Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

Title:
Sloan, Richard P. 2008. Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine. St. Martin’s Griffin.

Rating:
8/10

Review:
Why look at the connection between religion and health care? Let me begin this review the same way the the book begins, by recounting the exploits of a Colorado surgeon:

“On February 22, 2004, the CBS Sunday Morning news program broadcast a segment about a Colorado orthopedic surgeon who prays with his patients. When does he pray with them? Not several weeks prior to surgery, for example, in an office visit when the decision to proceed with surgery is made. Not several days prior to surgery, during routine prehospitalization medical tests. Not even several hours prior to surgery. The surgeon “asks” if it’s “okay” to say a prayer when patients are gowned and on the gurney ready to go into surgery. Put yourself in the patient’s position. Would you feel free to say no to a physician dressed in surgical scrubs who is about to have your medical future in his hands, who is about to take a scalpel to your body?” (p. 3)

What Dr. Sloan didn’t add but I think drives this point home is: And what if the surgeon were a Hindu or Muslim, and not a Christian, which is what most people in the U.S. would automatically assume? Would you feel differently then?

So why did Dr. Sloan write a book about this? Because much of the “research” being done in this area is not scientific and the implications and recommendations are not ethical. Yet, those advocating including religion in health care seem to be winning this argument: the Bush administration just recently made it legal for all health care practitioners (i.e., doctors, nurses, secretaries, etc.) to refuse to perform health care activities they find objectionable on religious grounds and doctors are now being encouraged to evangelize their patients by conservative Christian leaders in the U.S. (p. 6). Richard Sloan’s book is a comprehensive resource for the large portion of the U.S. population that does not want to go to a doctor’s office only to be told that we should be going to church.

The book begins by arguing that the increase in animosity toward science (which actually followed a short-lived love affair with science after Sputnik launched in 1957) resulted from the New Age, self-help, and religious fundamentalist movements in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. What Dr. Sloan doesn’t recognize is that these movements are, like all fundamentalist movements, backlashes against globalization and modernity, but he does recognize why some people oppose modernity: it’s complex and not readily understandable (p. 58). Of course, modernity also means a decline in authority and power for those who have traditionally wielded it: white men. Science doesn’t (any longer) put the opinions of white men above those of anyone else, leveling the playing field. The predominantly white and male leaders of fundamentalist religions feel threatened and attack science and modernity as a result. One of the victims in this battle is science, “Surveys commissioned by the National Science Foundation have asked respondents to explain in their own words how to study something scientifically. The answers suggest that about two-thirds of all Americans do not understand what it means to approach a problem scientifically” (p. 47). Along with the decline in science advocacy is an increase in reverence for subjectivity at the expense of fact: people feel like their opinon, regardless of how ill-founded or illogical it is, should be respected (pp. 47-48). The ethos of “feeling validation” is pervasive enough to serve as the entire shtick of Emmy Award winner Stephen Colbert. Colbert’s reductio ad absurdum portrayal of this ethos via his rants against “facts” and “the truth” has landed him a wide audience (most of whom realize it is an act, like I do). This ethos is, of course, inimical to science, which does not respect feelings.

Another contributing factor to the pervasiveness of religion in health care is the media, which knows that religion sells, “There is little doubt that in the media, stories about religion sell. The Newsweek Education Program Web site reports that in 2001, the magazine’s issue with the cover story on Mormons sold 240,000 newsstand copies, in contrast to the issue with the Sopranos on the cover, which sold 158,000. In 2002, the issue with the cover story on the Bible and the Koran sold 203,000 copies, while the issue with the cover story on Silicon Valley sold only 90,000 copies. The site reports that cover stories about religious matters sell more issues of a magazine on the newsstand – in fact, they’re generally among the top issues for the year” (p. 64). Thus, whenever a study, regardless of how poorly it was conducted, comes out drawing a connection between religion and health, it receives top billing by the media.

In practical terms, what does this mean? Well, let’s ask this question another way: Do you, the reader of this review, think that religion makes you healthier? Dozens of news stories are published every year suggesting as much. But what does the evidence actually show? Well, it depends on the specific claim that is made. But unlike those advocating a close affinity between religion and health care, Dr. Sloan reviews the evidence (mostly) objectively. Dr. Sloan uses a summary of research findings from one of the better studies published on these connections (Powell et al. 2003) as the launching point for his review of the literature (see table below). The second column summarizes the findings of Powell et al. (2003) from page 139 in the book (the article is available online here). The third column summarizes the findings based on more recent research, Dr. Sloan’s review, and my interpretation of his review and the literature I have read.

So, based on the second column in the table, it looks like maybe religion makes you healthier. Again, the details and nuances matter. Dr. Sloan illustrates that even the review by Powell et al. in the American Psychologist (a reputable journal) is misleading. Based on their review, religion and spirituality clearly do not: protect against death, disability, or the progression of cancer and they do not improve recovery from acute illness. There is also no good evidence that religion protects against cancer or helps people cope. But what about the other possible claims?

Let’s begin with religious service attendance. Does religious service attendance protect against death? Indirectly, maybe. Directly, absolutely not. Early studies examining this connection failed to control for one obvious factor: sick people can’t go to religious services regardless of whether or not they want to. So, highly religious sick people were being counted as “not religious” because they didn’t go to services. Anyone else see the flaw? Thus, when comparing benefits of religious service attendance, it appeared as though those who went were healthier and lived longer. But this is an inherently flawed way of measuring the relationship: of course those who attend are healthier and live longer, that’s why they are able to attend. The causal argument was reversed: attendance doesn’t increase health (directly), healthy people are the ones who attend. When you control for whether people would attend, most of the difference disappears (p. 93). There is still a very small health benefit to attending religious services, but it comes from having a strong social network, not from being at church. You can get the same benefit from getting together weekly with friends to play cards.

