John Levi Martin Eric Moore Univesity of Chicago
Although the social sciences have studied the everyday use of categories, the category of religion is often treated as a pre-defined independent variable rather than an object of study itself. This tendency has resulted in a gap within our understanding of what religion actually is to various groups of people. The problem with this situation is that we can only truly understand public debates surrounding religion if we understand the contours of what happens when people call something religion and how religion's referents may change systematically, not randomly, across social contexts, including those associated with sociological research. One way to address this issue is through research methods associated with cognitive sociology. Cognitive sociology attempts to build off of practices and theories from the cognitive sciences to better understand the social aspects of cognitive and cultural processes. This project therefore works towards solving three persisting empirical methodological problems related to the study of the category of religion. 1) It addresses the unanswered question of how people distinguish the religious from the secular and spiritual in everyday interactions. The project investigates this question through a study of two very different groups of people, self-identified atheists and practicing Christians. By examining the cultural and cognitive processes people use in making distinctions between religion, the secular and the spiritual we can learn about the shape of religion as a real-world category. These groups are studied both in the Bible Belt and the Midwest. 2) Because the project looks at the category of religion partially from the perspectives of non-believers, it also explores the American atheist experience in a way that has been lacking up until now. The importance of this exploration is clear in light of the growing secular population and ongoing debates over the correct place for religion in politics and public life. 3) The project makes use of insights from cognitive sociology to create a unique research design that incorporates both traditional qualitative techniques along with new interpretive strategies and additional quantitative measures. We literally think differently in different cognitive situations and this fact can be used to our advantage in sociological research. By using participant observation, in-depth interviews and adding a variety of cognitive exercises a more accurate picture of cultural phenomena can be created than would be possible with any one method alone.
Broader Impacts
Beyond its contributions to social science, this project furthers the larger public conversation over the appropriate role of religion in the United States. Ambiguity over religion as a category, and specifically our lack of understanding of it, makes it difficult to analyze religion and its place in many current controversies, including those surrounding healthcare funding (e.g. paying for contraception), electoral politics (e.g. perceived and actual religious positions of major party presidential candidates), and international relations (e.g. the United States and the politics of the Middle East). Taking into account the re-emergence of religion in recent years, on-going debates over the place of religion in a modern democracy and the numerous controversies involving religion worldwide, understanding the processes of how religion is created and understood as a category by ordinary persons becomes crucial. Likewise, it is also vital to increase our understanding of the non-religious and their relationships to religion. About 1.6% of the U.S. population is estimated to self-identify as atheist; this is approximately the same size as the U.S. Jewish population and more than twice the American Buddhist, Muslim or Hindu populations. However, relatively little is known about atheists, and this lack of knowledge creates difficulties in the ongoing conversation over the place of religion in United States.
Intellectual Merit Although the social sciences have studied the everyday use of categories like race or politics, the category of religion is often treated as a pre-defined independent variable rather than an object of study itself. This has not only left a gap in the literature, but it has left a gap in our understanding of what religion actually is to various groups of people. The problem with this situation is that we can only truly understand public debates surrounding religion if we understand the contours of what happens when people call something religion and how religion’s referents may change systematically, not randomly, across social contexts, including those associated with sociological research. This project has shown that in practice the category of religion is viewed in very different ways by different groups of people. Among atheists what is viewed as religious has to do with how closely things are to a perceived ideal of evangelical Christianity. Certain characteristics, such as a perceived link between religion and conservative political ideology, are held in greater importance than others in determining the degree to which something is religious. In other words the context of religious symbols indicates their strength and character; religious symbols within a context of liberal political ideology are more palatable and actually less religious to the atheists than symbols associated with conservative political ideologies. Among the subset of Evangelical Christians studied in this project many people differentiate between "religion," which is considered a fairly negative category, and a "relationship with Christ," which is viewed in a positive light. Therefore, within this community, religious symbols do not necessarily mark something as actually religious in the common sense use of the term, but rather it is the inner relational state of the person to Jesus Christ that matters. One practical result of this is that the boundaries between religious and non-religious spheres are virtually non-existent. Anything can have potentially religious significance regardless of whether or not it happens in the presence of obvious external religious symbols. Religion for these Christians is thus not a bounded category and the boundaries between religion and other areas of life are seen to be fuzzy and almost non-existent. These results were in part discovered through the use of techniques and theories taken from so-called cognitive sociology. Cognitive sociology attempts to build off of practices and theories from the cognitive sciences to better understand the social aspects of cognitive and cultural processes. Thus a second contribution of this project has been expanding the methodological toolkit used within social science disciplines. Broader Impact Taking into account the re-emergence of religion in recent years, on-going debates over the place of religion in a modern democracy and the numerous controversies involving religion worldwide, understanding the processes of how religion is created and understood as a category by ordinary persons becomes crucial. Likewise, it is also vital to increase our understanding of the non-religious and their relationships to religion. About 2% of the U.S. population is estimated to self-identify as atheist; this is approximately the same size as the U.S. Jewish population and more than twice the American Buddhist, Muslim or Hindu populations. However, relatively little is known about atheists, especially concerning their daily encounters with instances of religion and their interactions with those who identify as religious. This project thus helps us make sense of the many issues in society where religion is involved. Broadening our understanding of how diverse groups within our nation conceive of and evaluate the general category of religion aids the public discussion on a wide range of issues, including health care, education, and politics.
