A Post-Hoc Mission Statement

A Taxonomies for Religion Post

I had planned to write a summary for this series as it relates to real life to follow the one related to roleplaying games, but as I sit here I realize there’s nothing to say about real life that hasn’t been said about the roleplaying games, which I guess should come as a surprise to no one. So I’m not going to write the second of those posts; just go read the first one. What I am going to do is reiterate this project’s mission on a slightly bigger level, insisting on some caveats and imagining situations where you could use it.

Those caveats, then: In no way is this series of posts enough to achieve real understanding of any religion. You could grab this series of questions—that is, after all, what this is, a series of questions rather than a series of categories or, really, a series of questions because it’s a series of categories—and sit down in front of any religion and fill in all the little blanks. I really hope this helps you. I’ll talk in a bit about why I think it would. But when you’re done with that you won’t be done. Not at all. Because when you’re done with all this, you’ve still got to know how the religion works, how it’s structured, what it looks like on the inside. These questions will open the door for you, I think; you’ve got to step in after that.

What these questions are supposed to do is clear the preconceptions from your head. I suspect that most people have a dismally narrow view of what religion is. This includes the religious and the non-religious in equal measure, and I’m sure it does not discriminate by religion or denomination. This also includes the sorts of people who say other people have a narrow view of religion; this includes, I imagine, myself. Look again at Robert Hunt’s introduction to one of his distinctions:

The obvious must sometimes be said: for inter-religious dialogue to be of any value those involved must know what they are talking about. And not just expertise. They must know what they have in common, what this “religion” thing is that they supposedly share.

In his example, Hunt argues that one of his interlocutors merely assumes that all religious people imagine religion the same way; it does not even occur to this man that there’s another way of thinking about it. But there are other ways of thinking about and doing religion, and so this man fails to understand them. And so, if you’re debating with someone about a workplace policy or you’re trying to learn about your friend’s religious tradition or you’re drafting a diversity training policy or you’re engaging with philosophical and critical thought coming from a person who adheres to a religion that you do not, and so you’re trying to understand that person’s worldview, you’ll be seriously limited if you are making assumptions about their religion that simply aren’t true. In this series I want to help knock those assumptions out of your head; that is, I want to knock these assumptions out of my own head. I also hope to do so in a way that makes future knockings easier and more productive, too.

But that’s only the first step, as I said. I knock out the assumptions by offering alternatives; these alternatives may also help. But they might not, too. They might not be all that important to the religion you’re looking at. That’s why I want as many as I can get. But once you’ve got all these frameworks, you have to start figuring out how they fit together to produce the details which the rest of it won’t generate. And you’ve got to look at it in historical and social context, sometimes because stuff people say is religious is not really indigenous to their religion at all (so-called-Christian capitalism) and sometimes parts of their religion comes from their politics (American evangelicalism’s inherent racism). The real work follows the frameworks, and there’s no guide for it, because it has to arise in response to the particular religion you’re looking at.

And, of course, finally, you’ve got to get a sense of the individual. Psychology becomes pretty important then. I’ve got some suggestions about where you might start—personal epistemology definitely comes to mind—but you’ll need a toolbox bigger than mine currently is. Because, all else told, the individual matters at least as much to the religion as the religion to the individual.

Hopefully, though, after all these caveats, I’ve made a place where you can begin. Hopefully I’ve got you asking some questions.

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Index

Taxonomies and Mythopoeia

A Taxonomies for Religions Post

While trying to find ways to frame my understanding of different religions, and different individuals’ religion, is a worthwhile activity in itself, I would be lying if I claimed that my primary motivation was anthropological or psychological. Rather, I’ve primarily been imagining that this project would be useful for writing fiction: in a realist context, for creating a plausible variety of plausible religious characters (including those who believe themselves irreligious*); in a fantastic context, for creating a plausible variety of plausible religious characters and for creating a plausible variety of plausible fictional religions. If you write or worldbuild for any other reason, I suspect it might also be useful to you; the place where I can imagine this happening the most for the most people would be when playing D&D or some other tabletop RPG.

