Communal Religion vs. Personal Spirituality
Most of these essays focus mainly on virtue-centered personal spirituality. This is very different from communal religion.
“Virtue” consists in habits of mind that naturally manifest themselves in externally visible conduct when situations arise calling for the exercise of some particular virtues. But virtues in themselves have to do with a person’s internal motivations and feelings which are not directly visible to the general public from the outside. Only an individual is able to become introspectively aware of their own motivations. Cultivating virtue thus has an inevitably “individualistic” character. Possession of particular internal virtues, constitutive of what I call “personal spirituality,” can never become obligatory for membership in any given human community.
This is what makes personal spirituality different from communal religion. Being a member in good standing of a given religious community necessarily has to depend on living up to some communal norms that are easily observable from the outside. These norms typically have to do with rituals, rules, and beliefs: regular attendance at communal rituals, acting in accordance with specific rules determining what kinds of conduct are permissible and which are not; declaration of adherence to certain specific beliefs, or at least never publicly questioning them. It is relatively obvious that living up to these externally observable norms by itself is ambiguous with regard to true goodness. A person can be a member in good standing of a particular religious community by living up to the norms just described, and still not be a very good person.
Socratic/Platonic reasoning supports and develops this general observation, providing a rational way of showing that all concretely observable norms are necessarily ambiguous with respect to true goodness. Only pure and perfect virtue-ideals are able to represent human goodness in a clear, precise, and unambiguous way. The difficulty with Platonism is that grasping these pure and perfect Platonic virtue-forms requires the ability to think in abstractions, getting beyond the universally natural human habit of concrete-mindedness. It is obviously not true that no one can be a truly virtuous “saint” without developing this ability to think in abstractions. It is quite possible to have and live by a very highly developed and high-level intuitive “moral compass” giving a person a good sense of the what is the best kind of behavior called for by any given situation, without having an explicit conceptual grasp of abstract virtue-ideals. It is just that having and being committed to such a highly developed moral compass is again something not directly visible to the general public from the outside.
Durkheim’s theory of “social facts.”
These observations lead us to the importance of some aspects of the sociological theory developed by pioneer sociologist, Emile Durkheim. A key element in Durkeim’s theory is the idea of “social facts,” as the glue that binds together particular human communities. Social facts are the main constitutive element in what is called today more colloquially “social pressure.” We all feel “pressure” to live up to some given social norms or ideals consisting in externally visible signs that someone is or is not deserving of respect. Some of these signs are “materialistic”, consisting of degrees of wealth or poverty, degrees of success in a particular career. Some are more directly social signs of respectability, consisting in “respectable” marriage-partners and family relationships. Some are more directly moral, consisting in living up to some moral norms prevalent in a given society.
Religious communities are bound together by such “social facts,” consisting in living up to the kinds of externally observable membership requirements described above (rituals, rules, and beliefs). Everyone who wants to be a member in good standing of a particular religious community feels “pressure” to live up to these requirements.
What Durkheim is missing, I think, is an explanation of what gives “social facts” and social pressure” the coercive power they have over people. The following is my attempt to give an explanation of the psychological source of this power.
A psychological explanation of the power of social facts.
Start with the fact that everyone has a deep need to have a sense of themselves as someone leading a meaningful life and being a person deserving of respect. But this in turn requires a context, consisting in some norms and standards determining what constitutes a meaningful life, and what makes a person deserving or not deserving of respect. Call this an “evaluative context”, a context implicitly used by a given individual for self-evaluation, giving this individual a set of standards to try to live up to, in order to be able to have a sense of themselves as someone leading a meaningful life and someone deserving of respect.
Not all of this is a matter of conscious and explicit choice. “Socialization” in any given society involves gradually internalizing certain standards and norms prevalent in the society around them, necessarily consisting in externally observable signs of conformity. Everyone feels “social pressure” to live up to these evaluative standards, whether or not they ever make these norms conscious and explicit to themselves.
Once a person comes to define their identity in terms of some set of social norms and standards, they usually become deeply and emotionally invested in the standards themselves. They “take it personally” if anyone attacks these standards, since I feel any attack on standards in terms of which I define my identity as an attack on “me”.
One illustration of this is an otherwise puzzling phenomenon: the high status accorded to some law-breakers in certain kinds of populist conservatism. Think of Hell’s Angels in the movie Easy Rider. Hell’s Angels delight in projecting an image of “outlaws,” yet they are also “conservative” in their sometimes violent reaction to anyone who explicitly questions the validity of the standards they violate. Think of the culture-hero status that Donald Trump enjoys in some circles of Christian conservatives. The fact that he is known to violate Christian standards in his own personal life doesn’t matter that much because he has become a symbol of very aggressive conservative resentment against groups who question the validity of the standards themselves.
