Go Tell it on the Mountain
Lyndsey Godwin
Jordan Tate
Alec Risch
WCP 222-Natural Systems II
Instructor- Hays Cummins
May 4, 2001
Abstract:
The recent resurgence of
Christianity makes one wonder about the need for God and religion.
Christianity mean that more people are finding faith in God, or could the
identification as a Christian serve as something else?
congregation and group identification.
It is possible that this resurgence is in fact not a movement toward
God, but rather a need for community and identity. Through comparison of churchgoers versus non-churchgoers and
their attitudes toward community one can notice the correlation between
community and being religious.
Those that consider themselves to be religious learn more toward ideas
of community than those who would not label themselves as religious.
Introduction
There has been a noticeable
resurgence of Christianity among America’s youth. It is illustrated in
the movement of Christian music toward the mainstream, i.e. groups like
“Sixpence, None the Richer,”
“Creed” and “Jars of Clay.”
in Christian based conferences and symposiums such as Agape (Christian festival
of music and worship) and Chrysalis (retreat for the strengthening of Christian
faith in youth). It is hard to miss the clothing and accessories as well, from
W.W.J.D. bracelets and shirts to bumper stickers and key chains.
have decided to make a visible confession.
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is our belief that the resurgence of Christian affiliation reflects not a
return moral conservatism, but a need for community and social
involvement. We wish to see if
this resurgence exists on Miami’s campus and if it is because of a need
for social involvement. Are people
joining Christian organizations in search of religious leadership, or in search
of community and group identification?
We believe the gregarious nature of human beings spurred the resurgence,
more than a need for “religion”.
These instances refer directly to
those who identify with Christianity, but what about those who do not subscribe
to any form of organized religion [a “system of beliefs, rituals and
ethics centered around some notion of transcendence (Walsh-Bowers 223)].style="mso-spacerun: yes"> There are many people who consider
themselves to be spiritual (believe in and feel connected to a power beyond
oneself), but have claim no to a religious organization or assembly.style="mso-spacerun: yes"> It is possible to be religious and feel
no spirituality, or to feel spiritual and have no connection to a
religion. However, do both those
who assert only a spiritual belief and no religious affiliation have the same
need or tendencies toward community as those who ascribe to an organized
religion?
themselves to be spiritual (believe in and feel connected to a power beyond
oneself), but have claim no to a religious organization or assembly.
no spirituality, or to feel spiritual and have no connection to a
religion. However, do both those
who assert only a spiritual belief and no religious affiliation have the same
need or tendencies toward community as those who ascribe to an organized
religion?
Question:
What
factors contributed to the creation of religion and the propagation
thereof? Is the need for community
a key piece of the beginnings of organized religions?
Hypothesis:
believe that the need for human contact through community is a primary factor
in the propagation of religion and theorize that this same factor strongly
influenced the origin of religion.
We intend to support this claim through analysis of present religion (as
a parallel to religions’ beginnings) and some of the basic precepts of
human nature. By comparing
religious and non-religious people, their church attendance and their
tendencies toward community we will discover any connections that may exist.
Relevance:
By investigating these questions
we hope to discover the driving force behind growing memberships in American
Christian organizations. Is there
something inherent in human nature that drives the creation and evolution of
religion? Perhaps it is the need
to explain the inexplicable. Humans
are renowned for their fear of the unknown. By creating a “higher being” or designing a
“higher order” beyond the capacity of human comprehension we
relieve the stress of not knowing, and replace it with faith.style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Organized religions, especially those
of the Western Hemisphere, focus on the congregation, or community.style="mso-spacerun: yes"> The practice of organized worship
fulfills a need for community, and gives individuals a sense of membership in a
great scheme.
of the Western Hemisphere, focus on the congregation, or community.
fulfills a need for community, and gives individuals a sense of membership in a
great scheme.
