You have three options for this homework a
You have three options for this homework assignment. Please answer one of the three questions below.
1) Please explain the title thesis of Wilensky-Lanford's, “Gen Z’s Religious Affiliation Stats Are Confusing – But Only When Viewed from a Christian-Centric Perspective.” What does that mean? Include and interpret a direct quote from the article that expresses well its argument.
2) David DeStento, in his “Psychologists Are Learning What Religion Has Known for Years,” says, "I've come to see a nuamced relationship bweteen science and religion. I now view them as two approaches to improving people's lives that frequently complement each other." Explain a couple examples he provides of this relationship. Given his findings, what is his recommendation to his colleagues in the field of psychology?
3) "Secularism" is a word used in different ways by various people in various contexts, as we see in Yonat Shimron's interview with Jacques Berlinerblau ("Secularism Is Not Atheism. A New Book Explains Why the Distinction Is So Critical"). Please explain the distinction the article makes between secularism as "an approach to governance" and "lifestyle secularisms." Also, what do they mean by a distinction between "separationism" and "accommodationism?"
Psychologists Are Learning What Religion Has Known for Years
Social scientists are researching what humans can do to improve their quality of life. Their findings echo what religious practices perfected centuries ago.
WIRED OPINION
ABOUT
David DeSteno
is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University and author of How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion.
9/14/21
https://www.wired.com/story/psychologists-religion-how-god-works/
This story is adapted from How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion, by David DeSteno.
Even though I was raised Catholic, for most of my adult life, I didn’t pay religion much heed. Like many scientists, I assumed it was built on opinion, conjecture, or even hope, and therefore irrelevant to my work. That work is running a psychology lab focused on finding ways to improve the human condition, using the tools of science to develop techniques that can help people meet the challenges life throws at them. But in the 20 years since I began this work, I’ve realized that much of what psychologists and neuroscientists are finding about how to change people’s beliefs, feelings, and behaviors—how to support them when they grieve, how to help them be more ethical, how to let them find connection and happiness—echoes ideas and techniques that religions have been using for thousands of years.
Science and religion have often been at odds. But if we remove the theology—views about the nature of God, the creation of the universe, and the like—from the day-to-day practice of religious faith, the animosity in the debate evaporates. What we’re left with is a series of rituals, customs, and sentiments that are themselves the results of experiments of sorts. Over thousands of years, these experiments, carried out in the messy thick of life as opposed to sterile labs, have led to the design of what we might call spiritual technologies—tools and processes meant to sooth, move, convince, or otherwise tweak the mind. And studying these technologies has revealed that certain parts of religious practices, even when removed from a spiritual context, are able to influence people’s minds in the measurable ways psychologists often seek.
My lab has found, for example, that having people practice Buddhist meditation for a short time makes them kinder. After only eight weeks of study with a Buddhist lama, 50 percent of those who we randomly assigned to meditate daily spontaneously helped a stranger in pain. Only 16 percent of those who didn’t meditate did the same. (In reality, the stranger was an actor we hired to use crutches and wear a removable foot cast while trying to find a seat in a crowded room.) Compassion wasn’t limited to strangers, though; it also applied to enemies. Another study showed that after three weeks of meditation, most people refrained from seeking revenge on someone who insulted them, unlike most of those who did not meditate. Once my team observed these profound impacts, we began looking for other linkages between our previous research and existing religious rituals.
Gratitude, for instance, is something we had studied closely, and a key element of many religious practices. Christians often say grace before a meal; Jews give thanks to God with the Modeh Ani prayer every day upon awakening. When we studied the act of giving thanks, even in a secular context, we found it made people more virtuous. In a study where people could get more money by lying about the results of a coin flip, the majority (53 percent) cheated. But that figure dropped dramatically for people who we first asked to count their blessings. Of these, only 27 percent chose to lie. We’ve also found that when feeling gratitude to a person, to fate, or to God, people become more helpful, more generous, and even more patient.
Even very subtle actions—like moving together in time—can exert a significant effect on the mind. We see synchrony in almost every religion the world over: Buddhists and Hindus often chant together in prayer; Christians and Muslims regularly kneel and stand in unison during worship; Jews often sway, or shuckle, when reciting prayers together. These actions belie a deep purpose: creating connection. To see how it works, we asked pairs of strangers to sit across a table from one another, put on headphones, and then tap a sensor on the table in front of them each time they heard a tone. For some of these pairs, the sequence of tones matched, meaning they’d be tapping their hands in unison. For others, they were random, meaning hand movements wouldn’t be synchronized. Afterward, we created a situation where one member of each pair got stuck doing a long and difficult task. Not only did those who had been moving their hands in unison report feeling more connection with and compassion for their partner who was now toiling away, 50 percent of them decided to lend the partner a hand—a big increase over the 18 percent who decided to help without having just moved in sync.