Deep Attachment to some particular set of standards is probably in many cases also motivated by a half-conscious but deep-seated fear of “anomie”, “normlessness.” It is very unsettling to live in an environment with no standards at all. Once people get used to living in a social environment that provides some kind of commonly recognized structure within which human life takes place, normlessness, a deeply unsettling absence of structure, can seem the only alternative.
A non-referential theory of religious symbols.
A further element necessary to understand communal religion is a non-referential theory of symbols.
A national flag is an easy example. One might ask: What is a flag a symbol of? and answer, it is the symbol of a country. But this is inadequate if it refers only to the physical country, located geographically in some particular place. Why is a physical flag or a physical country invested with so much emotion?
Symbols get invested with a great deal of emotion when they serve as very concentrated representations of a society as evaluative context people regard as essential to their identities. Prevalent social norms and standards considered in themselves constitute a system that is relatively complex and diffuse. Something like a flag becomes a “symbol,” evocative of deep emotion, when it comes to be regarded as a very concentrated representation of a complex social structure itself, on which people have become deeply dependent for their sense of their own identity as persons deserving of respect leading meaningful lives. Understood in this sense, a symbol like a flag is not really a representation of something else one can point to instead of pointing to the flag.
The institutions of communal religion–particular rituals, particular doctrinal beliefs, particular rules, particular authority-figures–are like “flags” in this respect. These serve as concrete and concentrated representations of complex phenomenon making up a religious community. They become the focus of deep emotional commitment and investment when they are felt as concentrated representations of a total complex and diffuse system on which whole communities of people have become deeply dependent for their sense of their own identity as persons deserving of respect leading meaningful lives.
Such existential dependency is the ultimate basis for people’s feeling that certain symbols are “sacred” symbols, best represented by “supernatural” imagery. There are degrees of felt sacredness. Something feels “sacred” to a given person to the extent that it is a concentrated representation of what that person feels totally dependent on for their sense of self-worth and meaning in life. It is for this reason that I take it personally when anyone attacks a symbol that has become sacred to me, because I regard an attack on that symbol as an attack on me personally. “Flag-burning” is a good modern example to reflect on in this context.
In many cases, “God” can be regarded as a sacred symbol, whose meaning for believers consists in the way that for some people, God represents in concentrated form a complex system of meanings related to beliefs, rituals, and rules constituting the makeup of communal religion, tied to their sense of being persons worthy of respect leading a meaningful life. Durkheim was not far off when he said that worship of religious symbols can be regarded as a religious community worshiping itself–not a community consisting a collection of physical human bodies, but a set of communal norms and standards on which a group of people have become very essentially dependent in the sense described above.
In this explanation, what God means for a given body of believers can only be understood by understanding the place that God has in a total system of phenomena making up a given communal religion. God is real to a given body of believers to the extent that this is true. In this explanation, “God” needs to be understood in the context of a non-referential theory of symbols. That is, there need not be any actually existing entity to which the word “God” refers. On this theory of symbols, symbols do not refer to some other entity which one can point to instead of pointing to a symbol itself. Symbols become invested with intense emotion and might become regarded as “sacred,” when them become concentrated representations of a total complex system of phenomena constituting a communal religion.
It is understandable that many believers respond to those questioning the existence of God by trying to devise “proofs for the existence of God.” On the present view, this is a misguided endeavor. Either God enters human experience as a sacred symbol invested with intense emotion for reasons described above, or He is not. If He is then there is no need for proofs of God’s existence as an independently existing entity. If He is not already experienced as a sacred symbol, no intellectual proofs will render Him so.
The explanations given here also render problematic the efforts of some scholars to answer problems due to modern realizations of religious diversity, by proposing theories about a really existing divine being, inadequately represented by diverse concrete images of the divine found in different religions, a single “God beyond the gods” so to speak. The whole function of communal religion is to answer people’s need for some concrete and particular representations of some higher reality to base their lives on.
Emic and Etic: Insider’s view and outsider’s view
An idea I find very useful in the present context is a distinction suggested by anthropologist Kenneth Pike, between an “insider’s” view and an “outsider’s” view. An anthropologist studying a given tribal culture must try to understand how phenomena making up this culture are experienced “from the inside” by members of the culture itself. He coined the term “emic” to refer to this “insider’s” view. An anthropologist studying this culture from a more academic point of view also typically views this culture from a more analytical outsider’s view. Pike suggested the term “etic” to refer to this outsider’s point of view.
This emic/etic distinction is very relevant in the present context because it is obvious that the analysis of communal religion I am presenting here is clearly an “outsider’s” (“etic”) analysis, which many religious believers might well reject, particularly when it comes to my account of God as a “symbol” rather than an objectively existing entity. This account admittedly does not accurately describe what God means to many devoted believers. My “etic” analysis is very different from an “emic” account they would give.
