Becoming Believers: An Extended Model of Religious Cognition

Abstract

More than fifty years ago, Eric Hoffer (1951) pointed out in his landmark book, The True Believer, that most who join a rising revolutionary movement will find attractive the possibility of spectacular change. Given the pre-eminence of spiritual or religious beliefs in the lives of so many, modelling religious cognition offers a tremendous payoff in terms of understanding human social engagement and the role it plays in the hopes and aspirations of people trying to forge better lives amidst the collision of existential and practical realities. In observing the personal meanings and social implications of faith, researchers have consumed immense volumes in descriptive texts and careful, nuanced accounts of cultural context. Yet despite this overwhelming anthropological database, a comprehensive framework for explaining the ‘hows and whys’ of religious thought remains nascent. In this chapter I attempt to bring together what we do know and connect the emerging intersections wherever possible. I also make use of another stream of thinking — that around religious conversion — that has largely gone unnoticed by the CSR despite offering some instructive perspectives on the acquisition and transmission of religious concepts. Because I have found a process-based model helpful in working through the key issues and stages of religious cognition, and because it accommodates a reciprocal or circuitous series of cognitive actions, I spend the early part of this chapter discussing the aspects of conversion theories I have found insightful.