This post is here for you if you plan on using this series to make a D&D character.**

Depending on your learning style, you may want to skip down and peruse the questions themselves before reading the explanation, or you may want to read the explanation first so you better understand what you’re looking at.

Of course whatever game you are playing is probably going to have its own religious world built into it, with gods and suchlike for you to worship. These may even be rolled into its class system. For the purposes of mechanics it makes sense to start with what the game and the DM give you, but most RPGs I’ve encountered, including D&D, don’t delve much into the religious worldviews each sect or religion follows. You don’t get much sense of what it’s like to worship Bahamut or Tiamat or Lolth. That’s where the ideas I’ve been working with might come in handy.

Now, unfortunately, the sets of questions I’m about to ask you of your character are enormous. You may not want to do this much work for one facet of your character’s personality. (Of course, if you’re really invested in your character you might want to after all, but most people probably don’t). So you’ll need to trim it down according to the amount of work you want to put into it. But this might be a good thing: of the posts I’ve written so far, there might perhaps only be two or three that really seemed useful to you or got your attention, so it might make sense to focus on the associated questions.

And yes, I said sets of questions. From what I can tell, for a very thorough character-creation you’ll need to ask the first set of questions three times and the second set once. The first set of questions addresses a religious community; the second set addresses a religious person. But religious communities are often like a set of Matryoshka dolls set one in another: there is the religion writ large (say, Christianity) and there is a denomination, sect, or other internal division (say, Roman Catholicism) and then there is a particular group of people (say, St. Mark’s parish on UBC campus). Even this is a bit clumsy, of course, since you could say that Canadian Roman Catholicism is different from Brazilian Roman Catholicism, or West Coast Roman Catholicism different from East Coast Roman Catholicism. Or, less geography and more ethos, Pre-Vatican II Catholicism is different from Post-Vatican II Catholicism. But let’s go with three levels (religion, sect, community) for the first set of questions and one level for the second set (the individual). But that’s the thorough method: I recommend that you choose which levels and questions your complete according to what’s most useful to you at the time. You can always return to this post if you want to flesh your character out even further.

But why specify all of these layers in the first place? Well, first, you can talk about some broad strokes with a level of certainty but in order to get details that are useful for character creation you might need to drill down to increasingly local levels. Second, you might get different or opposite answers at different levels. There might be a religion that tends to be upwards in focus (a prophetic religion), but it might have a minority movement within it that tends to be more inwards in focus (a sage religion), while one of that movement’s temples might be more in line with its local community and focus slightly more outward than the other temples (a shamanic religion). And your character, coming from that religion, might be more sympathetic to any of those strains, but the fact that the temple they come from differs from the movement, which differs from the religion at large, might change how they approach other members of their religion. Indeed, it’s important to note that your character might be a black sheep in their community—maybe they’re relieved and excited to get out into the world and try to find new ways of approaching the gods, or maybe they’ve learned to be defensive, secretive, or argumentative about their religious beliefs because they are used to being the odd one out. These questions can help you figure that out.

I’ve included a short version down at the bottom, if you want to see an example/avoid making your own. I’m sure it says as much about me as it would about any character I made.

The First Set (Religion, Sect, Community)

What are this religion’s teachings? (Creed)

What are this religion’s behavioural norms? (Code)

How does this religion worship? (Cult)

How do members of this religion organize? (Community)

What stories does this religion tell? (Central Myth)

How many gods does this religion teach exist, and what are they like? (see the related post for some, but only some, of the possibilities)

What is this religion’s history?

How large is this religion?

How many different sects does this religion have, and what makes them different?

What major taboos does this religion observe?

What are this religion’s marriages like?

What are this religion’s coming of age rites like?

What are this religion’s funerals, or responses to death, like?