What about religion protecting against cardiovascular disease? Again, details are important. If you just measure the religious against those who are not religious (depending on how you measure this), you’ll probably find some differences and the religious will seem healthier. But if you control for lifestyle factors like smoking, drinking, promiscuous sex, etc. the difference disappears. In lay terms: If you have two people who do not smoke, drink alcohol, have promiscuous sex, and who regularly exercise, if one is religious and the other is not, there will be, on average, no difference in their health. Religion doesn’t make people healthy, lifestyle choices and behaviors do. So, indirectly, religion may provide cardiovascular benefits if it encourages a healthier lifestyle. But it is not religion that does that, it is the indirect benefit derived from a healthier lifestyle that does it.

What about being prayed for? Turns out a few years after the Powell et al. paper was published an authoritative study on intercessory prayer (that’s what it is called when you pray for someone) was published (Benson et al. 2006). In that definitive study, those who were prayed for didn’t do any better than those who were not. And those who were told they were being prayed for did worse (being told they were being prayed for probably led them to believe they were sicker than they actually were). Ergo, intercessory prayer is completely ineffectual.

In summary, religion has, at best, indirect benefits to health. But this hasn’t prevented advocates from fudging the data to suggest that religion improves health. One well-known study that claimed praying improved AIDS patients’ health (Targ et al. 1998) was so flawed as to almost be humorous:

“When Targ and her colleagues began the study, their aim was to see if the prayer treatment could have an impact on mortality. However, during the course of the study, the researchers were blindsided by the development of the then new antiretroviral therapies that revolutionized the treatment of AIDS. As a result, only one of the forty patients in their trial died, making it impossible to determine whether prayer had an impact on mortality. The researchers then sought to determine if the prayer treatment influenced some of their secondary outcomes such as physical symptoms, quality of life, mood, and counts of immune cells. It did not. Only after they analyzed length of stay in the hospital and physician visits did they find that the treatment and control groups differed in the predicted direction: the prayer group had shorter stays in the hospital and fewer visits to doctors… after the researchers discovered the group differences on length of stay and physician visits, they were informed by another physician that these variables were not very interesting, because whether or not patients had health insurance heavily influenced these outcomes. Not surprisingly, patients with insurance were more likely to stay in the hospital longer and have more doctor visits… Following the recommendation of this physician, Targ and colleagues then sought to determine whether their two groups of patients differed on twenty-three AIDS-related illnesses that had been identified in a very recently published paper. Unfortunately, these illnesses had not been measured in the original study, so the researchers, after already knowing which patients were in the treatment and control groups, went back to the charts to collect information on them. It was this information that they presented in their Western Journal of Medicine paper. There was no mention of the failure of distant healing to influence many of the original measures. Nor did the researchers mention that they had assessed AIDS-related illnesses after knowing which patients were in each group” (p. 98).

This approach to “research” is called the “sharpshooter’s fallacy” and is very common in the literature that claims religion improves health: you look for any possible relationship until you find one, then claim that one exists. How is this a “sharpshooter fallacy”? The sharpshooter fallacy is when you draw the bullseye after you shoot the gun. You can’t miss if you change the target’s location after you start. And that is precisely what many of these studies do. In fact, the leading name in most of this “research,” Harold Koenig, has published a massive book (Handbook of Religion and Health) that is filled with studies like this, most of which he proceeds to gloss over or misinterpret completely. Here’s Dr. Sloan’s take on the book, “Ironically, the great strength of the Handbook is also its downfall: because of their thoroughness, Koenig and colleagues have assembled the most comprehensive list of research studies thought to prove the health benefits of religious activity. What they have done instead is to show us definitively how incredibly weak the evidence actually is” (p. 137). Dr. Sloan actually reviews all of the studies in just one chapter of the book and illustrates that they do not show what Harold Koenig claims in the book; they aren’t even close.

So, the evidence, when accurately interpreted and evaluated, indicates there are virtually no benefits from religion directly. But there are additional problems with advocating the inclusion of religion in health care. For instance, when you claim religion can cure people of illnesses, people decide not to turn to the health care system, “about 25 to 30 percent of patients who used prayer for chronic conditions or cancer were not seeing a physician. For patients with psychiatric conditions, 90 percent of those using prayer were not seeing a mental health provider. Presumably, they relied solely on prayer because they thought it was sufficient to treat the condition and no conventional medical care was required” (p. 189).

Another problem with advocating religiosity or spirituality “assessments” by doctors is that doctors have no expertise in this area. They receive virtually no training in religion and are no more qualified to discuss religious matters with their patients than they are qualified to discuss quantum mechanics. This is especially true if their patients belong to minority religious groups. Doctors are experts in what they are trained in, nothing more. They have no business dispensing religious advice (p. 196). Additionally, if doctors spend their time discussing religion, what are they not doing (p. 219)? Would that time be better spent discussing healthy lifestyles? Or addressing other concerns of patients? Patients actually think so; 47% of patients want no discussion of religion or spirituality with their doctor; 3% want less (p. 236). Additionally, when asked who their first choice would be to discuss religious and spiritual matters, only 2% of patients said their physician (p. 237). Patients go to doctors for medical care, not religious proselytizing or to worship.