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Southern Evangelical churches can
be seen as a model of the resurgence of Christianity in America as the
traditions of this church spread beyond the boundaries of the south and into
mainstream America. This growth has indicated that “those who join,
particularly young people, seem to be searching for community and personal
well-being. Most are not moral
crusaders even if they tend to be conservative on some social issues”
(Shibley 4). We feel that this is
can be paralleled to the increase of interest in Christian Organizations on
campus. This interest may not
necessarily due to moral belief, but instead a need for community.style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Historically, in addition to the sense
of community, group belonging meant a safe place in response to the need for
survival. Religion is one outcome
of the need for assemblage, to hunt and gather food, and find or build
shelter. Religion has the ability
to “enable humans to generate knowledge and to cooperate in the service
of group survival (Alderink 222).
Larry J. Alderlink has provided an over view of Walter Burkert’s
Natural Theory of Religion, explaining that religion maybe a part of evolution
and therefore ingrained in human genes.
of community, group belonging meant a safe place in response to the need for
survival. Religion is one outcome
of the need for assemblage, to hunt and gather food, and find or build
shelter. Religion has the ability
to “enable humans to generate knowledge and to cooperate in the service
of group survival (Alderink 222).
Larry J. Alderlink has provided an over view of Walter Burkert’s
Natural Theory of Religion, explaining that religion maybe a part of evolution
and therefore ingrained in human genes.
There is further evidence for the
human need to be member to a group or groups in the fields of psychology.style="mso-spacerun: yes"> It is believed that as humans we need
to categorize and identify ourselves.
We have to be able to differentiate ourselves from other beings and have
self-knowledge. This has been
described as one of the defining aspects of being a human.style="mso-spacerun: yes"> A strong aspect of this identity
formation originates from group affiliation(s) or a person’s social
identity (Deaux 4).
“Personal identity is defined, at least in part, by group
memberships, and social categories are infused with personal meaning”
(Deaux 5). Not only does a
person’s identity come in some part from the groups that one claims
membership to, but each of those categories fulfills characteristics specific
to a being. “Identity
emerges from the context of intergroup relations. Thus one defines oneself as a member of a particular
in-group vis-à-vis an out-group” (Deaux 4).style="mso-spacerun: yes"> It is possible that the need for
community stems from the human need to identify and be identified by the people
one is surrounded by. Community in
this sense becomes two fold; it helps to define a person’s beliefs while
providing said person with a base group with which ideals are shared.style="mso-spacerun: yes"> This need to identify does not only
create groups within which one belongs (in-groups), but also groups that one is
against (out-groups). It is
possible that this idea can be traced back to the human need to identify those
whom one could trust and those that one knew was an enemy.style="mso-spacerun: yes"> If this is the case, it seems possible
that religions would form out of these groups as a product of necessity.
to categorize and identify ourselves.
We have to be able to differentiate ourselves from other beings and have
self-knowledge. This has been
described as one of the defining aspects of being a human.
formation originates from group affiliation(s) or a person’s social
identity (Deaux 4).
“Personal identity is defined, at least in part, by group
memberships, and social categories are infused with personal meaning”
(Deaux 5). Not only does a
person’s identity come in some part from the groups that one claims
membership to, but each of those categories fulfills characteristics specific
to a being. “Identity
emerges from the context of intergroup relations. Thus one defines oneself as a member of a particular
in-group vis-à-vis an out-group” (Deaux 4).
community stems from the human need to identify and be identified by the people
one is surrounded by. Community in
this sense becomes two fold; it helps to define a person’s beliefs while
providing said person with a base group with which ideals are shared.
create groups within which one belongs (in-groups), but also groups that one is
against (out-groups). It is
possible that this idea can be traced back to the human need to identify those
whom one could trust and those that one knew was an enemy.
that religions would form out of these groups as a product of necessity.
adequately address our topic we must make an effort to understand the Christian
religion in general. First, what is religion? Where did it come from, why did
it evolve, is it ingrained in human nature and instinct? Religion has been an
issue of constant confusion and debate for as long man has existed, but did
religion and faith groups all originate from the same phenomenon? According to
Emile Durkheim, there are debatably several types of religious roots.
