The Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism

[IChing]

By Walter A. Davis

is professor emeritus of English at Ohio State University. He is the author of Deracination: Historiocity, Hiroshima and the Tragic Imperative.

"I know you're a Christian, but who are you a Christian against."

The Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism


>>>snip
Before undertaking that examination a note on method. My goal is not to number the streaks of the tulip with respect to Christian fundamentalism but to get to the essence of the thing by offering a psychoanalytic version of the method Hegel formulated in the Phenomenology of Mind. My effort will be to describe the inner structure of the psyche implied by fundamentalist beliefs by examining those beliefs in terms of the psychological needs they fulfill. The examination of each belief will reveal its function in an evolving "logic" that traces the sequence of internal operations required for the fundamentalist psyche to achieve the form required to resolve the conflicts that define its inner world. The difference between my method and Hegel's is this: Hegel's effort was to describe the sequence of rational self-mediations required for the attainment of absolute knowledge. Mine is to record the sequence of psychological transformations that must take place for another kind of certainty to be achieved: one in which, as we'll see, thanatos and not reason attains an absolute status, freed of anything within that would oppose it. In effect, my goal is to offer fundamentalists a self-knowledge they cannot have since it is precisely the function of the belief structure we shall examine to render it unconscious and all the more powerful and certain of itself by virtue of that fact. What after all is religion but a desire displacing itself into dogmas all the better to assure the flock that what they desire is writ into the nature of things?

Who does the structure we'll examine describe? George W. Bush and some of those closest to him? The 42% or 51% of those Americans who now call themselves fundamentalists? The 80 or 90% of practicing Christians, the over 1 billion viewers worldwide, who found Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ a singularly compelling expression of their faith and who are thus already far more fundamentalist in their hearts than they realize? The power of any religious belief system derives from how deeply it taps into collective needs and discontents. In this regard we may already be living in a fundamentalist Zeitgeist with the collective Amerikan psyche now defined, even among those who have never (or seldom) seen the inside of a church, by the emotional needs and principles of operation that find their most seductive realization in fundamentalism. We may in fact find the same "faith" informing a project that initially appears to have nothing to do with fundamentalism--global capitalism.
>>>>>snip

Link: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/2281/26/

Long article but worth the time

[northernsoul]

1. very dense read, but worthwhile

thanks for sharing it.

[frebrd]

2. More like the psychopathology n/m

[IChing]

3. "Devout believers are safeguarded"

"Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree
against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance
of the universal neurosis spares them the task of
constructing the personal one."

Freud

[reprobate]

4. Opened my eyes. The Tribulation is now, and Bush is the Beast.

But you knew that, didn't you.

[pnwmom]

5. 80 or 90% of practicing Christians

"found Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ a singularly compelling expression of their faith"????

I'd like to know where he came up with that statistic. I don't personally know any Christians who went to it, much less viewed it as an expression of their faith.

[IChing]

6. Plenty of polls

What do you think of "The Passion of the Christ"?

Thumbs up
81%

Thumbs down
11%

Mixed feelings
8%


Evangelicals generally appear to have a high regard for the movie. The largest Evangelical Christian magazine in the U.S., Christianity Today, conducted a poll of visitors to its web site. On 2004-APR-22, six weeks after the movie was first released in North America, their visitors reported:


6% had seen the movie more than twice


17% had seen it twice


40% had seen it once


9% have not seen it, but plan to


28% have not seen it and don't plan to.



http://www.religioustolerance.org/chrgibson3.htm

[pnwmom]

8. Evangelicals are only a fraction of Christians.

And giving a movie a "thumbs up" is hardly the same as regarding it as a "singularly compelling expression" of a person's faith.

[IChing]

9. Care to prove your Evangelical statistical "fraction" assertion ?

Gallup numbers have averaged just under 39% of the population as accepting identification as born-again/evangelical.

Religion and the 2006 Elections
http://pewforum.org/docs/index.php?DocID=174

Religion & Politics
http://pewforum.org/religion-politics/

Bar Graph documenting years and percentage of people describing themselves as Born-Again or Evangelical (Princeton Religion Research Center, 2002)
http://www.wheaton.edu/isae/Gallup-Bar-graph.html

Defining Evangelicalism

http://www.wheaton.edu/isae/defining_evangelicalism.html

As far as the movie goes the other link given was enough.

[pnwmom]

12. Since when is 2/5 not a fraction? A fraction is a part of the whole.

And Evangelicals are only a PART of the Christian population.

