10/16/2024 – What is "religion"? Psychology of Religion

Have you ever wondered what is “religion”? I’ve got your back because I’m a former community college professor of religion. We’re going to look at a number of lenses academic scholars of religion use to understand, interpret, and define religion, but… broken down into slightly easier-to-understand bits. Check this out. This is TenOnReligion.

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This is the fourth episode in a multi-episode series which I’m simply calling “What is Religion?” This is about understanding the academic field of religion including how it started and ways academic scholars of religion interpret, understand, and define religion. In the first three episodes we looked at some of the early stages of development, the anthropology of religion, and the sociology of religion. In this episode were going to get into the psychology of religion. In future episodes we’re going to talk about the phenomenology (or experience of religion), and finally the comparison of religion. Today, we’re going to take a look at the psychology of religion through the lenses of three important figures: William James, Sigmund Freud, and James Fowler. Let’s get into it.

William James was a scholar in the areas of psychology, philosophy, and religion. His career spanned the last half of the 1800’s and he died in 1910. James established Harvard University’s Psychology department and was there from 1872-1907, a period of 35 years. He was an engaging speaker attracting large audiences to his public speaking events. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s the academic disciplines of psychology, philosophy, and to some extent, religion, were not fully separated yet. The American Psychological Association was founded in 1892 and the American Philosophical Association was founded in 1902. In the first ten years of their existence, William James, John Dewey, and Josiah Royce all served as presidents of both organizations. James was a pragmatist, meaning he was less focused on what is “truth” and more interested in what works. Not abstract ideas, but the practicality of what guides human behavior.

For instance, James delivered a famous lecture in 1896 which became an essay the next year titled “The Will to Believe.” In this essay he stated that people face situations which require a decision. There are often multiple options and the decisions must be made without absolute or firm evidence. He described such decisions based on three factors. The first is whether or not the hypothesis appeals to you as a real possibility. He referred to this as a living or dead option. For some people it is an open question and therefore a real possibility that God exists. Thus, it is a living hypothesis. For most people, at least I hope, the idea that pigs can fly, not just in a joking manner but in reality, is a dead hypothesis or a dead option. The second factor is forced or avoidable. In a forced choice one chooses to believe or not and the lack of belief means one has made a choice. A situation with an avoidable option means one can choose to not make a choice. Do I wear a red or blue sweater today? Actually, I’m just going to wear a shirt instead. The third factor is a momentous or trivial option. If it’s momentous, the choice is somehow unique, high stakes, or can’t really be reversed. If it’s trivial, it’s not unique, low stakes, and can be easily changed. James then described a genuine option as living, forced, and momentous. James was responding to other thinkers of his era which held that one can only rationally hold a belief if there is enough evidence to support it and in “The Will to Believe” James was attempting to justify or explain the case that one can still hold a position rationally without sufficient evidence.

The main religious work, however, that James is most famous for is The Varieties of Religious Experience, published in 1902. It is mostly descriptions of religious experiences and their practical implications. Religion deals with human needs and wants. His approach is not metaphysical in the sense of trying to prove anything regarding God, nor is it about theological doctrines. James has little to no interest in organized religious institutions. James was an empiricist. In order to understand one must focus on individual experience and only from the collection of individual experiences and perspectives can we see a picture of reality emerge. Humans have a tendency to live comfortably with illusions and prejudices that seem “rational” unless they are challenged to justify themselves. Most people are satisfied with beliefs that are traditional or simplistic and this is where most people want to live their lives. According to James, everyone lives by some kind of faith and even the scientifically-trained philosophers have faith in the laws of nature as a determining order. So, let’s talk about his definition of religion along with five characteristics of the religious life.