What problem does this religion see in the world? (ex. sin, chaos, artificiality, suffering)

What solution does this religion offer for that problem? (ex. salvation, propriety, flourishing, awakening)

What techniques does this religion offer to help practitioners achieve that solution? (ex. prayer, etiquette, physical disciplines, meditation)

What exemplars does this religion offer to show practitioners how to follow those techniques and achieve that solution? (ex. saints, noblemen, heroes, gurus)

Is this religion focused mostly upward (prophets/priests), inward (sages/gurus), or outward (shamans)?

How large of a role do clergy play in this religion?

Do religious authorities in this religion gain their authority from their knowledge of tradition (priests) or through apparent revelation (prophets and shamans)?

Do people turn to this religion on a mostly calendrical basis (priests) or according to needs that arise (prophets and shamans)?

Is this religion mostly a force for change in society (prophets), or a force maintaining the status quo (priests)?

What is this religion’s ultimate concern?

Does this religion contain a mechanism for/tradition of self-criticism?

Is this religion more likely to experience the holy in what is (ontological faith) or in what ought to be (moral faith)?

Is this religion more likely to offer experiences of the holy in a sacred object (sacramental faith) or to encourage looking beyond the concrete and trying to find the holy within yourself (mystical faith)?

Is this religion more likely to explain religious morality as pervasive religious laws (juristic faith), as social etiquette (conventional faith), or as obedience to a more abstract sense of justice (ethical faith)?

Do members of this religion usually think of religion more as a set of rules one ought to strictly obey or as a set of universal principles one tries to apply in one’s time and place?

Do members of this religion usually think of religion more as a set of answers to the questions people have about the universe, or more as a set of questions the universe/the gods demand people to answer about themselves?

Do members of this religion usually think of religion more as an ethical philosophy (either a set of rules or a universal principle), a set of questions (asked either by the believer or by the universe/the gods), or as a voice of comfort for the living?

Which obstacle to love is this religion better designed to address: the Fear of Death, the Experience of the Absurd, or both?

Does this religion encourage denying or facing that obstacle to love?

Does this religion tend to be threatened by other worldviews or is it hospitable to outsiders?

Does this religion encourage wakefulness?

Is the theology of this religion more modernist or traditionalist, in Fesser’s sense? (Fesser’s idea of these terms is pretty specific and not exactly intuitive, so if you’re not familiar with them you should probably just skip this question.)

Which of Scott McCloud’s four campfires governs this religion most (circle all that apply)? Classicist, Animist, Formalist, Iconoclast

The Second Set (The Individual)

How much does your character agree with his or her religion, sect, or community about its teachings and ways of doing things?

What problem or trouble continually and pervasively distresses your character? (ex. inevitable death, personal suffering, uncertainty) This is your character’s obsessio.

What gives solace or strength to your character in the face of their obsessio? (ex. belief in salvation, belief in justice, family, fellowship) This is your character’s epiphania.

Does this character turn to religion to focus upward (prophets/priests), inward (sages/gurus), or outward (shamans)?

How often, or to what extent, does this character rely on or turn to clergy?

Is this character more likely to respect authority that comes from knowledge of tradition (priests) or from apparent revelation (prophets and shamans)?

Does this character turn to religion mostly on a calendrical basis (priests) or mostly according to needs that arise (prophets and shamans)?

Does this character expect religion to be a force for change in society (prophets) or a force maintaining the status quo (priests)?

What is this character’s ultimate concern/about what is this character ultimately concerned?

Is this character willing to challenge their religion’s symbols and theology?

Is this character more likely to experience the holy in what is (ontological faith) or in what ought to be (moral faith)?

Is this character more likely to experience the holy in a sacred object (sacramental faith) or are they more likely to look beyond the concrete and try to find the holy within themselves (mystical faith)?

Is this character more likely to find religious morality in pervasive religious laws (juristic faith), in social etiquette (conventional faith), or in obedience to a more abstract sense of justice (ethical faith)?

Does this character think of religion more as a set of rules one ought to strictly obey or as a set of universal principles one tries to apply in one’s time and place?

Does this character think of religion more as a set of answers to the questions people have about the universe, or more as a set of questions the universe/the gods demand people to answer about themselves?