One area where I actually disagree with Dr. Sloan is over whether we should even be studying these issues. Dr. Sloan seems okay with studying whether or not a general religiosity improves or worsens health outcomes, but he does not advocate asking which religious groups are the healthiest (p. 182), as the outcome will always result in bias against one group or another. I agree with Daniel Dennett on this point: if the religious are going to make claims about the benefits of their religion, they should be willing to subject those claims to empirical scrutiny. If Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists, Mormons, etc. believe they are the healthiest people, they better be able to show me the data. And if they can’t, then they should stop making such claims. If it turns out that some religious group has some key to health, I want to know. It’s unlikely that it has anything to do with the religion, but perhaps they advocate a particular lifestyle that correlates with improved health outcomes. That is worth knowing.

In the end, Dr. Sloan advocates religious privatization: be religious, use religion to cope, talk to your priest or pastor, etc., just don’t combine religion and health care. I don’t really disagree with him. In fact, I do think having chaplains in hospitals makes sense, so long as they are trained to be culturally sensitive and ecumenical. If people find comfort in religion (some do; others actually end up doing worse, medically, because of their religion), then why not give them some support in that. But doctors and other health care practitioners have no business discussing or advocating religion.

Overall, while a bit repetitive and long-winded at times, Dr. Sloan’s book is a long overdue skeptical look at the claims that religion has positive effects on health. I highly recommend it.

Title:
Norris, Pippa, and Ronald Inglehart. 2004. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. Cambridge University Press.

Rating:
10

Review:
A long-standing theory in the sociology of religion, secularization, suggests that, as societies modernize, they will also grow more secular. Many scholars have found support for this argument, but there are some countries that serve as exceptions. The most obvious one is the U.S., though how much of an exception it is is hotly debated. The U.S., of course, is a pretty developed country, yet levels of religiosity (in particular, belief in some form of god and levels of religious affiliation), remain fairly high (about 60% of Americans believe in a personal god; another 30% believe in some other form of god or aren’t sure; less than 10% are atheists and agnostics). So, the primary questions Norris and Inglehart are trying to address is: Does secularization result from modernization? And, if so, how do you explain exceptions to the rule?

Keep in mind that most other developed countries around the world (pretty much all of Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, etc.) are pretty secular, while undeveloped countries tend to be fairly religious. That, alone, suggests support for the theory of secularization. But critics of the theory point to countries like the U.S. (and Poland and Ireland, the other two classic exceptions) and say, “But these are developed countries. Why aren’t they as secular?” Well, the U.S. is a lot more secular than, say, Afghanistan, where 100% believe in a god and everyone has a religious affiliation (within rounding error). Previous scholars have suggested modifications to the theory of secularization. Mark Chaves suggested we should understand secularization as “declining religious authority,” not just reductions in the classic indicators of religiosity – belief in god, attendance, and religious affiliation. If you look at secularization as declining religious authority, it’s pretty clear that religions have lost a lot of their ability to dictate beliefs and behaviors to their followers (e.g. over 60% of Catholics in the U.S. use birth control and want women to be ordained priests; clearly the authority of the Roman Catholic Church has declined). Steve Bruce has also argued that secularization can be seen in the changing nature of religion in the U.S.: religion is becoming more “this-worldly” rather than “other-worldly,” meaning it is increasingly similar to pop-psychology and includes watered-down theology with virtually no mention of hellfire and damnation. Both Chaves and Bruce are correct: religions are losing authority and changing to accommodate the broader secular culture.

But Norris and Inglehart suggest another modification. They argue that it isn’t necessarily modernization that leads to secularization, but rather “existential security”: the feeling that survival is secure enough that it can be taken for granted, “We believe that the importance of religiosity persists most strongly among vulnerable populations, especially those living in poorer nations, facing personal survival-threatening risks” (p. 2). As they understand it, those without existential security are experiencing significant levels of stress. “Individuals experiencing stress have a need for rigid, predictable rules. They need to be sure of what is going to happen because they are in danger – their margin for error is slender and they need maximum predictability. Conversely, people raised under conditions of relative security can tolerate more ambiguity and have less need for the absolute and rigidly predictable rules that religious sanctions provide. People with relatively high levels of existential security can more readily accept deviations from familiar patterns than people who feel anxiety concerning their basic existential needs. In economically secure industrial societies, with an established basic safety-net safeguarding against the risks of absolute poverty and a relatively egalitarian distribution of household incomes, an increasing sense of safety brings a diminishing need for absolute rules, which contributes to the decline of traditional religious norms” (p. 13). In short, it isn’t modernization that leads to declines in religiosity; it’s existential security, which often (but not always) comes with societal modernization.

In addition to testing this hypothesis about secularization, the authors also examine a variety of other hypotheses, but they are more tangential to the main argument of the book. Norris and Inglehart suggest that cultural differences will result in slightly different trajectories for different countries (in particular, differences in culture between Protestant, Catholic, and Muslim countries will all effect secularization trajectories). They also suggest that the greatest declines in religious behavior will occur in countries where the importance of religion has declined the most (this is a less than compelling causal argument as it’s virtually impossible to say that one of these causes the other or vice versa). The authors also look at the ramifications of declining religiosity on civic engagement, suggesting, like Robert Putnam does, that higher levels of religiosity increase one’s involvement in the local community. They also suggest that different cultural traditions will influence other societal values, like work ethic. Finally, the authors suggest that modernized countries will continue to become more secular, but the overall levels of religiosity around the world will continue to rise as the most rapidly growing populations are also the populations with the highest levels of religiosity – they are also the least existentially secure.

The bulk of the data the authors use to test these hypotheses comes from the World Values Survey. They combine that data with other data where necessary.