I think an appropriate analogy here is the often marked difference between the (“emic”) experience of a person who finds themselves deeply moved by some particular poem, and an (“etic”) analysis of the same poem by a literary critic. This is a good analogy of the way that emic and etic perspectives can diverge very markedly in cases in which the emic perspective is connected with some deep emotional involvement, and in which this deep emotional involvement is a necessary condition for the meaning that a poem, or a religious belief, has for someone who finds themselves personally engaged in a poem or belief. The whole of the discussion of communal religion given in the present essay is conducted from an etic “outsider’s” point of view, very different from any account which would match the way that emotionally involved believers would describe their experience of their religion from their own “insider’s” “emic” point of view.
Complex factors required for an adequate analysis of the persistence of religious belief in a secularized world.
Religious belief was strongest in traditional communities relatively culturally isolated from each other, that is, where the absolute/universal validity of their own particular religious worldview was unchallenged by frequent interaction with others having a different worldview. More frequent exposure to religious and cultural others tends to erode this sense of absoluteness.
In Europe, Renaissance developments in the arts and literature provided people with “humanistic” models of finding meaning in their lives through meaningful personal relationships and purposeful work, independent of religion. Great changes in people’s lives and experience, largely due to the industrial revolution, also resulted in religious systems having much less immediate emotional appeal and connection to personal life-experiences.
The spread of ideals of “rational autonomy” has also contributed to disillusion with religion. “Autonomy” means self-rule, living one’s life by internal standards rather than by social standards imposed from without. “Rational autonomy” represents an ideal in which a person develops their own guiding principles by their own processes of critical rational thinking.
Above I gave a functional analysis of religious belief and the hold that such beliefs have on people. But religious believers themselves generally have a more straightforward, concrete, and literal minded view of their own beliefs, taking them as representations of objectively existing facts existing in an unseen other world. In the modern world, science has become the paradigm for critical rational thinking, and among more educated people this has severely undermined the plausibility of belief in unseen realities for which no convincing rational evidence is available.
And still communal religion persists. Reasons for this are rather complex. Communal religions are often connected to nationalist sentiments, ethnic and family loyalties, and cultural conservatism, and so have unfortunately often been associated with violence and war against those not members of one’s own “tribe.”
But, following my general approach to religion, I want to propose a theory about the ideal case, as at least a measure for measuring other cases, as follows.
Modern secular societies have done a great deal of good in providing widespread opportunities for moderate material prosperity, and allowing freedom to make one’s own lifestyle choices. What they fail to offer is a context for living one’s life that represents full of higher ideals to strive for, “higher” in an ethical sense and also in the sense of higher levels of fulfillment of man’s quest for meaning. Many people feel a need for connection to something “higher” in this sense. This is what communal religion represents for them, and represents this in a very concrete way, in the form of concrete rituals, rules for concrete behavior, and beliefs clothed in concrete supernatural imagery, which form an essential part of belonging to a concrete supportive community.
Concreteness is important here because in their natural condition most people are very concrete-minded. “Concrete-mindedness” is a mentality that takes the world of concrete material realities as the paradigm case of “reality,” so that everything really real must be able to be pictured as some kind of material entity, or some other kind of entity, something like material entities but more immaterial or “spiritual.” (Even “spirtual” realities are often conceived of as like material entities, except they are made of spiritual stuff rather than material stuff.) Concrete-mindedness is the sense that everything really “true” is true in virtue of its connection to some kind of concretely conceivable entities.
Concrete imagery also has emotional appeal lacking in ideals less connected to anything concrete.
In the best case, concretely oriented communal religious institutions provide an environment fostering and supporting personal virtue in individual members, given much less support in a purely secular society. One can think of many cases in which this seems to be true.
On the other hand, the concrete imagery in which religious beliefs are clothed is a special and continuing source of problems. The very importance of the concreteness of religious beliefs lies in the implicit assumption that only concrete realities are really real. Believers regard the concrete objects of their belief as the basis for a way of life founded with those beliefs, a basis in something “really true.” And the natural assumption is that, if something is really true, it is objectively true, a true picture of what is really “out there,” which often brings religious belief into conflict with modern science, the paradigm case today of a truly rational approach to discovering objective truth about concrete reality. Further, the natural assumption is that, if something is really true, it is true for everyone everywhere, making diversity of beliefs a source of great problems in a world where one is much more likely than in the past to be made aware of, and actually encounter this diversity. Nevertheless, when a person’s fundamental identity is closely tied to a set of religious beliefs clothed in concrete imagery, questioning those beliefs is felt as a shaking the foundations of one’s life.
These seem to be continuing sources of difficult dilemmas faced by those who look to communal religion to fulfill a felt need for connection to some “higher” reality. Personal “spirituality,” treated in many other essays on this website, offers a partial solution. But to be practiced well, spirituality requires sustained and subtle attention to one’s own inner life, something unfamiliar to many people. Historically, personal spirituality has been the province of a rather small minority of individuals (monks and nuns, in more traditional societies in Europe and Asia). Perhaps the availability of higher education and more leisure, as well as the opportunity to learn about diverse spiritualities, will make personal spirituality more attractive to more people in the modern world.