Does this character think of religion more as an ethical philosophy (either a set of rules or a universal principle), a set of questions (asked either by the believer or by the universe/the gods), or as a voice of comfort for the living?

What is this character’s primary obstacle to love: Fear of Death or Experience of the Absurd?

Does this character mostly use their religion to face or deny this obstacle?

Is this character mostly threatened by people who challenge their worldview, or are they hospitable to these people?

Is this character trying to achieve wakefulness?

Is this character more of a modernist or a traditionalist, in Fesser’s sense? (Fesser’s idea of these terms is pretty specific and not exactly intuitive, so if you’re not familiar with them you should probably just skip this question.)

Which fictional genre would be best for communicating this character’s worldview?

Which of Scott McCloud’s four campfires attract this character most (circle all that apply)? Classicist, Animist, Formalist, Iconoclast

As I said, make yourself a shorter version by selecting the questions you care about. Here would be the sort of shorter version I might use:

For each question, note whether and, if so, how the character differs from her religious community, religious sect, and religion in general on this matter.
1. What is the character’s obsessio? What is the character’s epiphania?

2. Does this character expect to find the divine/holy/sacred/spiritual on high, offering revelation, or within themselves, awaiting meditation, or around them, requiring negotiation?

3. Is this character willing and able to engage in prophetic self-criticism, in Tillich’s sense?

4. Does this character mostly experience the holy in what is or what ought to be? Is their faith more sacramental or mystical, or juristic, conventional, or ethical?

5. Does this character think of religion more as a set of rules one ought to strictly obey or as a set of universal principles one tries to apply in one’s time and place?
6. Does this character primarily fear death or the Absurd, and do they deny or face this fear?

7. Is this character mostly threatened by people who challenge their worldview, or are they hospitable to these people?

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*Which is not to say that all irreligious people are unknowingly religious by all or even most useful definitions of religion, but simply that some irreligious people are unknowingly religious by some or most useful definitions of religion. Again, there's a whole other series of posts in what counts as a religion.
**To forestall the complaints I’m sure I’d get if over a dozen people read this post: I do not imagine D&D to be the ultimate, a typical, or even a decent example of mythopoeia (the creation, or in technical terms the sub-creation, of a mythology or myth). While I suspect that real mythopoeia is possible in tabletop role-playing, I doubt the medium encourages anything like the Legendarium. It doesn’t need to. But, as far as mythopoeia goes, D&D is the closest most people are likely to get very often, besides of course the creation of their own worldview. This topic might be worth its own discussion.

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Index

Some Other Ways of Looking at Religion

A Taxonomies for Religions Post

Having gone through all of the taxonomies about which I felt I could write substantial posts, I’m now going to do a quick lightning round for taxonomies which I find limited, but still probably worth mentioning. Think of it as that drawer in the kitchen where you keep the miscellany.

Harris’s Wakefulness

I have not read Sam Harris’s Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion; rather, I’ve read a single review. So I can’t say much about it. However, it clearly tries to create a dichotomy—which is, in a way, a simple taxonomy—for different religious traditions. Namely, Harris considers whether a religion encourages or discourages wakefulness. From the review, it seems that wakefulness might mean something like ‘a state of awareness of certain neurological truths,’ with a strong Zen Buddhist connection. So Harris finds that Buddhism encourages wakefulness, though some Buddhisms encourage it better than others, while Christianity, Islam, and Judaism discourage it. As I said, though, I haven’t read the book, so I can neither assess the ‘wakefulness’ construct nor his application of the construct to different religions. (I am summarily dismissing the spirituality/religion distinction because that distinction is only useful as a rhetorical device rather than as an analytical one.)

Feser’s Traditionalists and Modernists

As I haven’t read Harris’s Waking Up, so I haven’t read Edwar Feser’s The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism. However, I’ve argued with people on the Internet who like to trot Feser out on occasion, and I’ve read the odd review of Feser, so I might take a shot at explaining his distinction between Traditionalists and Modernists. (A person usernamed Yvain gives a much better summary at his livejournal blog Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz, which is where I get most of my own understanding of it.)

