In the wake of some give-and-take about what constitutes a religious and what a secular perspective on the recent post about the ‘death’ of conservative Christianity, I was much taken by a brief BBC Newshour story a few days on, of all things, ghosts. Did you know that, according to a recent Theos poll, almost four in ten Britons believe in ghosts? Five out of ten believe in heaven, and, and seven out of ten believe in the human soul. Apparently the belief in ghosts has actually grown over the past four decades.
This, mind you, is Britain, where attendance in churches has been on the decline (with notable exceptions) for years.
In that context, I appreciated the relatively straightforward, no hype article by The Times of London’s Ruth Gledhill, who wrote up the Theos results.
Four out of ten people in Britain believe in ghosts and more than half believe in life after death, according to research to be published today.
Research by Theos, the theology think-tank, shows that seven out of ten people believe in the human soul and more than five out of ten believe in heaven. One in five believes in astrology or horoscopes, one in ten in Tarot or fortune telling and nearly three in ten people believe in reincarnation.
ComRes, the company that carried out the research, surveyed more than 2,000 people for Theos. The results suggest that we are more superstitious than 60 years ago, at a time when orthodox religious belief is declining and secularism is on the rise.
It seems to me that these results do suggest an increase in superstitutious behavior and a decline in “orthodox” belief. My quibble is the use of the word “secularism,” a term that, as our commenters have shown, is subject to many meanings. Is “secularism” another word for separation between church and state? Does it allow religious groups to operate within certain boundaries? Or does it indicate a surging group of people indifferent to religion?
Gledhill includes what seems to me to be the “money quote” from Theos director Wooley’s comments — a central point for those who believe that even those who don’t have “traditional” beliefs aren’t indifferent to religion:
Paul Woolley, the director of Theos, said: “The enlightenment optimism in the ability of science and reason to explain everything ended decades ago. The extent of belief will probably surprise people, but the finding is consistent with other research we have undertaken.
“The results indicate that people have a very diverse and unorthodox set of beliefs. Our research may point to a slight increase in scepticism about aspects of the supernatural over the last ten years.”
Of course, if you are going to believe in ghosts, you might as well do it in Britain, where they have ancient settings more suited to supernatural visitations.
But seriously — I wonder why we aren’t getting more coverage of the “unorthodox” forms of belief over here from the mainstream media? Isn’t it possible that these fight isn’t between faith and “secularism” but between traditional beliefs and various ancient forms of supernaturalism? And that’s not to mention the marshmallow middle ground of American civil religion, wonderfully dissected by Ross Douthat on the Atlantic website.
Belief in reincarnation, astrology, Tarot and other forms of faith in the supernatural has been around almost as long as many of the world great religions. Ignoring the possibility that such practices shape and affect the behavior ordinary Americans seems like walking over the elephant in contemporary religious life. Is it because both traditional and progressive elites find this idea rather unpalatable? It also poses a challenge to those who claim that ‘secularism’ is on the rise — without defining what ‘secularism’ is.
By the way — do you really think that guy is Charles I?
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Comments (14) |
April 16, 2009, at 8:24 am
Questions of terminology are a beloved topic of philosophers. You and your readers might be interested in a recent post by Bill Vallicella, a philosopher who recently dealt with the question of what superstition is. Full disclosure: the ultimate purpose of the post is to make a statement about the “superstitious” nature of naturalism (or materialism, etc.), but I think that what the post says about superstition is relevant here.
Kevin
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April 16, 2009, at 9:39 am
I object to the use of the term “superstition.” It carries a hidden value judgement, a denigration of some forms of supernaturalism: “I am religious; you are superstitious.”
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April 16, 2009, at 10:18 am
I’m sure they’ve been around for longer.
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April 16, 2009, at 10:20 am
I think practically any article or column that implies that a decline in church attendance might be correlated with an increase in ghosts and occultism should give due to the late, great English journalist G.K. Chesterton, who made the correlation a full century ago and often pointed it out, directly or indirectly, in his creative works. (He’s commonly credited for the aphorism, “When men stop believing in God they don’t believe in nothing: they believe in anything.”)
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April 16, 2009, at 10:27 am
I too thought of Chesterton when I read this, Shaun. I think his main point -and that implied here - is that humans are hard-wired to seek the transcendent.
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April 16, 2009, at 11:36 am
Uhmm, these are all empirical, based on personal experience, type ideas. I believe in ghosts because I have seen a ghost. I believe in reincarnation because I spontaeneously remember past lives, and have done so since childhood. Astrology and Tarot general conform with observed phenomena. ‘Interperative frameworks’ might be a better term.