The combined effects of simple elements like these—ones that change how we feel, what we believe, and who we can depend on—accumulate over time. And when they’re embedded in religious practices, research has shown they can have protective properties of sorts. Regularly taking part in religious practices lessens anxiety and depression, increases physical health, and even reduces the risk of early death. These benefits don’t come simply from general social contact. There’s something specific to spiritual practices themselves.
The ways these practices leverage mechanisms of our bodies and minds can enhance the joys and reduce the pains of life. Parts of religious mourning rituals incorporate elements science has recently found to reduce grief. Healing rites contain elements that can help our bodies heal themselves simply by strengthening our expectations of a cure. Religions didn’t just find these psychological tweaks and nudges long before scientists arrived on the scene, but often packaged them together in sophisticated ways that the scientific community can learn from.
The surprise my colleagues and I felt when we saw evidence of religion’s benefits was a sign of our hubris, born of a common notion among scientists: All of religion is superstition and, therefore, could have little practical benefit. I’ll admit that we’re unlikely to learn much about the nature of the universe or the biology of disease from religion. But when it comes to finding ways to help people deal with issues surrounding birth and death, morality and meaning, grief and loss, it would be strange if thousands of years of religious thought didn’t have something to offer.
Over the past few years, as I’ve looked back at the results of my studies and those of other researchers, I’ve come to see a nuanced relationship between science and religion. I now view them as two approaches to improving people’s lives that frequently complement each other. It’s not that I’ve suddenly found faith or have a new agenda to defend religion. I firmly believe that the scientific method is a wonder, and offers one of the best ways to test ideas about how the world works. Like any good scientist, I’m simply following the data without prejudice. And it’s humbling.
Rather than scoffing at religion and starting psychological investigations from scratch, we scientists should be studying rituals and spiritual practices to understand their influence, and where appropriate, create new techniques and therapies informed by them. Doing this doesn’t require accepting a given theology—just an open mind and an attitude of respect. Not doing it risks betraying our principles. If we ignore that body of knowledge, if we refuse to take these spiritual technologies seriously as a source of ideas and inspiration to study, we slow the progress of science itself and limit its potential to benefit humanity. It’s by talking across the boundaries that usually divide us—science versus religion, one faith versus another—that we’ll find new ways to make life better.
From the book HOW GOD WORKS: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion by David DeSteno. Copyright © 2021 by David DeSteno. To be published September 14 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. Printed by permission.
WIRED Opinion publishes articles by outside contributors representing a wide range of viewpoints. Read more opinions here, and see our submission guidelines here. Submit an op-ed at [email protected]
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GEN Z’S RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION STATS ARE CONFUSING … BUT ONLY WHEN VIEWED FROM A CHRISTIAN-
CENTRIC PERSPECTIVE
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R ecently, Atlantic writer Derek Thompson tweeted an image of two graphs of
religious survey data. The first(https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1412837699443175428/photo/1) showed the number of people who say they “believe in God without a doubt,” broken down by generation: Gen Z numbers drop off precipitously
since the late nineties. The second(https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1412837699443175428/photo/2) showed the number who say they “believe in some higher power.” Here, Gen Z showed an equally precipitous rise, since around 2012. Thompson’s tweet betrays some exasperation with the apparently contradictory results: “Depending on how you ask the question,” he wrote, Gen Z was either “leading a stunning atheist revolution, or they’re extremely spiritual people without an organized religion to claim for themselves.”
But the graphs, made by political scientist of religion Ryan Burge(https://twitter.com/ryanburge) using GSS(https://gss.norc.org/) data, are only contradictory if you read them from a limited, Christian-centric perspective. Asking about belief “without a doubt” implies that belief and doubt are mutually exclusive, not a pair of related and often fluctuating mental habits. The concept of “some higher power,” while assuming a theological hierarchy that’s not relevant to all traditions, seems to be perceived as a larger category than “God,” and thus an easier proposition for some Gen Z survey subjects to sign onto.
Neither are Thompson’s terms—“atheist” and “spiritual”—contradictory. “Spiritual,” an impossible-to-define term, does not require belief in God, although it can also describe a level of devotion within a religious tradition. Questions like these focus on “belief.” The recent Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) “Census of American Religion(https://www.prri.org/research/2020-
census-of-american-religion/#_ftn2)” focuses largely on “affiliation.” But both “belief” and “affiliation” are poor proxies for how something called religion exists in the world.