According to Feser, most people today are Modernists; indeed, most religious people today, even very traditional ones, are Modernists. However, the traditional teachings of most religions—or, anyway, of Catholicism and maybe the Orthodox churches—are based in Traditionalist logic, and the theologians in those traditions are mostly still Traditionalists. But because most people are Modernists. This is why most religious people have difficulty arguing for the things they believe; according to Feser, Modernism pretty much necessitates atheism. Traditionalism seems very weird to us, but Feser wants to make a case for it. It’s very hard to give a pithy statement to sum up each viewpoint, but the following three examples might help to sketch out some outlines:

Where Modernists see the human soul as an ethereal presence that exists in some relationship to the body, Traditionalists see the human soul as another name for the body’s shape and nature. Where Modernists see God as either “an old man with a beard” or a more ethereal being “that escapes being an old man with a beard only through a technicality” (Yvain), Traditionalists see God as a being of pure existence and/or another name for existence itself. Where Modernists think religious morality means doing things because God commanded them, Traditionalists understand that religious morality has little to do with God; rather, goodness is the same thing as existence and since God is pure existence, God put also be pure goodness. Modernists see things as existing because of certain causes; Traditionalists see things as existing for certain purposes (or telos).

Maybe this works as a taxonomy. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t be sure. From I can see, I think Tillich’s work drops a bomb in Feser’s dichotomy and blows it to pieces, but maybe Feser has Tillich-proofed it and none of the reviewers mentioned that part. (Or maybe Tillich is the quintessential traditionalist and Feser just wouldn’t like what Tillich does with that? Or maybe Feser isn’t as hidebound as it sounds from his critics and supporters?)

The Most Suitable Genre

I wrote a while ago about using genres as a way of thinking about worldviews. For instance, if a person with this worldview were to write an epic, what would the underworld look like in that epic? Or if a person with this worldview were to write a mystery novel, what would count as a crime? If a person with this worldview wrote the script for an exploitation flick, what plot points or visual cues would they use to establish their identity in it? More importantly, which genre would give them the best way of exploring their concerns: the epic, with its historical or universal arc and its characters’ virtues? the mystery, with its focus on human communities and the things which rupture those communities? the romance novel or romantic comedy, with its focus on interpersonal relationships and individual happiness? the horror movie, with its insistence that there is something worth fearing, and fighting against, especially when one is alone? the western, with its focus on individuals making difficult decisions in small communities but also, simultaneously, on how these decisions feature in the making of a nation?

This question might require a lot of thought, and it might be harder to answer (or require more of a particular kind of knowledge or interpretation) than other questions here, but it might work for some people as a taxonomy.

The Four Campfires of Art

I’m really not sure whether this will work for religions, but Scott McCloud’s Four Campfires come to mind. I’ve written on them before, but I can summarize again. Based on Jung’s archetypes, the Four Campfires represent artists’ different motivations and how these influence the work they create. These Campfires are created by overlaying two dichotomies: Tradition/Revolution and Form/Content.

Classicists, at the intersection of Tradition and Form, have Beauty as their watchword. They seek to create art which as perfectly as possible adheres to the formal standards of their tradition.

Animists, at the intersection of Tradition and Content, have Content as their watchword.* They seek to create art which tells engaging stories according to the tastes and conventions of their craft.

Formalists, at the intersection of Revolution and Form, have Form as their watchword. They create art in order to experiment with its forms and capacities, discovering what it is capable of.

Iconoclasts, at the intersection of Revolution and Content, have Truth as their watchword. They create art in order to tell the truth, by which they mean the stories which have not been told before.

Of course most artists tend to visit two campfires rather than live permanently at one, usually showing loyalty to one side of a dichotomy (Tradition, Revolution, Form, or Content), though McCloud gives a few examples of artists who visit diagonal campfires (Classicist-Iconoclasts or Animist-Formalists). Some artists might even visit three; a rare few might draw from all four.