In The Varieties of Religious Experience James states, “Religion…shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.” He clarifies that the divine may not even be a personal deity, but an abstract idea. In light of this definition, the five characteristics of the religious life starts with three religious beliefs. First, the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance. Second, union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end. Third, prayer or inner communion with the spirit is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, either psychological or material. The last two characteristics of the religious life are psychological. Fourth, the religious life offers us a new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism. And fifth, an assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections. So, you see James was really interested in describing and understanding religion from a psychological perspective, meaning how do individuals understand religion and what meaning does it have for their lives. And now on to a not-so-controversial figure, Sigmund Freud.

Paul Ricoeur referred to Sigmund Freud as one of the three masters of suspicion along with Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche. Freud is probably most well-known for being the father of psychoanalysis, but in addition to psychology, he also wrote quite a bit about religion. Though born to a Jewish family, he was an avowed atheist his entire life and thought that religion was open to psychoanalytic investigation. Three of his works actually have religion as the main focus: Totem and Taboo in 1913, The Future of an Illusion in 1927, and a work purportedly finished on his deathbed, Moses and Monotheism in 1939. In Moses and Monotheism much of his conclusions have been debunked through archeological and historical discoveries over the past century, so I’m not really going to address that book. We’re going to mostly focus on the second, but first a few comments about Totem and Taboo. Freud was somewhat of a fan of James George Frazer mentioned in our recent anthropology episode and this is apparent in this work. Freud sought the origins of culture in religion and rituals in prehistoric murder. Oppressed sons got together to kill and…eat…their powerful father. Now there’s a lot of psychological interpretation going on here, but since it’s based on Frazer’s works, and Frazer didn’t really see any of these cultures in person but only through second-hand sources, Freud’s conclusions are on less than solid ground. So, we’re moving on to the most interesting part.

In 1927, Freud published The Future of an Illusion, and this is where his psychology of religion comes to the forefront. He uses the German term Kultur quite a bit which can be translated as culture or civilization. By this term he means something which is imposed on the majority by a minority who figured out how to possess power and coercion. Whereas Marx thought this was based in the economy and unequal distribution of wealth among social classes, Freud thought that it was more based in psychological explanations. Humans have instincts which can be hard to renounce. Individuals who gain power and whom masses recognize as their leaders can be induced to be distracted from their instincts and perform work and this is how civilizations live. The reason for the existence of civilization, or culture, is to defend us against nature. Religion is seen as arising from the helplessness of childhood against nature – a helplessness which could not be remedied otherwise. Morality became the domain of the gods which were elevated above human society. Once gods were seen as protective father figures, humans’ relations towards them became more like the children’s relation to their fathers. But there is more.

When children are born and raised in civilization, the finished body of religious ideas is transmitted by the civilization to the individual. One does not discover this by oneself, and, ironically, these ideas, according to Freud, are often the least well-authenticated. He refers to this as a remarkable psychological problem. Religious ideas are illusions derived from human wishes. Belief in an illusion occurs when wish-fulfillment becomes a prominent factor and in so doing its relation to reality is discarded. He gives the example of telling children that newborn babies are brought by a stork. The story is told in symbolic clothing and the adult knows what the bird signifies but the child does not. The same with religion. The truths contained in religious doctrines are so distorted and disguised that the general population cannot recognize them. But humans cannot remain children forever. They must go out into the real world. Freud referred to this as “education to reality.” The religious illusion can be defended, but then if it later becomes discredited for any reason, the world of religion collapses which would be a psychological travesty. In 1930, Freud wrote the direct successor to The Future of an Illusion titled, Civilization and Its Discontents. Here he further stated that one can try to recreate the world by building up another world in which the unbearable features are removed and replaced by other features which are more in line with one’s own wishes. All religions are like this and Freud thought they must be classified as mass delusions, but of course, anyone sharing or participating in the delusion never recognizes it as such. Does any of this sound familiar? Religion is simply the means by which humans attempt to overcome their helplessness in some sort of an institutionally acceptable way. And now on to a more recent figure.