The inadequacy of measuring belief and affiliation is especially apparent when we are talking, as we often are, about the “nones.” That term, it’s worth repeating, refers to people who check “none of the above” when given a list of religious terms with which to affiliate. It’s true there are real people who describe themselves as “nones.” To learn about some of them, I recommend Kaya Oakes’s thoughtful study The Nones Are Alright(https://religiondispatches.org/refusing-religion-claiming-the-future-a-roundtable-
discussion-on-the-nones-are-alright/). The refusal to religiously label oneself also
has a long and deep American history. But shouldn’t the existence of the “nones,” and the purported “rise(https://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-
the-rise/)” or “fall(https://religionnews.com/2021/07/08/survey-white-mainline-protestants-
outnumber-white-evangelicals/)” of their numbers, tell us just as much about the limitations of the other options for “affiliation” on that list? And maybe even about the limitations of “affiliation” and “belief” in general? Here are three of those limitations.
Practice, Practice, Practice. Say it with me: religion is less about what you believe than what you do. Indeed, when it comes to observing how something called “religion” shows up in the world, practice is all we have to go on. You cannot get inside someone else’s head. Yet we persist in defining religion as a “belief system.”
One of my favorite ways to demonstrate the absurdity of this is Beliefnet’s “Belief-O-Matic(https://www.beliefnet.com/entertainment/quizzes/beliefomatic.aspx)” quiz. You answer a series of strictly theological questions: about the existence of supernatural entities, what it means to align oneself with those entities; what happens after we die. Then it assigns you an affiliation based on your declared beliefs. I usually end up around 40% Hindu and 60% Quaker, neither of which religious tradition I have any personal connection to.
The cognitive dissonance forces us to notice the many other practices we use to define religiousness: by the family that we were born or raised in, by what kind of prayers we say, by the church we attend, or don’t. Which brings me to my second point.
It’s Complicated. Even if we ask about practice instead of belief, the answers don’t do justice to the complexity with which most people “do” religion (or not). It’s easy to fall into authenticity traps when asking “how many times a day you pray?” or “how often you attend a house of worship?” The answer to the latter question is notoriously dependent(https://www.pewforum.org/2021/01/14/measuring-religion-in-pew-research-
centers-american-trends-panel/) on whether a live person is asking the question: in the U.S., a high percentage of people apparently think they should be attending religious services.
And here again, thinking this way can privilege certain ways of being religious: What if prayer is silent or ongoing in your practice, or what if there is no house of worship? And there is no straight line between quantity of practice and self-identified quality of religiosity. What if I just really love
Catholic Mass although my family is Jewish? What if the more I pray the more I doubt? (Do you know anyone who is really “without a doubt”?)
The appropriate genre to express the kind of complex relationship many individuals have with something called “religion” isn’t survey data but literary journalism. The online religion magazine Killing the Buddha(https://killingthebuddha.com/about/) (shameless plug), founded in 2000 by Jeff Sharlet and Peter Manseau for people who are “both hostile and drawn to talk of God,” has survived and thrived because that mix continues to be fascinating.
Freedom of Choice. My third limitation of measuring “affiliation” is a hard one for Americans to accept: Religious affiliation is not solely a matter of individual choice. The notion that we are all autonomous entities able to freely move toward enlightenment using whatever religious or non- religious beliefs and practices we select for ourselves has always been more ideal than real—and once again more Protestant than not.
For one thing, who counts as “affiliated” varies widely by tradition and perspective. I might not affiliate myself with Judaism in a survey, but if we’re counting people whose mothers are Jewish, I go on that list. Some Catholic parishes continue to count anyone baptized or confirmed there as “Catholic” no matter where those individuals are now or what they’ve gone on to choose. As Megan Goodwin and Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst like to say on their essential religion podcast, Keeping it 101(https://keepingit101.com/): “even if you’re done with religion, religion is not done with you.”
For another thing, many non-white Americans have their religious identity racialized, and vice versa. Anyone who “reads” as Muslim can be subject to Islamophobic violence, no matter what they believe, or practice, or don’t. Consider the way that racist(https://islamophobiaisracism.wordpress.com/)
Islamophobic violence has been directed(http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/12/29/sikh-americans-not-muslims-but-
suffer-islamophobia.html) against Sikh Americans, or how Buddhist temples are targets(https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/los-angeles-police-probe-fire-
vandalism-japanese-buddhist-temple-n1259148) of anti-AAPI violence. Religious choice is, on some level, a white privilege.
So “belief” is inaccessible and exists in a complex relationship with practice; and our own religious “affiliation” or lack thereof doesn’t necessarily count for much in the world at large. Why then do we persist in trying to count American religion? My goal isn’t to get rid of these surveys, but to look at
them differently. They are indeed “data,” but not in the way they purport to be. There may not be any solid, observable referent for the numbers of young people who say they “believe” in some kind of “higher power.” But that does not mean we shouldn’t ask. Any survey is a snapshot of a moment, in which the questions reveal as much as, if not more than, the answers.
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