are all aspects of the experiential dimension of religious feeling.
Religious knowledge
is the intellectual dimension of religious commitment - what a person knows about the belief. Common sense suggests that the belief dimension has two simple categories - those who believe and those who do not - but it might also be conceived as a continuum. Similarly, the knowledge dimension stretches along a continuum of possibilities that range from those who know a great deal about a particular religion to those who know absolutely nothing. Crossing religious belief categories with religious knowledge categories generates some intriguing portrayals. For example, consider the knowledgeable believer and the ignorant believer. Imagine also someone who has “blind faith” - that is, someone who claims strong belief yet has little knowledge about what he or she claims to believe. Such people do exist. And think about someone who is highly knowledgeable about a religion, yet rejects it. These people also exist. Much can be learned by exploring the various combinations that can be achieved by crossing religious belief and religious knowledge.
Religious effects
refer to the consequential dimension of religious commitment - the behaviors a person engages in during everyday life that are due to her or his religious beliefs. Religious prescriptions for everyday morality fit this category. For example, consider a man who experiences a religious conversion and as a consequence alters his behavior from abusing his wife to not abusing her. Consider also that, in repeated Gallup surveys, individuals who attend church or synagogue services on a weekly basis report more than twice as many volunteer hours spent in helping the poor and the sick, compared to individuals who never or infrequently attend services. And in one recent study, a commitment to religion was associated with giving to the poor (Regnerus, Smith, & Sikkink, 1998).
An important final point about religious commitment needs to be made. Religious commitment has both positive and negative aspects (Hill, 1998). It is a consistent negative predictor of drug abuse (Gorsuch, 1995), has consistent positive links with marital adjustment and family stability (Hansen, 1992), and is associated in many ways with how people construct a life that they feel is meaningful (Silberman, in press). However, certain types of religion appear to be related to prejudice and discrimination (Hunsberger, 1995) and to some forms of child abuse (Bottoms & others, 1995). Some experts on the psychology of religion argue that the negative effects of religion occur mainly when a religion is too rigid or is misused, as when it is used to manipulate and control others (Koenig & Larson, 1998). Some clinical psychologists, such as Albert Ellis (1962), argue that excessive religion can produce depression or other mental disorders in some individuals. Others say religion can saddle people with too much guilt. A century ago, William James (1902) distinguished between sick-souled and healthy-minded religion. Today, experts in the psychology of religion continue to believe, like James did a century ago, that religion cannot be given the simple label of good or bad.
The Science-Versus-Religion Problem
It is important to notice that psychology (like any other science) is not necessarily in conflict with religion (Jones, 1994). Some scientists’ conclusions might appear to be in conflict with some specific religious beliefs (as in the evolution-versus-
creation controversy), but such differences are the exception. For the most part, scientists’ views are compatible with, rather than in opposition to, religious teaching. Consider the views of leading neuroscience researcher Candace Pert (1986), who says that she sees constant signs of God’s presence in the beauty of the brain and its order. Contemporary research on the brain and cognition is yielding a portrait of human consciousness that is compatible with spiritual conceptualizations (Hill, 1998; Sperry, 1988).
With regard to psychology and religion, it is not unusual to hear someone say, “Either God did this, or it was psychological, but it was not both.” For example, some might argue that religious conversion is due to God and therefore cannot be explained psychologically. Such reasoning is incorrect, according to psychology of religion scholars (Paloutzian, 1996). There is nothing in psychology’s theories or methods as a scientific discipline that somehow makes psychology automatically contrary to religious teaching. Take religious conversion as an example. It is entirely legitimate to say that religious and psychological explanations can both be correct (or incorrect) at the same time. In other words, religious teachings about the possible supernatural cause of conversion could be true in principle and, likewise, psychological statements about the mental and emotional processes involved could be accurate as well. Thus, the either/or view (either a religious explanation or a psychological one, but not both) is inaccurate.
As you study the psychology of religion in this chapter, it will be helpful to remember that psychology can neither prove nor disprove either religion in general or any particular religion. However, psychology of religion can tell us much about how religion works in people’s lives.
Religious Orientation
One of the most important concepts in psychology of religion research since the 1960s is the concept of intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation. The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation is intellectually related to the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in general motivational theory (Deci, 1975).
Intrinsic religious orientation
involves religious motives that lie within the person; the person lives the religion. By contrast,extrinsic religious orientation
involves personal motives that lie outside the religion itself; using the religion for some nonreligious ends. To better understand the distinction between these two religious orientations, consider the following two physicians. Physician Jones, as a consequence of her religious teachings about helping needy people in Third World countries, becomes a medical missionary and receives little money for doing so. Indeed, even the small amount she does receive has to be raised from individual supporters. In contrast, physician Smith practices medicine in Hollywood for movie stars and receives large fees for doing so. To which physician should we attribute an intrinsic, altruistic motive (her only desire is to help someone) and to which should we attribute an extrinsic, monetary motive? In this situation, we would infer that physician Jones’s behavior is intrinsically motivated and physician Smith’s is extrinsically motivated.