What do they find? They find support for all of their hypotheses, “Due to rising levels of human security, the publics of virtually all advanced industrial societies have been moving toward more secular orientations… Due to demographic trends in poorer societies, the world as a whole now has more people with traditional religious views than ever before – and they constitute a growing proportion of the world’s population… [And] the expanding gap between the sacred and the secular societies around the globe will have important consequences for world politics, raising the role of religion on the international agenda” (p. 19). Remarkably, their statistical models are able to account for 66% of the variation in religious behavior between countries. As social science goes, that’s pretty remarkable.

Turning to some specific findings… How do the authors address the issue of the U.S. remaining somewhat more religious than is expected? First, they note that the U.S. is something of an exception when it comes to the relationship between economic development and secularization, but they also offer an explanation: the level of inequality in the U.S. is really high. There are lots of rich people, but there are also lots of poor people in the U.S. – lots of them! Poor people, regardless of their society, tend to be more attracted to religion’s promises as it provides the existential security they lack. Thus, it is the high levels of inequality in the U.S. that explain the continued religiosity. The explanation offered by scholars like Rodney Stark and Roger Finke – that it’s the high levels of religious pluralism in the U.S. that leads to higher levels of religiosity – is not supported in their data. In fact, they find just the opposite – countries with greater levels of religious pluralism tend to have lower levels of religiosity, while more monopolistic countries tend to have higher levels of religiosity. Additionally, there is not a significant relationship between religious freedom and levels of religious behavior (which refutes Grim and Finke 2006).

Norris and Inglehart also examine religiosity in former soviet countries, which has also been a question of interest in the sociology of religion. Some scholars have claimed that there has been a resurgence of religiosity since the fall of the Soviet Union (see Greeley’s work). The authors of the book note that it is difficult to say for certain whether or not there has been a resurgence since there is no good religiosity data on former soviet countries prior to the 1990s. But their analysis suggests a linear relationship between age and religiosity: older people are more religious; younger people are less religious. Ergo, no resurgence of religiosity in former soviet countries. There is some renewed interest in Orthodox religions and New Age religions, but not enough to offset declines.

Another intriguing finding has to do with some of the other norms and values that differ between countries with different cultures. There are no differences between predominantly Muslim countries and Western, more democratic countries in their support for democracy, democratic ideals, and strong leadership. However, Muslims do show greater support for a strong societal role by religious authorities. But the biggest differences are on gender equality and sexual liberalization. Muslim countries are substantially more oppositional to gender equality and greater sexual liberalization. Ironically, though, Muslim countries show a greater work ethic, greater even than Protestant countries, which Max Weber claimed had the highest work ethic resulting from capitalism (also note that Protestant countries score lower than Catholic countries). If it was true at some point that Protestants had a higher work ethic, it is no longer true. As Protestant countries tend to be post-industrial, they tend to place greater value on leisure, relaxation, and self-fulfillment outside of employment. In fact, level of development is a better predictor of attitudes toward wok than is religion. Additionally, Protestant countries are not the most ethical in their moral views and they are not the most fundamentalist on moral life issues like abortion or euthanasia. Economic development is actually a better predictor of fundamentalist views on those issues; less developed countries have more fundamentalist views.

There are a few problems with the book, but nothing major. The biggest problem I observed was that the organization of the book wasn’t perfectly clear and the authors had a tendency to both jump around from topic to topic and repeat themselves at times. This may have resulted from the broad range of ideas they were examining, but it did make the book more difficult to read than it needed to be. That said, the writing is quite lucid and clear when the organization makes sense.

Overall, this is an extremely compelling argument in favor of secularization theory, though modified to understand the driving force as increasing existential security. The authors bring an overwhelming body of data to the debate and address a number of hypotheses, perhaps a few too many, but this book will definitely serve as a foundational resource for future debates over secularization.

(Note: Most of this book is available online for free: http://www.pippanorris.com/)

Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time

Author:

Michael Shermer

Publisher:

Holt Paperbacks

Date of Publication:

2002

ISBN:

978-0805070897

Rating:

7

Review:

Why People Believe Weird Things, by Michael Shermer, is a fascinating read, despite the hodgepodge of content and the slightly confusing theoretical argument it contains. Let me begin with the theoretical argument. Shermer begins the book by arguing that belief in pseudoscience, superstition, etc. is the result of biological evolution, “We evolved to be skilled, pattern-seeking, causal-finding creatures. Those who were best at finding patterns… left behind the most offspring. We are their descendants. The problem in seeking and finding patterns is knowing which ones are meaningful and which ones are not. Unfortunately our brains are not always good at determining the difference. The reason is that discovering a meaningless pattern usually does no harm and may even do some good in reducing anxiety in uncertain situations” (pp. xxiv-xxv). The biological systems involved in pattern recognition often help us (1) discover falsehoods (it’s a mirage not a spring in the middle of the desert) and (2) discover truths (touching a hot stove causes physical harm to our bodies).

However, our ability to detect patterns also results in a proclivity to make two types of errors: (1) believe a falsehood and (2) reject a truth. We do these things when there are no serious consequences to doing so. For example, what is the consequence of believing in homeopathy? Generally, homeopathists treat actual conditions with colored water (they claim it has magical properties), which is unlikely to cause any harm. Homeopathy is a falsehood in that has been shown to not actually help the conditions it claims to treat, but it also doesn’t cause harm, generally (except for the money they take). Thus, believing in the falsehood of homeopathy is generally harmless. Likewise, in the US today, what is the harm in rejecting the truth of evolutionary theory if you are a car mechanic? You can reject that truth (which about 40% of Americans do) but suffer no ill effects. Thus, humans can accept falsehoods and reject truths, all in the pursuit of seeking patterns and causes. We need to be able to discern falsehoods and truths for our survival. But believing in falsehoods and rejecting truths when they don’t cause us harm is rather benign.