evolved from a distinct separation of conscious and non-conscious thought (i.e.
the waking thought and the dream world). The soul was separate from man, but
influenced his daily actions resulting in a distinct delineation between man
and soul. The soul could do things man could not. It could influence action during daily life.
death, because death could have been viewed as a prolonged sleep. So, in this
respect, religion comes from the self, thereby discounting the innate power of
it, because it is merely given power by belief. Durkheim stated
"religions, which have held so considerable a place in history, and to
which, in all times, men have to receive the energy which they must have to
live, should be made up of a tissue of illusions."
The “tissue of illusions” that Durkheim refers to is the power man
places is his own thought and rationalization, we, as humans (according to
Durkheim), have created religion through our own communities and similar views,
yet attribute this power and belief to a god. This view on religion and this practice of religion itself
merely reduce this type of religion to a hallucination or R.E.M. cycle.
was Naturalism. Naturalism was a human invention to explain natural phenomenon
that affected our survival. After language was created, humans started with the
words for basic human action, and then personified nature by giving human based
definitions to elements. River became “something that moves
swiftly” and wind was “one who blows or whistles”, and so on.
So, natural forces were perceived to be godlike phenomenon due to a lack of
explanation. Much like the animists, the spirit/soul was separated from the
body, but not through sleep or conscious thought, but through death. Thus spirituality
is derived from an altered perception of nature and the surrounding world.
After the deification of the spirit/soul what is separate from the physical
body (from fear of death) moves on to affect the natural world. Once again,
they are worshiping a creation of themselves, how they view nature, by adding
mystery and wonder to their surroundings, and their souls. They are only
worshiping the significance that they give to their natural surroundings, such
as the wind that blows or whistles.
religion is Totemism. Totemism is
the practice of clans giving significance to an animal or plant that they feel
they have a mystical connection with. Imagine that the first two options
don’t quite seem to fit. Spirituality and divinity cannot come from man,
or nature, so where is there a third option? Totemism is a more fundamental and
basic form of religious practice. If you do not have the desire or ability to
create some form of spiritual strength, then find things around you to worship.
Totemism is the practice of identifying with an object, be it animal or plant
that the tribe/cult personifies to be their higher power.
The primary power of this religion is not the object that they worship, but a
kinship that the members have. It is not a family relationship by blood, but
they all share the same name, the name that is derived from the totem. This
totem is considered sacred and is branded on property, people, and worshiped
much like a crucifix. This is not worshiping an animal, but merely what the
tribe feels that the animal represents, because the tribal members also belong
in that spiritual realm because of their association with the totem. The
emblem, the actual animal/plant, and the tribal members are all considered to
be sacred. All of the power given to this totem, and the power/spirituality
given to man by the totem (which is given to man by himself because the
power/spirituality is given to the totem by man) is created by the same force.
It is created by a need for community.
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That is the one common bond
here, survival and community. Man worships the significance that he gives to
things, that are merely representations of the natural or mental world, and is
in turn merely worshiping himself. This is the common thread, man giving
objects/nature/himself spiritual power and significance so he is able to
explain the “unexplainable” and control the mystical forces that
affect him and his world. It is a survival technique that brings people together
and enables them to relate to their environment. The question that is with us
now is what affects today’s youth to follow the same patterns and to
thirst for the same types of comfort with the mysteries of the world mostly
explained and survival being less of a concern. Why does man feel that there
needs to be something greater than himself and a need to submit to this power?
Is it instinctual, or merely a societal desire to “be a better
Christian”?
Methods
and Materials-
Our experiment relies
solely on surveys and the students of Miami University.
locations in attempt to get a variance of churchgoers and non-churchgoers.
surveys on an event organized by the Christian organizations on campus.