A sampling of questionnaire items that are designed to measure intrinsic and extrinsic religious motivation can help to clarify these concepts. Intrinsically motivated individuals are more likely to agree with statements like these:
•“I try hard to carry my religion over into all my other dealings in life.”
•“My religious beliefs are what really lie behind my whole approach to life.”
Extrinsically motivated individuals are more likely to agree with statements like these:
•“Although I believe in my religion, I feel there are many more important things in life.”
•“The primary reason for my interest in religion is that my church provides congenial social activities.”
A close examination of these statements reveals that intrinsically motivated religious individuals tend to agree with statements that involve a consistency between beliefs and behavior, whereas extrinsically motivated religious individuals tend to agree with statements that underscore using religion to get something out of it (Allport & Ross, 1967; Hill & Hood, 1999).
The distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic ways of being religious was initially seen as a way of describing genuine (intrinsic) and ingenuine (extrinsic) religiousness. It was said that intrinsically religious individuals live their religion while extrinsically religious individuals use it. The notion also included the idea that religion is a master motive in life for the intrinsically religious individual (Allport, 1966). As such, religion is an umbrella under which other motives operate. The concept of a master religious motive becomes especially important in mixed-motive circumstances. For example, imagine a circumstance in which a person’s religious motivation conflicts with his or her sexual or economic motivation. According to the original master-religious-motive conceptualization, the intrinsically motivated individual would be more likely to follow the teachings of his or her religion in mixed-motive situations, whereas the extrinsically motivated individual would be more likely to compromise the religious teachings.
So far, we would seem to have a clear-cut case that having an intrinsic religious orientation is good while having an extrinsic religious motivation is bad. However, religious orientation is not so simple. Later in this chapter we will discuss the complexity of intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientations and learn that people can be both intrinsically and extrinsically religious in a variety of ways.
At this point we have discussed many different ideas about the scope of religion and linkages between psychology and religion, and we defined and explored the psychology of religion. A summary of these ideas is presented in the first half of summary table at the end of the chapter.
Religious Development and Conversion
What is the nature of religious development in children and adolescents? What might a life-span view of religious development be like? What is the nature of spirituality and religiousness in older adults? How does religious conversion unfold?
Religious Development in Children and Adolescents
Many children show an interest in religion, and religious institutions created by adults are designed to introduce children to certain beliefs and ensure that they will carry on a religious tradition. For example, societies have invented Sunday schools, parochial education, tribal transmission of religious traditions, and parental teaching of children at home so that children will come to hold the same beliefs and values as their parents.
Does this indoctrination work? In many cases it does. In general, adults tend to adopt the religious teachings of their upbringing. For instance, if individuals are Catholics by the time they are 25 years of age, and were raised as Catholics, they likely will continue to be Catholics throughout their adult years. If a religious change or reawakening occurs, it is most likely to take place during adolescence.
Religious issues are important to adolescents. In one recent survey, 95 percent of those 13 to 18 years old said that they believe in God or a universal spirit (Gallup & Bezilla, 1992). Almost three-fourths of adolescents said that they pray, and about one-half indicated that they had attended religious services within the past week. Almost one-half of the youth said that it is very important for a young person to learn religious faith.
Developmental Changes
Adolescence can be an especially important juncture in religious development. Even if children have been indoctrinated into a religion by their parents, because of advances in their cognitive development they may begin to question what their own religious beliefs truly are.
During adolescence, especially in late adolescence and the college years, identity development becomes a central focus (Erikson, 1968). Youth want to know answers to questions like these: “Who am I?” “What am I all about as a person?” “What kind of life do I want to lead?” As part of their search for identity, adolescents begin to grapple in more sophisticated, logical ways with such questions as “Why am I on this planet?” “Is there really a God or higher spiritual being, or have I just been believing what my parents and the church imprinted in my mind?” “What really are my religious views?”
The cognitive developmental theory of famous Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget (1952) provides a theoretical backdrop for understanding religious development in children and adolescents. For example, in one study children were asked about their understanding of certain religious pictures and Bible stories (Goldman, 1964). The children’s responses fell into three stages closely related to Piaget’s theory.
In the first stage (up until 7 or 8 years of age) - preoperational intuitive religious thought - children’s religious thoughts were unsystematic and fragmented. The children often either did not fully understand the material in the stories or did not consider all of the evidence. For example, one child’s response to the question “Why was Moses afraid to look at God?” (Exodus 3:6) was “Because God had a funny face!”
In the second stage (occurring from 7 or 8 to 13 or 14 years of age) - concrete operational religious thought - children focused on particular details of pictures and stories. For example, in response to the question about why Moses was afraid to look at God, one child said, “Because it was a ball of fire. He thought he might burn him.” Another child voiced, “It was a bright light and to look at it might blind him.”
In the third stage (age 14 through the remainder of adolescence) - formal operational religious thought - adolescents revealed a more abstract, hypothetical religious understanding. For example, one adolescent said that Moses was afraid to look at God because “God is holy and the world is sinful.” Another youth responded, “The awesomeness and almightiness of God would make Moses feel like a worm in comparison.”