So, we have the ability to accept falsehoods and reject truths, but how do people come to believe falsehoods and reject truths? Shermer has an answer for this as well, “Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons” (p. xxvi). What does he mean by this? “[M]ost of us most of the time come to our beliefs for a variety of reasons having little to do with empirical evidence and logical reasoning… Rather, such variables as genetic predispositions, parental predilections, sibling influences, peer pressures, educational experiences, and life impressions all shape the personality preferences and emotional inclinations that, in conjunction with numerous social and cultural influences, lead us to make certain belief choices. Rarely do any of us sit down before a table of facts, weigh them pro and con, and choose the most logical and rational belief, regardless of what we previously believed. Instead, the facts of the world come to us through the colored filters of the theories, hypotheses, hunches, biases, and prejudices we have accumulated through our lifetime. We then sort through the body of data and select those most confirming what we already believe, and ignore or rationalize away those that are disconfirming. All of us do this, of course, but smart people are better at it through both talent and training” (p. 283). In short, smart people are better at justifying their erroneous beliefs because, well, that’s the definition of being smart.

As I read the book, this was the major theoretical explanation offered by Shermer. However, there are lots of other reasons offered as well. Perhaps these other reasons are subsets of the big reason, but that wasn’t clear. For instance, Shermer says on page 275, “More than any other, the reason people believe weird things is because they want to. It feels good.” Shermer does not tie this reason back into the broader reason, which would be quite simple: smart people like to feel good and sometimes that means believing erroneous things, which they then justify believing. Thus, they are particularly good at justifying beliefs that make them feel good. On a side note, as a skeptic I feel compelled to point out that Shermer doesn’t provide any empirical evidence for this claim (it’s probably true, but as a skeptic, he should provide evidence). Other similar explanations for why people believe weird things include:

• simplicity: “Immediate gratification of one’s beliefs is made all the easier by simple explanations for an often complex and contingent world.” (p. 277)
• morality and meaning: “At present, scientific and secular systems of morality and meaning have proved relatively unsatisfying to most people.” (p. 277)

I think Shermer did intend for these arguments to be sub-arguments to the broader argument of the book, but that wasn’t very clear. Overall, then, Shermer’s theoretical argument is that people believe weird (i.e., erroneous) things because they arrived at those beliefs for a variety of reasons and then found ways to justify them. Also, the erroneous beliefs are generally not causing them harm.

To illustrate these weird beliefs, Shermer discusses a variety of pseudoscientific and superstitious beliefs, illustrating that they are erroneous along the way. He begins, however, with a clarification of what it means to be a skeptic, “Some people believe that skepticism is rejection of new ideas or, worse, they confuse skeptic with cynic and think that skeptics are a bunch of grumpy curmudgeons unwilling to accept any claim that challenges the status quo. This is wrong. Skepticism is a provisional approach to claims. Skepticism is a method, not a position” (p. 8). Shermer discusses science and empiricism at length, illustrating that skeptics seek after empirical verification, which is why they are unwilling to accept unfounded claims. Like science and scientists generally, skeptics don’t reject the possibility of supernatural and pseudoscientific claims outright, they simply are holding out for compelling evidence.

One of the topics Shermer tackles as pseudoscience is creationism, or a literalistic interpretation of the Bible. Shermer illustrates that creationists are smart enough to develop explanations for why they believe the earth was created in six days, but they are justifying a non-empirical position: the evidence does not support young-earth creationism. One argument he uses to illustrate the irrational position of creationists is a discussion of creation myths, which I always find intriguing. Shermer notes that pretty much all societies have creation stories, and they can be grouped into specific categories based on the characteristics of the myths (p. 129):

• No Creation Story: “The world has always existed as it is now, unchanging from eternity.” (Jainists of India)
• Slain Monster Creation Story: “The world was created from the parts of a slain monster.” (Gilbert Islanders, Greeks, Indochinese, Kabyles of Africa, Koreans, Sumero-Babylonians)
• Primordial Parents Creation Story: “The world was created by the interaction of primordial parents.” (Cook Islanders, Egyptians, Greeks, Luiseno Indians, Tahitians, Zuni Indians)
• Cosmic Egg Creation Story: “The world was generated from an egg.” (Chinese, Finns, Greeks, Hindus, Japanese, Persians, Samoans)
• Spoken Edict Creation Story: “The world sprang into being at the command of a god.” (Egyptians, Greeks, Hebrews, Maidu Indians, Mayans, Sumerians; FYI – this is the Biblical creation myth most widely espoused among Christians in the US)
• Sea Creation Story: “The world was created from out of the sea.” (Burmese, Choctaw Indians, Egyptians, Icelanders, Maui Hawaiians, Sumerians)”

