Models of Mind and Memory in the Cognition of Religion: A Case Study in Early Quakerism

Modes of religiosity and Quakerism

In the formation and development of religious community and group identity, memory — both individual and shared — and group practices — including their expression through ritual — play pivotal roles. From within the cognitive science of religion field, one of the most influential models exploring the form and transmission of religions, based on human cognitive architecture and revolving around memory and ritual, has been that of the ‘modes of religiosity’ put forward by Harvey Whitehouse. The model emerged out of anthropological research in Papua New Guinea and seeks to combine cognitivist, ethnographic and historical perspectives. It is a testable theory of how religions are created, passed on, and changed, based on a distinction between imagistic and doctrinal religious forms. Whitehouse’s theory, resting on a broad Tylorian definition of religion as ‘any set of shared beliefs and actions appealing to supernatural agency,’ suggests religions tend to coalesce around either an imagistic or doctrinal pole depending primarily on the manner in which religious behaviour is constituted and remembered (2004: 2).¹ Utilizing, and critiquing, this model, to look at the origins and early years of Quakerism enables us to expand and develop our concept of religious ecology within the context of the long English Reformation.