“Neo” provided an array of different religious affiliations and
organizations, our original plan was to specifically survey members of such
organizations at their weekly meetings.
However, this event offered a fantastic opportunity to reach a variety
of people in one setting. We
continued our surveying (forty) in the Shriver food court where a large number
of differing students can be found each day. Shriver center is one on campus location that nearly every
student frequents, therefore it offers the best random sampling of
Miami’s students. In
addition to these two locations, we did about twenty surveys in an uptown
coffee shop, Buzz. Buzz averages a
rather liberal and generally unreligious clientele who helped to assure that we
had many different views on spirituality, religion and church going, hence
making for a more convincing comparison of views on community.
The questions include; age,
sex, and year in school, participation in an on campus religious organization,
religious upbringing and current personal religious beliefs.
rank a list of eight things for their influence on a person’s
participation in an on campus organization. The categories were Search for answers, Need for support,
Community, To learn more about God, To meet people, Free food, Teach/Share
about your religious experience or Worship with a ranking system which ran from
1 to 4: high influence (1), Moderate Influence (2), Minimal Influence (3), or
not a consideration (4). Those who claimed no participation in an on campus
religious organization, were asked to rank these items as if they
hypothetically chose to join such an organization. This allowed us to see where emphasis fell, even without the
participation in an organization.
Coming to this survey and
this format was a long process; originally we had planned on focusing solely on
those who participated in religious organizations to see if they leaned toward
ideas of community. However, after
some redirection, we realized that this offered little comparison and would
lead to somewhat inconclusive results.
It was at this point that we decided to also survey a variety of people
and compare the tendencies of the religious versus the non-religious.
compare the rankings of the community oriented categories (need for support,
community and to meet people) between religious and non-religious people.
looking for higher rankings in the community related areas from those who
claimed to be religious.
Results and Discussion-
stated in the methods section, a random sample survey was taken at two places,
one at a religious “revival”, and the other at Shriver Center.
primarily Christian people assembled with the intent of hearing a revival type
speech. There was a noticeable difference
between the attitudes of the people gathered here and the people whom we
surveyed at Shriver. Aside from that analysis, and our primary point as random
sampling, was served by taking the general consensus of the surveys. To gain a
general understanding of how religion affects perceptions of community, and
desire for other human contact we split 6 of the survey questions into parts.
Part one, community oriented; these parts include, need for community, need for
support, and to meet people. All three stem from the basic human desire for
community and agreeable contact. The introspective religious traits stem more
from the spiritual side of religion, these traits were: learn about god,
worship, and a search for as answers.
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#1 and #2 there existed a stark contrast between actions/beliefs of churchgoers
and non-churchgoers. In this we were able to reject the Null hypothesis that
stated that there would exist a similarity. The P-Value for each graph was
.0003. This data gave us the knowledge that in the realm of community (relying
on others) and spiritual (introspective) the attendance of church does have an
impact on the importance of each group. In both cases, churchgoers felt that it
each category was more important that non-churchgoers.
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relying on others and introspective religious beliefs by checking each
individual value against spirituality and church attendance. Graph #3 rejected
the Null hypothesis and enabled us to ascertain that spirituality had a greater
influence that attendance of church in the peoples need for support. This was
against our hypothesis. Graph #4 discusses the desire to meet people, one of
the values that we grouped as a community need. In this graph, people that were
not spiritual tended to share about the same level of need whether or not they
went to church. This factor is very useful because it help us determine the
true cause of the variation. In this case, spiritual people that did go to
church (and slightly on spiritual people who went to church) tended to place a
greater value on the need to meet people. This is in accordance of our
hypothesis because the attendance of church, i.e. participation in organized
religion, did make a noticeable difference in the importance of this particular
community-based value.
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thereby also supports our hypothesis. People in general, spiritual or not, that
went to church, placed a greater value on the need for community. Furthermore,
regardless of spirituality, the people with the same spiritual standing in the
church-attending group placed a higher value on the need for community.