There is an artistic quality to the performance of religion: a high church service will involve reading of texts (two artistic forms here—the text itself, and the reading of it), music and singing, choreography (ie. liturgy), oratory, fashion (ie. vestments), architecture, and possibly perfume (ie. incense). But even low church services have these features, even if less attention is paid to them. So, I wonder, is it possible to apply these four campfires to religions? Form/Content might indicate a distinction between ritual and belief—for instance, Shinto is sometimes described as a religion without theology but with lots of ritual. And Tradition/Revolution might reflect some of our previous distinctions between static priestly religions and dynamic prophetic religions, or Tillich’s concern with self-criticism. This strikes me as far too simplistic, but I’d like to offer it in case it helps you.

Conclusion and Future Directions

Despite their heterogeneity, I’ve collapsed all of these questions into a chart. Of course, some apply better to religious traditions (wakefulness) and some apply better to religious people (trad/mod).

There are some other comparisons I might want to draw—personal epistemology comes to mind, as do the nominalist/realist distinction and the ideographic/nomethetic distinction—but I don’t think they stand alone as taxonomies of religion. Rather, they are most helpful as ways of thinking about how a person’s adoption of a certain kind of religion might accord with their pre-existing psychological tendencies. Anyway, it’s the subject of another post.

And on the note of other posts, these are all of the taxonomies I have! I would like more (my unachievable goal, actually, is to list all of them), so if you know of anything I missed, please let me know! I’d love to add to my collection. In the meantime, I’m going to talk about putting these to use and I’m going to compile all of these taxonomies into a big list of questions to help you described a religious tradition or religious person. (Also, eventually, I plant to read Feser’s and Harris’s books, so I might beef those sections up at that point.)

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*Yes, it’s super annoying and confusing that “Content” and “Form” are both watchwords and half of one of the two dichotomies. If it helps, pretend that the Animist watchword is “Story” or “Engagement” and the Formalist watchword is “Experiment” or “Discovery.”

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Index

Looking Square at Death

A Taxonomies for Religions Post

I’ve already written a fair amount about Richard Beck’s work, including a synopsis of what I’ver read of his Death Trilogy. In case you don’t want to read that, though, here’s an altogether too quick Coles Notes version:

Richard Beck is an experimental psychologist working on the psychology of religion and the fear of death, drawing extensively from the work of Ernst Becker. According to Beck’s studies, most people are intrinsically afraid of death. In order to manage their fear of death, they invest themselves in worldviews which promise that their lives will have some sort of value beyond their death: maybe these worldviews promise a literal afterlife, or maybe they promise that you can live on in your grandchildren, or maybe they promise that you can live on through your achievements. Religion is often such a worldview. Because people deny their fear of death through these worldviews, they defend their worldview against threat as though losing their worldview is a threat to their life. Losing one’s worldview is a psychologically equivalent experience to losing one’s life, in fact. The existence of alternatives to their worldviews can constitute a threat, so people who especially rely on their worldview to avoid acknowledging death can be very hostile to people with different worldviews. For this reason, the fear of death can drive people to bring death and suffering to others. However, not all religious people use their religions to avoid their fear of death; a minority of religious people confront death and doubt directly. This makes them less hostile to alternatives. That said, as much as it is likely better not to deny death through religion, it is impossible to sustain an honest confrontation with death for all of your life, and all people will construct a worldview of some kind, whether they realize it or not. Thus, it is important to build a worldview which is not threatened by the mere existence of other worldviews, so that we do not react with hostility to people who do not agree with us. Only then can we be hospitable to outsiders and loving to those who threaten us. If you’re going to have a worldview anyway, try to have one that helps you be welcoming.

If you’ve been following this whole Taxonomies for Religions series, I’m guessing you can already see the categories I’m going to get from Beck’s work. In this synopsis, we can see two dichotomies. The first is between a) those who tend to use their worldview or religion to deny the fear of death, relying on that worldview’s promise to extend their life past death, and b) those who tend not to use their worldview or religion for such purposes; the second is between a) those worldviews which are threatened by the mere existence of other worldviews and b) those worldviews which are more hospitable.