Catholics happen to be the largest single Christian denomination. The term "evangelical" is a very loose term, defined differently by different people; it encompasses some Baptists, Methodists, and also some non-denominational Christians.

And where in all your polls does it show that the average Christian, or even the average Evangelical, found the Gibson movie to be a "singularly compelling" statement of his or her beliefs? As opposed to -- for example -- the Bible?

One of the beliefs of Evangelicals is that they consider the Bible to be the inerrant word of God. I've never heard of an Envangelical claiming that Gibson's movie falls into that category.

[Skittles]

15. you MUST be kidding

in this area, churches BUSSED people to that f***ing piece of trash

[Prophet 451]

7. Fascinating

It's also striking and probably not conincidental how well the psychological model correlates to Kohlberg's work on moral development and Altemeyer's studies on authoritarianism.

[IChing]

10. Kohlberg moral analysis was a development out of Piaget

Also along these lines one might look into James W. Fowler who sees.
the Stages of faith development as a holistic orientation,
and is concerned with the individual's relatedness to the universal: evangelist are mostly in stage 3

"Stage 1 - "Primal or Undifferentiated" faith (birth to 2 years), is characterized by an early learning of the safety of their environment (ie. warm, safe and secure vs. hurt, neglect and abuse)

Stage 2 – "Intuitive-Projective" faith (ages of three to seven), is characterized by the psyche's unprotected exposure to the Unconscious.

Stage 3 – "Mythic-Literal" faith (mostly in school children), stage three persons have a strong belief in the justice and reciprocity of the universe, and their deities are almost always anthropomorphic.

Stage 4 - "Synthetic-Conventional" faith (arising in adolescence) characterized by conformity

Stage 5 – "Individuative-Reflective" faith (usually mid-twenties to late thirties) a stage of angst and struggle. The individual takes personal responsibility for their beliefs and feelings.

Stage 6 – "Conjunctive" faith (mid-life crisis) acknowledges paradox and transcendence relating reality behind the symbols of inherited systems

Stage 7 – "Universalizing" faith, or what some might call "enlightenment"."

[Prophet 451]

14. I'm familiar with Piaget

but could you direct me to something a bit more detailed on Fowler's work?

[nealmhughes]

11. Dense, yes, but at least it flows logically and the German words are easy to look up these days with

the Googles.

One wonders if the trauma of witnessing a paradigm shift in one's very midst is so upsetting and unfathomable that a return to what is perceived as absolute is necessary for those not willing to embrace such megachange?

Ergo, the strong daddy of Ronald Reagan and the right wing and their wing men, the fundamentalists, both of the laisser faire capitalist and religious variety here in the US, and only the strong daddy via the return of the Caliphate via jihad and shariah in fundamentalist Islam, and a same sort of disconnection in the contemporary fundamentalist Hindu movement in India?

It seems as if, at least in the West, that once the horrors of the Religious Wars had settled and the Enlightenment begun to blossom, that a lot of toleration and free thought flowed, even though the paradigm was rapidly shifting towards modernism. Perhaps the shift had begun earlier at the outbreak of the Reformation with the discovery of the New World, moveable type, etc. Unleashing a torrent of reaction, the height of which had to have been the 40 Years War. The people turned inward to "protect" the Volk and as a result, Germany was a poverty stricken back water for over 100 years, each little state with its own "truth" and faith. . .

In short, it seems that when a new mode of life is about to be thrust upon everyone that reaction to it by the masses automatically ensues and fighting over the true nature of the "Golden Age" one seeks to regain results in civil war.

We are witnessing the falsehood of Fortress America and Its Place in the Sun Eternal. We don't even make stuff any longer, just consume. The bubble is bound to soon burst, and as a result, people just latch onto whatever they find constant. Although, as a good student of history, I must state that I have never bought into the fact that any thing at all is or can be truly static. All culture is merely an attempt of making sense of the present through corrupted imperfect reflection upon the past and then attempting to either perfect what the viewers see as "desirable" or else to accept it and continue on cultivating their gardens.

[IChing]

13. A change of consciousness or a paradigm shift

can occur within an individual or society but usually it is painful.
It comes from realizing something is very fucked up
or wrong with their lives or government.

Most people seek a moral examination of their existence and grow
in their moral and spiritual needs.

But usual only trauma or crisis is when
we really re-examine our reality.
Some use drugs,
some use religion,
some use wealth,
some use sex,
some use power
some use violence,
or war to compensate.

some use the Socratic analytic method
but most on this planet
just try to survive
to get to their basic necessities.

Religion is just a psychological tool
but beware of the owners of the tool.

I think Jesus said:

We are all Gods.