Other researchers have found similar developmental changes in children and adolescents (Long, Elkind, & Spilka, 1967; Oser & Gmünder, 1991). For example, in one study, at about 17 or 18 years of age adolescents increasingly commented about freedom, meaning, and hope - abstract concepts - when making religious judgments (Oser & Gmünder, 1991).
Religiousness and Sexuality in Adolescence
One area of religion’s influence on adolescent development involves sexual activity. Although variability and change in church teachings make it difficult to characterize religious doctrines simply, most churches discourage premarital sex. Thus, the degree of adolescents’ participation in religious organizations may be more important than religious affiliation as a determinant of premarital sexual attitudes and behavior. Adolescents who attend religious services frequently may hear messages about abstaining from sex. Involvement of adolescents in religious organizations also enhances the probability that they will become friends with adolescents who have restrictive attitudes toward premarital sex. In one study, adolescents who attended church frequently and valued religion in their lives were less experienced sexually and had less permissive attitudes toward premarital sex than did their counterparts who attended church infrequently and said that religion did not play a strong role in their lives (Thornton & Camburn, 1989). In one recent study, the link between religion and sexuality was confirmed (Fehring & others, 1998). In college students, guilt, prayer, organized religious activity, and religious well-being were associated with fewer sexual encounters. However, while religious involvement is associated with a lower incidence of sexual activity among adolescents, adolescents who are religiously involved and sexually active are less likely to use medical methods of contraception (especially the pill) than are their sexually active counterparts with low religious involvement (Studer & Thornton, 1987, 1989).
Fowler’s Developmental Theory
James Fowler (1986, 1996) proposed a theory of religious development that focuses on the motivation to discover meaning in life, either within or outside of organized religion. Fowler proposed six stages of religious development that are related to Erikson’s, Piaget’s, and Kohlberg’s theories of development (Torney-Purta, 1993).
Stage 1. Intuitive-projective faith (early childhood). After infants learn to trust their caregiver (Erikson’s formulation), they invent their own intuitive images of what good and evil are. As children move into Piaget’s preoperational stage, their cognitive worlds open up a variety of new possibilities. Fantasy and reality are taken as the same thing. Right and wrong are seen in terms of consequences to the self. Children readily believe in angels and spirits (Wagener, 1998).
Stage 2. Mythical-literal faith (middle and late childhood). As children move into Piaget’s concrete operational stage, they begin to reason in a more logical, concrete, but not abstract way. They see the world as more orderly. Grade-school-age children interpret religious stories literally, and they perceive God as being much like a parent figure who rewards the good and punishes the bad. What is right is often perceived as fair exchange.
Stage 3. Synthetic-conventional faith (transition between childhood and adolescence, early adolescence). Adolescents now start to develop formal operational thought (Piaget’s highest stage) and begin to integrate what they have learned about religion into a coherent belief system. According to Fowler, although the synthetic-conventional faith stage is more abstract than the previous two stages, young adolescents still mainly conform to the religious beliefs of others (as in Kohlberg’s conventional level of morality) and have not yet adequately analyzed alternative religious ideologies. Someone’s behavior that involves a question of right and wrong is seen in terms of the harm it does to a relationship or what others might say. Fowler believes that most adults become locked into this stage and never move on to higher stages of religious development. The faith of adolescents often involves a personal relationship with God. God is thought of as “always there for me” (Wagener, 1998).
Stage 4. Individuative-reflective faith (transition between adolescence and adulthood, early adulthood). Fowler believes that, at this stage, for the first time individuals are capable of taking full responsibility for their religious beliefs. Often precipitated by the leaving-home experience, young people begin to take responsibility for their lives. Young adults now start to realize that they can choose the course of their lives and that they must expend effort to follow a particular life course. Individuals come face-to-face with such decisions as these: “Should I consider myself first, or should I consider the welfare of others first?” “Are the religious doctrines that were taught to me when I was growing up absolute, or are they more relative than I had been led to believe?” Fowler believes that both formal operational thought and the intellectual challenges to an individual’s values and religious ideologies that often develop in college are essential to developing individuative-reflective faith.
Stage 5. Conjunctive faith (middle adulthood). Fowler believes that only a small number of adults ever move on to this stage, which involves being more open to paradox and opposing viewpoints. This openness stems from people’s awareness of their finiteness and limitations. One woman Fowler placed at this stage revealed the following complex religious understanding: “Whether you call it God or Jesus or Cosmic Flow or Reality or Love, it doesn’t matter what you call it. It is there” (Fowler, 1981, p. 192).
Stage 6. Universalizing faith (middle adulthood or late adulthood). Fowler says that the highest stage in religious development involves transcending specific belief systems to achieve a sense of oneness with all being and a commitment to breaking down the barriers that are divisive to people on this planet. Conflictual events are no longer seen as paradoxes. Fowler argues that very, very few people ever achieve this elusive, highest stage of religious development. Three who have, he says, are Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mother Teresa. Figure 4 portrays the six stages in Fowler’s theory of religious development. To read about the exemplary religious life and advanced religious thought of Mother Teresa, see Explorations in Psychology describing the exemplary life of Mother Teresa.
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Author: Raymond F. Paloutzian