However, I’ve started noticing limitations in Beck’s work here. As my synopsis and critique argues, it might not be fair to assume that everyone fears death in the first place. Some people—like me—are quite comfortable with the thought that we’ll eventually die. In private correspondence with me, Beck acknowledges as much, noting that his work applies mostly to the majority who do fear death, and not to those of us who don’t. He works on obstacles to love, and for that minority of us the obstacle to love might instead be the experience of the Absurd.* I suppose that our small numbers might explain why so many religions and worldviews are so bad at addressing absurdity rather than mortality as the primary obstacle to love. Nonetheless, this insight gives us another dichotomy: those for whom the primary obstacle to love is the fear of death, and those for whom the primary obstacle to love is the experience of absurdity.

I think I have enough material for some headings for a chart:

These categories are not entirely independent, of course. Beck’s work indicates that those people who use religion to deny the fear of death are much more likely to feel threatened by, and therefore act with hostility towards, people with other worldviews. I’m not sure the correlation is 100%, so there might be a few examples of people who deny death but are very hospitable to those who have fundamentally different worldviews. But one often leads to the other. And, since Beck’s work does not address those whose primary obstacle to love is the experience of absurdity, I can’t say whether the other two columns correlate for such people.

(If you’re familiar with Beck’s work, you might have expected my chart to include mention of his distinction between Summer and Winter Christians. That distinction is good work: Beck notes that while some people tend to assume that complaint about the world indicates disengagement from God, many people are highly engaged with God and highly prone to complaint. These are Winter Christians, the ones who, while experiencing communion with God, more keenly feel the suffering widespread in the world; Summer Christians, meanwhile, feel mostly joy and happiness while in communion with God. I’ve found this dichotomy helpful…but I feel like it’s just a specialization of the above dichotomy, between those who use religion to deny the reality of death and suffering, and those who do not.)

As with the last post, these categories seem to apply to religious people rather than religions; after all, Beck was writing mostly about Christians—or, really, Protestants—of different stripes. It’s a psychological difference that modifies the person’s ideology, not an ideological difference that modifies a person’s psychology. But we can, perhaps, note that some religions are better at supporting some psychologies than others—highly relativistic religions might not prove to be so threatened by outsiders, for instance. When I explained Beck’s work to a friend from Taiwan, she observed that Buddhism and Taoism tend to be quite hospitable to other worldviews; Confucianism, however, is less so. Similarly, we can note that most worldviews primarily address (or deny) the fear of death, but a few, like existentialism/absurdism, address the experience of the absurd.

But let’s go back to the bit about Beck writing mostly on Christians. It’s here that I can see Beck’s investments most clearly. Beck is clearly writing as someone who is already a particular kind of Christian; his motivation is to improve our ability to live out the Gospels and welcome the stranger. As such, he takes as given that moving toward hospitality and love are desirable. His research grows from that. That’s not to say that his empirical findings are somehow compromised because of it: the science works or it doesn’t according to the quality of the experiment design and the interpretation of the results, not his motivations for conducting the experiments. But the pastoral message Beck takes from his research is based on his Christianity. Moreover, it is based on his American pragmatism, as well: the American pragmatists taught that a belief system should be judged by the result it has in its adherents. That is what makes a claim true: if it bears fruit in those who claim it. However, despite these clear investments, Beck’s work might be the most empirically valid of all the ones I’ve examined so far. It may be the case that a group of people might not even be trying to love more, be more hospitable, etc., and their worldview may not address or encourage these issues at all…but, nonetheless, they will either be using their worldview to deny a fear of death or they won’t be, and their worldview will either be threatened by and therefore hostile towards people with other worldviews, or it won’t be.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Let me know if you have a good reason for thinking I am.

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* The Absurd, in philosophical language, means the conflict between the human desire to find meaning in life/the world and the human inability to find such meaning, or at least the human inability to find such meaning reliably and with certainty.

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Index