Passing away in 2015 at the age of 75, James Fowler is most well-known for his 1981 book Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. This work describes six stages of faith development preceded by an infancy pre-stage for humans under the age of 2. Fowler draws from three prominent psychologists of human development in creating these faith stages: Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, and Lawrence Kohlberg. The idea is that we shape our actions and responses in life according to larger patterns in communities of shared interpretations. Let’s get into the stages and then I’m going to make a few important comments after, so stay until the end.

Fowler’s stages of faith begin with a pre-stage. The infancy pre-stage from birth to age 2 is Undifferentiated Faith where the beginnings of trust and love are fused.

Stage 1 is Intuitive-Projective Faith typically occurring between ages 3-7. Children can be influenced by examples, moods, actions, and stories from the primary adults in their lives. Imagination and fantasy are extremely productive and self-awareness emerges along with taboos and moral expectations.

Stage 2 is Mythic-Literal Faith where people start to appropriate symbols as one-dimensional and literal, and typically occurs in ages 8-12. Stories and narratives are important and valuable but they cannot yet reflect on their conceptual meanings.

Stage 3 is Synthetic-Conventional Faith and is associated with ages 13-20 or adolescence and early adulthood. A person’s experience of the world extends out beyond the family and the social environment becomes vastly interpersonal. It is also the main identity-forming stage with the development of a personal myth incorporating one’s past and anticipated future with religion often being a significant contributing factor. At this point I should note, some people interviewed in the study never got beyond stage three. The remaining four stages can be found in any adult age range, however, the transition from one stage to the next was often precipitated by some sort of dislocating experience causing cognitive and religious dissonance, and after a short or long period of soul-searching, prompted them on to the next stage.

Stage 4 is Individuative-Reflective Faith when one realizes one must take responsibility for their own commitments, lifestyle, and beliefs. How much are you going to be defined by a group? How much of your identity is going to be expressed by your own individuality? Symbols can now be translated into conceptual meanings and this aids in worldview development.

Stage 5, Conjunctive Faith, is a complex stage of faith-knowing where one can see multiple sides of an issue simultaneously. Truth is multidimensional and individual religious experiences can provide incomplete pictures of reality. This is Paul Ricoeur’s “second naïveté” for those familiar with that idea. [Shameless plug: check out my video on that, it’s thought-provoking.] In this stage, one becomes aware of one’s own prejudices and paradoxes.

Stage 6 is Universalizing Faith and Fowler describes it as exceedingly rare as it was manifest in only 3% of the responses in his study. Many people at this stage are persecuted and even die at the hands of those whom they hope to change. Specific or particular beliefs are cherished because they represent part of a larger universal understanding of faith. Their large visions expose the partiality of the tribal nature of most other people’s religious perspectives. Think of people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mother Teresa. Religion can come in many forms and many expressions.

Fowler then has a chapter focusing on a real-life interview with a person anonymously named Mary and continues to show how her responses can be analyzed using the stages of faith model. Transitions from one stage to another can occur slow or fast depending on the individual and their circumstances and many never reach the upper stages. Issues such as whom or what people recognize as an authority, what people value, and images or symbols of power have a direct effect on religious worship patterns and commitments. Conversion amounts to a change in the contents of faith but not necessarily the presence or experience of faith. The important thing to grasp is that people in stages 3 and perhaps 4 don’t really understand why or how people in stages 5 and 6 can hold the religious views that they do and that’s why they often attack them. The lower stages tend to have a smaller vision of “us four and no more” and tend to be afraid of those who have views which are beyond their own horizon. It’s kind of like old maps which labeled unknown places with “here be dragons.” Which stage do you think you’re at? Sometimes we need to pause and reflect before criticizing someone who has views different from our own because maybe… we’re just not there yet. And that’s Fowler’s stages of faith.

Today we were answering the question “What is religion?” through the lens of psychology using William James, Sigmund Freud, and James Fowler. So, what do you think about the psychology of religion? Which figure did you find the most interesting and why? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Next up, the phenomenology, or experience, of religion. It’s gonna be a fun one. Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this, support the channel in the link below, please like and share this video and subscribe to this channel. This is TenOnReligion.