The point of mentioning other creation myths, of course, is to put widely held creation myths into context. A literalistic interpretation of the Bible fails to recognize the context of the Bible and fails to recognize that it is just one creation myth among many. Shermer offers another good illustration of the diffusion and assimilation of creation myths in the Bible, “The Noachian flood story, in fact, is but one variation on the Sea Creation Story, except that it is a myth of re-creation. The earliest version we have is ancient, predating the biblical story by over a thousand years. Around 2800 B.C.E., a Sumerian myth presents the flood hero as the priest-king Ziusudra, who built a boat to survive a great deluge. Around 2000 to 1800 B.C.E., the hero of the famous Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh learns of the flood from an ancestor named Utnapishtim. Warned by the Earth-god Ea that the gods were about to destroy all life by a flood, Utnapishtim was instructed to build an ark in the form of a cube 120 cubits (180 feet) to a side, with seven floors, each divided into nine compartments, and to take aboard one pair of each living creature. The Gilgamesh flood story floated (pardon the pun) for centuries throughout the Near East and was known in Palestine before the arrival of the Hebrews. Literary comparison makes its influence on the Noachian flood story obvious” (p. 130). Again, the point here is that the Noachian flood story in the Bible is just a new incarnation of an ancient myth. Contextualized (set in its time period), this makes sense. When you take the Bible out of its context and interpret it literally, you end up believing the nonsensical notion that the entire world could be covered by war, which is a naturalistic impossibility (there isn’t enough water to cover all the land).

I’ve probably already spent more time on creationism than necessary, but I have to note one great quote from the book that I had not come across earlier. Shermer uses a quote from Voltaire’s Candide (1759) to illustrate the absurdity of the argument of intelligent design that the world is designed intelligently to be “the best of all possible worlds”, “’Tis demonstrated that things cannot be otherwise; for, since everything is made for an end, everything is necessarily for the best end. Observe that noses were made to wear spectacles; and so we have spectacles. Legs were visibly instituted to be breeched, and we have breeches” (p. 256). This still makes me laugh after having read it a dozen times or so. This reminds me of Kirk Cameron’s argument that it is obvious that the world was designed by an intelligent designer because bananas naturally fit the curve of a human hand, indicating they were designed for humans to eat them. In a discussion following that claim, one person offered a one-word refutation of that ridiculous argument: pineapples.

Other topics discussed by Shermer include holocaust denial and the attempt of one physicist to prove religion through physics (Chapter 16), which Shermer illustrates is quite absurd. Another topic I wasn’t expecting was a discussion of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. Having read much of Ayn Rand’s work (and at one point really having believed she was right), I was interested to see what Shermer had to say about her ideas. Intriguingly, Shermer’s attacks on Objectivism are actually indirect attacks, as he still seems to be at least fond of her basic argument, “The cultic flaw in Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism is not its use of reason, emphasis on individuality, view that humans ought to be motivated by rational self-interest, or conviction that capitalism is the ideal system” (p. 118). Shermer accepts these premises, or at least does not reject them. Where he takes issue with Objectivism is in “…its belief that absolute knowledge and final Truth are attainable through reason, and therefore that there are absolutes of right and wrong knowledge and of moral and immoral thought and action. For Objectivists, once a principle has been discovered by (the Objectivists’ version of) reason to be True, the discussion is at an end. If you disagree with the principle, then your reasoning is flawed. If your reasoning is flawed, it can be corrected, but if you don’t correct your reasoning (i.e., learn to accept the principle), you are flawed and do not belong in the group. Excommunication is the final solution for such unreformed heretics” (p. 118). In other words, Objectivism is flawed because it claims to actually have all truth, and if you disagree with its truth, you are in error, as Objectivism cannot be in error. That’s an intriguing argument that does undermine Objectivism to some degree. However, Shermer also actually uses a logical fallacy to attack Objectivism as well, though perhaps a slightly justified one as it relates somewhat to the above criticism: Shermer talks at length about the cultic milieu created by Rand in the later part of her life. Apparently Rand set up a controlling environment in which she was worshiped by her followers and dictated everything they did. Shermer may not have brought this up to undermine Objectivism, but it’s unclear why else he would have. This is an ad hominem attack and a logical fallacy as her private life has no bearing on the validity of her philosophy. As it stands, I think the book would be stronger without this chapter.

Two additional topics discussed are alien abductions and the satanic scare of the 1980s. Shermer does a better job bringing his skeptical reasoning to bear here as he outlines a pattern to many pseudoscientific movements, like exorcism, satanic rituals, recovered memories, and alien abductions. They tend to follow a pattern:

1. Victims tend to be women, the poor, the retarded, and others on the margins of society.
2. Sex or sexual abuse is typically involved.
3. Mere accusation of potential perpetrators makes them guilty.
4. Denial of guilt is regarded as further proof of guilt.
5. Once a claim of victimization becomes well known in a community, other similar claims suddenly appear.
6. The movement hits a critical peak of accusation, when virtually everyone is a potential suspect and almost no one is above suspicion.
7. Then the pendulum swings the other way. As the innocent begin to fight back against their accusers through legal and other means, the accusers sometimes become the accused and skeptics begin to demonstrate the falsity of the accusations.
8. Finally, the movement fades, the public loses interest, and proponents, while never completely disappearing, are shifted to the margins of belief.

Shermer also rightly notes that these waves of panics and scares are often driven by corporate interests, as the people who need them (the book, film, and television industries) use these scares to make money (pp. 106-107).

Overall, the book is definitely worth reading, but it could have been a much better read for several reasons. First, Shermer does have a tendency to repeat himself at times, rehashing ideas in multiple chapters. Cutting out the repeated information would have shortened the book by at least a good 30 to 50 pages. Second, the theoretical arguments aren’t completely integrated and don’t always come across clearly. I think you can distill the major theoretical arguments from the book, but you kind of have to do that by reading it carefully and making some assumptions, as Shermer doesn’t necessarily do that for you. Third, not all of the topics covered seem to fit with the general theme of the book (definitely the case for Objectivism). This kind of left me thinking that Shermer took topics he has examined and written about previously and aggregated them into this book without thinking about how well they worked together.