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April 16, 2009, at 11:42 am
That is a profoundly ignorant statement to make because reincarnation is part of the Hindu faith and is also there for many Buddhists (although not all). It is a bad as a Buddhist, for example, saying that belief in heaven and hell has been around as long as many of the world’s great religions.
It is actually worse than that because you’re ignorant of or dismissed actual research that has been conducted into reincarnation. For example there is research tracking birth marks back to remembered past lives.
http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/personalitystudies/publications.cfm#Reincar-articles
I would not call this proof from a scientific perspective but I do call it suggestive evidence.
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April 16, 2009, at 12:00 pm
Jerry, I was making a very general statement — accuse me of sloppy verbiage, but not ignorance.
I certainly did not mean to slam any religion that included any of those elements. Obviously, I could have worded it more carefully to make it clear that a belief in reincarnation and the practice of astrology are part of some of the world’s ancient religions — as well as independent of them. Actually, I should have put reincarnation, which isn’t neccesarily twinned with an outright faith in the supernatural, in a whole different category.
As Jerry said, Dalea, these occurences are threaded through the practice and culture of some religions, so they are not neccesarily only empirical. Grow up in a family that believes in reincarnation — or mind over body faith healing, and I’m guessing you are more likely to believe in it yourself. And Jerry, I said, “more likely” to believe not “the only ones”…
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April 16, 2009, at 2:11 pm
Interesting definition of “secular” in an EJ Dionne piece:
Source: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=d5f9008b-b52b-4af4-82d1-6e343eaad8c7
Makes sense of the word to me.
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April 16, 2009, at 7:29 pm
Fair enough. As you can tell, a couple of my hot buttons were pushed.
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April 16, 2009, at 11:43 pm
Well, it’s very humbling to be called ignorant. Hopefully I’ve hit my quota for this month…but probably not. In Philly, that word is a terrible insult. Fortunately, I grew up in New York City.
Julia, thanks for the EJ Dionne quote: it sounds about right to me as a pragmatic definition.
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April 17, 2009, at 2:18 am
I grew up in a family of cultural Lutherans, Scandanavian variety. No reincarnation, just boat loads of disgusting piety.
There are people prone to mystical experience. I am one of them, it just happens with no input from me. Only when I came out as a NeoPagan and Gay, which happened at about the same time, did my life come together.
So, I would not be so quick to condemn the empirical types of spiritual inquiry to the dustbin. There are materialistic atheists who accept reincarnation on the grounds that everything recycles. GetReligion is dominated by SkyGod enthusiasts who have problems thinking outside their particular box.
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April 17, 2009, at 1:49 pm
It seems this time I “lept to contusions”. Every so often, I pull out a card I keep on my desk: I know you think you understand what you thought you heard me say, … think you realize that what you heard me say was not what I meant!
“faith in the supernatural” is one of my hot button phrases. Atheists claim that about all religions except perhaps some forms of Buddhism, for example. Their definition is that supernatural is “anything science can’t measure” and, in fact, that is close to the dictionary definition.
On top of that, another of my hot buttons resulted from a debate I had with a number of atheists on reincarnation. They, supposedly very scientific, refused to look at the actual research on the subject. If they had looked and found it not convincing, I would have accepted that. Because from a scientific perspective I also don’t think the research is conclusive. But for someone who upholds science to refuse to look at evidence got to me. So when I read the word “reincarnation”, that debate popped back into my mind.
Usually when a post gives me a head of steam, I’m able to restrain myself for a while and think about different ways of interpreting what was written but in this case, the head of steam went immediately to my typing fingers
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April 20, 2009, at 1:47 am
An angle no one really seems to be addressing is the rise in immigration in Britain, and consequentially the rise in non-Anglican religious beliefs. Plenty of religions believe in the survival of the human soul, the existence of Heaven and Hell (including Buddhism and Hinduism. I’m living in Korea right now, and there are plenty of vivid Hell sequences illustrating the walls of temples here.), and so forth. Astrology is a bit more respectable and mainstream in India, and I would imagine the belief in ghosts a lot more widespread (the placating of wandering ghosts is a crucial part of a lot of Hindu and Buddhist ritual) Not that I’m discounting the possibility of the rise in spiritualism and table rapping in England, there’s certainly a history of it, but the immigration angle seems to be a pretty big one to miss.
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