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of church. It showed us that (as its design) people who attended church more
frequently tended to place a higher value on worship. src="http://nsystems.wcp.muohio.edu/HumanNature2001/image015.jpg" alt="File written by Adobe Photoshop® 4.0"
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between introspective religious acts and spirituality. In both situations,
regardless of church attendance, the spiritual people put more value in
learning about god, searching for answers, and teaching about god. To further
test our hypothesis, we decided to split up the people at and not at a revival.
The reason to do this came because we felt that the results from the revival
may be biased because of the elated religious state of mind that the
participants may or may not have been in. Although these people are inherently
more religious an(a10
and
spiritual (as you can see from the surveys) there may be unwarranted
differences.
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Hypothesis thereby telling us that there was not enough different between
spirituality and church attendance to make any sort of prediction. This tells
us that the people who did take the survey at Shriver, were primarily sharing a
definition of spirituality and religion that was not that much different, and
possibly not clearly defined.
the community sum (discussed previously) and the introspective sum. The results
we derived from these two graphs both rejected the Null Hypothesis thereby
stating that attendance of church, even in a highly spiritual revival setting,
still does influence the need for community values over introspective values.
We can say this because the P-Value (although small) is 13 times greater for
personal values.src="http://nsystems.wcp.muohio.edu/HumanNature2001/image018.jpg" alt="File written by Adobe Photoshop® 4.0"
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not enough difference in graph #14 (it failed to reject the null hypothesis) to
ascertain any difference between perceptions of need of community with a change
in spirituality. This is not say that it is not important, but merely that in
this group, a highly spiritual and high frequency of church attendance,
spirituality has a much smaller influence on community than does church
attendance (organized religion).
hypothesis, graph #15 rejected the Null hypothesis, telling us that
spirituality still has a significant influence over the personal, introspective
aspects of religion.
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supports our hypothesis, but not nearly enough to make any certain, or even
sturdy claims on. It supports our claims based mainly on what you believe. But,
regardless of the lack of certainty of some our claims one fact seemed to
remain clear. More people existing in the non-spiritual sense (i.e. going to
church and participating in the organized religion, spiritual or not) felt a
stronger need for community.
a Spearman Rank comparison. We
asked each survey respondent to rank factors that influence their participation
in religious organizations. In this
graph, we compared spiritual and non-spiritual respondents, and what influenced
their involvement most. The
comparisons are in percentages of the total response. A response with higher percentage means that factor was of
less importance than one with a lower percentage. In our comparison, people who marked “other”
usually said it had that it had the highest influence.
marked that response is insignificant in the scheme of the total analysis.
spiritual people seem more likely than non-spiritual people to attend a
religious organization to learn about God. Spiritual people are also less concerned with attending with
the sole purpose of meeting new people.
However, Spiritual and non-spiritual people are equally concerned with
the community atmosphere of religious groups. The trend in the line graph suggests that, if the question
about food was removed, the responses for spiritual and non-spiritual people
would be very similar. The desires
to learn about God and worship differ the greatest. That is expected.
Conclusion:
great deal of our hypothesis, there are several factors standing in our way.
The first, and most unavoidable, is people’s unique definitions of
religion, spirituality, and the large variance of religious practice. A few
things that may help for the next group that attempts to do this study would be
a more specific survey with grouped questions. Our original intent was to
question community and individual spirituality in several different ways, but
some of the questions may have been taken in the wrong light. Another factor
that stands in the way of asking a direct question is the media and idealism.
This may sound like stretches at first, but people have preconceived notions of
what a good Christian is, what, and primarily how, he or she believes. This
possible stood in our way as in the answers we see many ideals of worship that
may not be truly lived up to, or even lived at all. We would also like to know
more about how religion changes with the time, to aid us in gauging whether or
not our analysis were correct.
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Walsh-Bowers, Richard.
Community Psychology. “
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Smith, Christian.
Evangelicals Really Want. Berkley: University
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