Despite these problems, the book is entertaining. Shermer is a born-again skeptic, having engaged in some pretty bizarre pseudoscientific behaviors in his past, which make for good stories to illustrate his arguments. Shermer has some great ideas, and while the execution of those ideas by America’s leading skeptic isn’t perfect, it is still a worthy read.

Bonus Quotes:

p. 82 “As humanist scholar Robert Ingersoll (1879) noted, “The only evidence, so far as I know, about another life is, first, that we have no evidence; and secondly, that we are rather sorry that we have not, and wish we had.”"

p. 295 “The anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1954), for example, discovered that among the Trobriand Islanders (off the coast of New Guinea), the farther out to sea they went to fish the more they developed superstitious rituals. In the calm waters of the inner lagoon, there were very few rituals. By the time they reached the dangerous waters of deep sea fishing, the Trobrianders were also deep into magic. Malinowski concluded that magical thinking derived from environmental conditions, not inherent stupidities: “We find magic wherever the elements of chance and accident, and the emotional play between hope and fear have a wide and extensive range. We do not find magic wherever the pursuit is certain, reliable, and well under the control of rational methods and technological processes. Further, we find magic where the element of danger is conspicuous.” Think of the superstitions of baseball players.”

p. 298 “With an odds ratio of 8.8 to 1, we may conclude that people are nearly nine times more likely to attribute their own belief in God to rational reasons than they are other people’s belief in God, which they will attribute to emotional reasons. One explanation for this finding is the attribution bias, or the attribution of causes of our own and others’ behaviors to either a situation or a disposition. When we make a situational attribution, we identify the cause in the environment (“my depression is caused by a death in the family”); when we make a dispositional attribution, we identify the cause in the person as an enduring trait (“her depression is caused by a melancholy personality”). Problems in attribution may arise in our haste to accept the first cause that comes to mind (Gilbert et al. 1988). Plus, social psychologists Carol Tavris and Carole Wade (1997) explain that there is a tendency for people “to take credit for their good actions (a dispositional attribution) and let the situation account for their bad ones.” In dealing with others, for example, we might attribute our own success to hard work and intelligence, whereas the other person’s success is attributed to luck and circumstance (Nisbett and Ross 1980).”

Violence Against Wives

Author:

R. Emerson Dobash; Russell Dobash

Publisher:

The Free Press

Date of Publication:

1979

ISBN:

0029073200

Rating:

9

Summary:

I picked this book up as it is related to a project I’m working on having to do with families and religion. Spousal abuse isn’t normally my area of expertise. Also, I have to admit to having skimmed some of the contents, but I think I got the primary points of the book.

The authors start the book out describing a group of women in England who finally get together in the 1970s at a community center and begin discussing a variety of issues facing women. It’s only after the community center opens that some of the women begin discussing the abuse they suffer from their husbands. These discussions eventually open the shutters, exposing a pervasive problem to a world that has basically been oblivious to it for millenia: lots of husbands beat their wives.

The authors then describe the history of husbands beating wives, “history is littered with references to, and formulas for, beating, clubbing, and kicking them into submission. Women’s place in history often has been at the receiving end of a blow” (p. 31). This abuse took place basically as far back as written history goes, and probably much further. The authors highlight two particular periods: Ancient Rome, which is often thought of as progressive, and Christianity in the Middle Ages (post the fall of Rome).

In Rome, “It was the legal right of a husband to require that his wife obey him. She was his property and subject to whatever form of control was necessary for achieving obedience and what was deemed by himself and by the law to be appropriate behavior” (p. 36). Particularly grievous offenses of wives against husbands included: adultery, drinking of wine or drunkenness, “counterfeiting the household keys, making poison, abortion, attending public games without the husband’s permission, and appearing unveiled in the streets” (p. 36). “A husband was allowed to leave his wife if she committed any of these offenses, but, until later reforms, she was prohibited from leaving him even if he engaged in the same behavior. For him, such behavior was not defined as an offense, and he was therefore not liable for punishment” (p. 37).

Christianity during the Middle Ages co-opted the ” retrogressive principles of patriarchy” (p. 40) from the Romans, not their later progressive ideas. What’s more, Christianity provided an ideological and moral support for patriarchy (p. 44). Granted, the state later codified this relationship into law and arranged the legal system so as to make it difficult if not impossible for women to change it. But Christianity justified that system. At the end of the Middle Ages, as changes and reforms spread around the Western World (we’re ignoring the rest of the world, as is so common among Westerners), one thing that did not change in a progressive fashion was the spousal relationship, “The authority of the male head of each conjugal unit was increased while wives became more dependent and subject to control and chastisement and lost many of the means that traditionally had afforded them some opportunity, albeit very limited, to resist or struggle against subordination. As the French historian Petiot put it: “Starting in the fourteenth century, we see a slow and steady deterioration of the wife’s position in the household. She loses the right to take the place of the husband in his absence or insanity… Finally, in the sixteenth century, the married woman is placed under a disability so that any acts she performs without the authority of her husband or the law are null and void. This development strengthens the power of the husband, who is finally established as a sort of domestic monarch”" (p. 48).

