The Evolution of Religion: Part One

Do we really want to go there?

The Christian Problem with Anthropology of Religion

Anthropology of religion is a field of inquiry that I would have never ventured into as a Christian… 25 years ago. This would have been akin to reading The Satanic Bible for my morning devotional time. First off, the word (much less the study of) “anthropology” would have been a red flag. After all, everything I needed to know about human beings was in the Book of Genesis, and Adam and Eve. The first three chapters explained it all. I would have also balked at the word “religion”. As a good Evangelical, I proudly proclaimed, “Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship.”

If all that wasn’t bad enough, just a cursory look into the field of the anthropology of religion reveals its ties to the theory of evolution, which is a problem for many creationists as I was at the time. Additionally, viewing religion as a phenomenon of evolution scared the hell out of me. Anthropology of religion implies that religion is not ontologically real, but something we made up in our evolution as a species. That’s frightening, right? This would mean that my beliefs in God and my entire Christian belief-system attached to it… was just a figment of my evolutionary imagination. This is why I would have never ventured down these paths previously as an Evangelical Christian.

Both the philosophy of religion and anthropology of religion (as well as psychology of religion and neuroscience of religion) are academic disciplines in fields such as psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and social sciences. Their interest in religion is not based upon being an adherent of any particular religious belief-system. That’s not to say that these areas of examination or done in a vacuum, completely untethered from the religious, spiritual or philosophical proclivities of those doing the research and work. For me personally, 25 years removed from my religious life and deconstruction process, I am not provoked by examining religion and spirituality from this vantage point.

What exactly is anthropology of religion?

In a nutshell, the anthropology of religion explores how different forms of religion came to be, how they change, and what they mean for the nature of human experience. Since the early 1900s anthropologists have been conducting field research to retrieve, record, classify, and interpret religious beliefs and practices.

A typical anthropology of religion course will do the following:

• Define religion and explain its significance in human cultures.
• Summarize theories developed by anthropologists to explain the importance of supernatural beliefs in human communities.
• Identify the four elements of religion (cosmology, belief in the supernatural, rules of behavior, and rituals) and explain how each element contributes to religious practices.
• Define rites of passage, rites of intensification, and rites of revitalization and explain the purpose of each type of ritual.

In the 19th century cultural anthropology was dominated by an interest in cultural evolution; most anthropologists assumed a simple distinction between "primitive" and "modern" religion and tried to provide accounts of how the former evolved into the latter. In the 20th century most anthropologists rejected this approach. The anthropology of religion today reflects the influence of, or an engagement with, such theorists as Karl Marx (1818-1883), Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Émile Durkheim (1858-1917), and Max Weber (1864-1920). Anthropologists of religion are especially concerned with how religious beliefs and practices may reflect political or economic forces; or the social functions of religious beliefs and practices.

For Karl Marx, religion constitutes a system of beliefs that orients individual to otherworldly concerns and masks the harsh realities of the lived human experience.

Durkheim and Weber, social anthropologists, conceive of religion as culture. To them, religion is a pattern of beliefs, values, and actions that are acquired by members of a group. Religion constitutes an ordered system of meanings, beliefs, and values that define the place of human beings in the world. The human capacity to acquire and use symbolic thought in everyday transactions is an essential element of culture. In religion they found the articulation of a coherent worldview that meaningfully ordered human life.

And it should be no surprise that Freud approached the anthropology of religion through the lens of analytical psychology.

It goes without saying that the subject of the anthropology of religion cannot be addressed with any great detail in one short Substack post. If this is the case, why even bring it up?

How Anthropology of Religion is Useful

I work with people who are abandoning religion. The common term used for this is “deconstruction”. For many people, this means their bedrock existential assumptions and beliefs are shattered. Suddenly, they wake up in a world with no absolutes and careening towards nihilism.

A major shift in religious identity is rocketing to the forefront of American life with Generation Z. Gen Z, born between 1999 and 2015, is the first truly “post-Christian” generation. More than any other generation before them, Gen Z does not assert a religious identity. The percentage of Gen Z that identifies as atheist is double that of the general U.S. population. For Gen Z, “atheist” is no longer a dirty word. The percentage of teens who identify as such is rapidly growing. In my work with Gen Z, they really aren't all that concerned about whether God really commanded armies to commit genocide in the Old Testament, they are trying to figure out if life has meaning and worth living.

For some time now I have been using the term “existential health” as a worthy and universally applicable objective for one’s deconstruction process. We've all heard of “physical health” and “mental health”. It’s time to start talking about “existential health”. For me, “existential health” means:

• having a felt sense of meaning to one’s life

• relating constructively to the givens of human existence

• adopting a rationale for being a person of love and compassion

The anthropology of religion speaks of “religious evolution”. The idea is that there has been an evolution of human imagination, namely religious imagination, to enhance survival chance of our species under existential pressure. Examples of this would be the religious reinforcement of social bonds to enhance the survival chance of social group, and religious or supernatural beliefs to alleviate stress and anxiety to enhance the survival chance of individuals. In other words, “religion” is one tool our species created in order to bolster the moods, motivations and cohesion to keep the project of survival moving forward.

At a point in our evolution as a species we became acutely aware that something bigger than ourselves was happening in the universe. We found ourselves thrust into an epic story that often seemed outside our control, and at times frightening. The opening line of the Breton fisherman’s prayer reads, “The sea is so great and my boat is so small.” The magnitude of the universe pressed upon a budding species striving to survive. More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died out. We should never take lightly just how menacing a Survivor episode this truly was, and how the development of religious imagination played a pivotal role.

