The Psychology of Christianity: Part 13, The Good Book

This will be the final installment in the "The Psychology of Christianity" series, a thirteen part summary of a chapter coming out where I was tasked with reviewing the empirical psychological literature related to the Christian faith.

Throughout these posts (and in my chapter) we've been using the Apostles' Creed as a theological "outline" of the Christian faith. At the start of each of the three (Trinitarian) sections with the Creed there is the refrain, "I believe." Given that refrain we might ask, where do Christians get these beliefs?

The Bible, of course. Consequently, any review of the psychology of the Christian faith will have to grapple with the Christian experience related to "The Good Book."

Let's start with the basics and assume you know very little about the Christian faith (the assumption I was told to work with in writing the chapter).

Christianity, similar to the other Abrahamic faiths, is a religion of “the book,” a divinely inspired and sacred text that sits at the heart of the faith. For Jews the book is the Tanakh (what Christians refer to as the “Old Testament”), for Muslims it is the Koran, and for Christians it is the 27 “books” of the New Testament. (Note: Some Christian communities also recognize a variety of “Deuterocanonical books” written in the interlude between the composition of the Old and New Testaments.)

The New Testament consists of four—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—“gospels” (narrative accounts concerning the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus), one narrative account of the early church (The Acts of the Apostles), twenty one “epistles” (letters from Christians leaders to early Christian communities), and a concluding work of apocalyptic literature (The Revelation of John). Christians also consider the 39 books of the Jewish Tanakh to be a part of their scriptures and generally call these books the “Old Testament.” The "Old" and "New" Testaments, combined, make up what Christians call "The Bible." Although Christians do not consider the Old Testament to be authoritative, they consider the Old Testament to be crucial to understanding the human predicament, the nature of God, the role of Jesus, and the mission of the church in salvation history.

Christians do, however, consider the New Testament to be normative for their life and practice. Although exegetical and hermeneutical disagreements abound, Christians believe that the New Testament specifies the core theological commitments of the faith, articulates the moral vision of the Christian life, and offers guidance on the formation, organization, common life, and shared mission of the Christian ecclesia (“assembly”), the basic unit of Christian community (most often called “the church”).

Despite general agreement on the centrality and authority of the Bible, Christians are sharply divided on its exact meaning and interpretation. For a psychological survey such as this, these exegetical and hermeneutical debates need not occupy us. However, psychologists have investigated some of the social and psychological correlates involved in an individual’s general hermeneutical orientation toward the Biblical text (i.e., how they typically extract meaning from the Bible).

One of the most investigated relationships in the psychological literature in this regard has been the relationship between Biblical literalism and what is known as “fundamentalism.” As a general hermeneutical strategy Biblical literalists adopt a "plain sense" or "literal" reading of the Bible. That is, the supernatural and miraculous events recounted in the Bible are treated as literal, historical facts. As you might expect, this hermeneutical strategy can create sharp conflicts between “the Bible” and “Science.” The debates over a literal reading of the book of Genesis and Darwinian evolution are just one example of this conflict. For many Christians of the liberal (or post-liberal) bent, this conflict is only illusory, the blinkered outcome of a misguided hermeneutical strategy. But for those committed to Biblical literalism the conflict is real and acute.

On the surface, Biblical literalism and Biblical fundamentalism are similar constructs, and many people use the terms interchangeably. This use is justified as measures of Christian fundamentalism are highly correlated with measures of Biblical literalism. These associations are unsurprising as Christian fundamentalism began in the early 1900s as a movement in America to defend “The Fundamentals” of the Christian faith against the forces of modernity and secularism within Biblical scholarship (much of it coming from Germany). These “Fundamentals” were, essentially, literal readings of both the Bible and the early Christian creeds. Thus, it is not surprising that Christian fundamentalists are also Biblical literalists.

However, despite these associations, fundamentalism is not reducible to nor should it be equated with Biblical literalism (or creedal orthodoxy generally). As operationalized by psychologists, fundamentalism is a broader and richer construct. Summarizing this literature, the relevant contrast is this: Fundamentalism has less to do with the contents of belief than the way the believer holds those beliefs. For example, fundamentalism is strongly associated with dogmatism, the degree to which beliefs (whatever they are) are considered to be unassailable and held with fervent, unjustified certainty. This certainty is often associated with religious zeal and the proselytizing of outsiders. More, fundamentalism has also been associated with authoritarianism and ethnocentrism (i.e., fundamentalism has a strong "us versus them" dynamic). For example, positive correlations have been observed between fundamentalism, anti-homosexual sentiment, and racist attitudes.

Stepping back, these are the characteristics of fundamentalism—dogmatism, zealotry, proselytizing, authoritarianism, and ethnocentrism—that have allowed the term “fundamentalist” to be pulled out of its original Christian context and be applied to any belief system or ideology demonstrating these attributes (e.g., Christian fundamentalist, Islamic fundamentalist, etc.)

Given the negative associations related to fundamentalism, dogmatism and authoritarianism, attempts have been made in the psychological literature to describe and study Christian believers who hold their beliefs more lightly and tentatively. The most influential attempt in this direction has been Daniel Batson’s construct of religion as “quest." As operationalized by Batson, religious believers high on Quest view religious doubt as healthy and are open to changing their beliefs in the face of life experience. Given this, it is not surprising that ratings of Quest are negatively associated with religious fundamentalism. Interestingly, in contrast to the associations between fundamentalism and ethnocentrism, Quest appears to be correlated with a variety of pro-social motivations and behaviors.

To conclude, this brief review of the literature concerning Biblical fundamentalism and Quest should make it clear that the Christian experience with the Bible is complex and heterogeneous. Christians display great diversity in how they interpret the Bible. More, beyond the content of the beliefs themselves, Christians are idiosyncratic in how they hold and deploy their beliefs. Christians, like persons in all religious groups, can be either tentative or dogmatic in regards to their core doctrinal commitments. And they can display an almost bewildering diversity in how they hermeneutically handle the sacred text of their faith, with predictable effects upon how they see and approach outgroup members.