Infused With Faith: Ritual and Conflict

[rug]

Posted: 08/14/2013 11:49 am
Wray Herbert

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks begin this week, and it's fair to say that attitudes range from guardedly hopeful to sneeringly cynical. After all, this conflict has been going on since the mid-20th century, with a lot of dashed promises along the way. It was just a year ago that missiles from Gaza were raining down daily on Israel.

All of the final status issues are on the table, both sides agree -- land, borders, settlements, Jerusalem. It's widely assumed that the animosity and conflict between Palestine and Israel are fueled by these geopolitical issues, rather than by clashing religious values. That is, most believe that competition over resources is the core issue dividing the two groups -- groups who also happen to have different religions.

But is this true? Are religion and religious values really tangential to this enduring conflict? This same question could of course be asked of other hateful conflicts -- Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, Muslims and Hindus in South Asia, fundamentalists and secularists right here at home. New evidence is raising questions about this basic assumption, and suggesting that certain aspects of religion may indeed fuel these violent clashes.

Arizona State University psychological scientist Steven Neuberg and colleagues have been studying what they call "religious infusion" -- the extent to which religion permeates a group's private and public life. Religious infusion is not tied to any particular religious belief, nor is it a necessary feature of any religion, but any religion might be highly infused throughout a given society. For example, religious trappings are a much more visible feature of life for Catholics in Nicaragua than for Catholics in, say, Austria. Such infusion can engage groups in a powerful way -- through religiously tinged public events and discourse -- and this engagement can in turn strengthen group prejudices and spur aggression.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wray-herbert/infused-with-faith-ritual_b_3755780.html

[cbayer]

1. Those are some really interesting findings,

but I approach research in the softer sciences with some skepticism and caution.

It seems to have to do more with tribalism of some sort in this case.

Being more marginalized and disadvantaged might lead people to infuse their communities with more religion, and not the other way around.