According to the anthropology of religion, in order to cope and survive the givens of human existence our species started doing something that could be identified with the word “religion”. A fairly common definition of “religion” in anthropology might be that religion is a pattern of beliefs, values, and actions that are acquired by members of a group. Religion constitutes an ordered system of meanings, beliefs, and values that define the place of human beings in the world. Anthropology of religion seeks to understand how this works as a dynamic aspect of culture, and how individuals interact with their social environments to create systems of belief and ritual in their efforts to make sense of the world.

In the anthropology of religion, religion is defined as a set of beliefs and behaviors based on the theory that produces a shared imagination to enhance survival chance under existential pressure. As a result, religion formation requires imagination and existential pressure. The additional requirement is called “ontogenetic ritualization”, which involves religious participants mutually shaping each other’s behavior during the course of repeated interactions to achieve ritualization. The transformation from the natural instinctive behaviors to the imaginary behaviors requires imagination, existential pressure, and ontogenetic ritualization.

I’ve mentioned “existential pressure” a few times. What exactly is this?

Imagine as a new species the trauma and confusion of the reality of death of one’s biological offspring and the loss of life of one’s in-group. It’s perhaps easy for us now, with the buffet of afterlife options available to chose from, to not appreciate the struggle of our earliest ancestors in coming to terms with death. Additionally, severe hardship, severe danger, and severe unfamiliarity-uncertainty were everyday realities in the struggle for our species survival.

Today we have a variety of means to mitigate the anxiety and despair these realities can create through a coherent scientific explanation of the universe, and modern psychology to bolster a strong psychological immune system to cope with the volatility of the lived human experience. As our species evolved we became more acutely aware of our smallness in an infinite universe, and thus the existential questions of our species were born - How did we get here? Why are we here? What is the meaning of all this? Is there something out there in charge? What happens when you die?

Anthropology of religion postulates that our species created what is identified as “religion” to address these challenges and the necessity of doing so for survival. This survival tool of “religion” namely came in two forms:'

1. Supernatural beliefs as answers and explanations to questions and concerns that could not be sufficiently addressed within the raw materials of their lived human experience. What this provided was a strong psychological immune system to support the necessary mood and motivation to face the rigors of surviving and thriving.

2. Religious rites and practices to reinforce and strengthen in-group cohesion and solidarity. This assured the only realistic chance of surviving as a species - cooperation, mutual aid, and coalition. One could argue that this religious imagination and behavior prevented our species from becoming one of the 99% of species that didn’t survive.

How did religion save our species?

As a reminder, this post cannot and does not offer a complete understanding of the anthropology of religion. Perhaps the real value of this article is to whatever extent in might inspire this field of study if it interests you.

In my own research into the anthropology of religion, I discovered how the religious imagination of our species accomplished many significant things. Here are two:

1. Where there is hardship, there is a need for a comforter. At one level this could be another human being in one’s biological family or social in-group. But as a supernatural countermeasure to extreme hardship our species created an imaginary supernatural love. I’m not meaning the word “imaginary” to be offensive. Even if there is “God” it would require some use of our imagination to make this meaningful and relatable. I use the word “imaginary” because I am looking at religion through the lens of the anthropology of religion. The value of an imaginary supernatural love would be that it is a fixed, steadfast, unchanging, pervading, and sustaining. This supernatural love provides an inner equanimity that bolsters the endeavor of survival.

2. Where there is unfamiliarity-uncertainty, there is a need for structure, order and authority. Otherwise, there is unresolved unfamiliarity-uncertainty, there is phobia - a persistent, excessive, unrealistic fear. You can’t stave off species extinction when you are paralyzed by phobia. As a countermeasure, according to the anthropology of religion, the first humans created imaginary supernatural authority and providence. This supernatural authority and providence provided inner equanimity and acceptance of the unknown - two things to aid the daunting struggle to survive.

Now, fast forward 2 - 6 million years later to today. Enter French anthropologist René Girard and his “mimetic theory”, which says that human desire is not an autonomous process, but a collective one and further, that we establish the satisfaction of our desires through imitation. Through the lens of anthropology of religion, it looks like this:

• Homo sapiens fashioned the imaginary tool of religion in order to survive and thrive as a species

• This religious imagination of supernatural beliefs, practices, rites, etc. has endured because that’s what our species does - we satisfy our human needs and desires through imitation.

So for example, the anthropology of religion would think of Christian theism in these terms. An anthropologist of religion might say that Christian theism is the perfect imaginary antidote to existential anxiety and dread. Christian theism offers supernatural love, supernatural authority, and supernatural providence.

As stated somewhere several paragraphs earlier, a person who leaves their religious background is basically deep-sixing the very tool that has been instrumental to the survival of our species. And so it should be no surprise that this can lead to the same existential pressure that prompted the religious imagination of our species to begin with, and which bolstered the necessary moods, motivations and social cohesion to survive and thrive. For the deconstructing person, they find themselves in our original ancestral quagmire of fear, uncertainty and isolation. Leaving religion is essentially departing from the mimetic desire pattern. A lonely and frightening place to be, and possibly even a nihilistic place to be.

For me, because of my work with people who deconstructed their religious background and are left with shattered core assumptions and beliefs, I seek to offer non-religious tools for charting a path forward that supports the moods, motivations and social cohesion for a healthy, meaningful and liberating life. For these reasons I have found the field of the anthropology of religion is useful.

What should you take from this post?

1. The point of this post is not to claim that all religion and religious experience is imaginary and not real in any other sense.

2. I wrote this post because the field of the anthropology of religion offers useful insights to understanding how religion functions in a person’s life, and how the loss of religious absolutes in the deconstruction process is becoming more common and needs addressed in non-religious ways.

3. You may have no interest in the anthropology of religion. It’s all good. It would be a mistake to reify the explanations of the anthropology of religion as if they are the absolute “gospel truth”. It’s just one lens.

4. What Super Bowl match-up would you most like to see?

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