This disenfranchisement of women was legally codified in the U.S., “In 1824 wife beating was made legal in Mississippi. Court cases in several other states reaffirmed the traditional right of a man to beat his wife and did so in language identical to that of the English common law” (p. 4). “[The] subordination of women was explicitly established in the institutional practices of both the church and the state and supported by some of the most prominent political, legal, religious, philosophical, and literary figures in Western society, for instance, Rousseau, Hegel, Kant, Fichte, Blackstone, Saint Augustine, John Knox, Calvin, and Martin Luther. In one way or another, they each advocated a patriarchal relationship between men and women and especially between husbands and wives. They believed that men had the right to dominate and control women and that women were by their nature subservient to men. This relationship was deemed natural, sacred, and unproblematic and such beliefs resulted in long periods of disregard or denial of the husband’s abuses of his economic, political, and physical power” (pp. 6-7).

What, exactly, was the relationship between husbands and wives? “The relationship between husbands and wives was once almost identical to that between parents and children. The husband’s use of physical force against his wife was similarly an expression of the unequal status, authority, and power of marital partners and was widely accepted as appropriate to the husband’s superior position. The husband was legally vested with responsibility for the control and management of his wife’s behavior because she was generally acknowledged to be naturally less capable and responsible than her spouse” (pp. 10-11).

It wasn’t until after the Civil War in America that wife beating was made illegal. It took until 1894 for Mississippi to change the earlier law (p. 63). But the change in legality didn’t change the practice. That remained fairly common through the 1970s, and probably remains disturbingly common still today. There’s also a great deal of irony (and not in a humorous sense), that the most pervasive brutalization of women takes place in what is deemed the most “sacred institution”: the family. “It is within marriage that a woman is most likely to be slapped and shoved about, severely assaulted, killed, or raped” (p. 75).

After giving the above history of the treatment of women, the authors turn to their findings. They interviewed over 100 hundred women who had been physically abused by their husbands. They also draw on the data of other researchers. They discuss abuse from its initiation, when a husband first hits his wife, and follow it through to when it ends, either with the wife leaving or one of the two dying.

Most of the women in the study did not marry men who were already physically abusing them: 77% experienced the first violence after marriage. But for most of these women, it was soon after marriage: 84% were attacked within the first three years. Why do men do this? Those men who do beat their wives tend to think of their wives as property, “One woman we interviewed told us that she was first beaten on her honeymoon and when she cried and protested, her husband replied, “I married you so I own you.”… The husband’s sense of ownership and control is immediate. It comes with the marriage contract, and all the social meanings and obligations associated with the words “love, honor, and obey”" (p. 94). The first time a husband hits his wife changes their relationship, “The first episode clearly illustrates a growing sense of possessiveness, domination, and “rightful” control and these are the factors that lead to the continuation of the violence” (p. 96). Initially women think the violence will stop, especially if the violence is associated with what are believed to be solvable problems (p.124). Men, initially, are also remorseful (p. 124). But the alleged problems are usually not solvable and are just excuses for the violence, not the actual causes. Over time, the man, “becomes less concerned, less remorseful, and less willing to change while the woman’s affection for him and estimation of her own worth begin to deteriorate. As the physical abuse becomes more frequent and severe it eventually dominates the relationship” (p. 124).

Women in abusive relationships seldom respond with violence. The physical strength of their spouses makes such attempts futile, as fighting back generally only increases the rage of their husbands (p. 108). Despite their lack of a violent response, wives do make it clear to their husbands that the violence is not okay and they are not happy with it (p. 120). Women in abusive relationships experience violence regularly, “A majority of the women experienced at least two attacks a week. Twenty-five percent said that the violence usually lasted from 45 minutes to over 5 hours; the other 75% reported that the physical attack lasted 30 minutes or less… Any particular physical attack might last only a few minutes or several hours, as one woman indicated” (p. 120). The authors estimate only 2% of the attacks are reported to the police (pp. 1654-165), though wives do mention the abuse more commonly to friends, relatives, and other individuals.

Also, only about 3% of the beatings the women received were reported to doctors (p. 180). In the authors’ research, 20% of women never made a single visit for any of the injuries they received. Some of the beatings result in broken bones and severe lacerations, but women are reluctant to go to the doctor, “When visits to the doctor were made usually they were made against the husband’s explicit prohibition or were allowed by him only after the woman had given assurances that the source of the injury would not be revealed to any medical staff. This meant that the time spent in the doctor’s office or the emergency room often was very tense and that the woman sometimes had to lie about the cause of her injuries in order to protect herself from further attack” (p. 181). Doctors also rarely inquired about abuse (in the 1970s at least, not sure about today), which meant the women had to bring it up. And even when they did, doctors usually would simply say “leave him” and not do anything else.

Part of the reason doctors probably said so little was because so few men are prosecuted for beating their wives, “In 1966 over seventy-five hundred women appeared at the district attorney’s office in Washington D.C. seeking to file complaints against their husbands. Only 200, that is, 2.7%, succeeded” (p. 219). I’m not sure what the numbers are today, but I’m guessing they are still pretty low.

Once the attacks become repetitive, wives often cease to struggle, “They cease to argue and to defend themselves from even the most blatantly false accusations or unjust treatments in the hope that they will avoid an escalation of violence. Either they turn inward and attempt to build a protective shell around their emotions that will allow them to cope with the continuing violence or they consider that their only escape is suicide or murder” (p. 141)

It is at this point that the authors address the age old question of why women in such relationships don’t leave, “Since a married woman’s social and individual worth rests largely upon her ability to be a good wife and mother and since being a good wife includes, among other things, providing proper services for her husband… then her sense of self-worth depends in large part on how the recipients of her services, that is, her husband and children, evaluate her performance. When a man beats his wife… he is making an explicit and powerful statement about his belief in her inability to be a good wife and to provide what he believes to be proper services. When he then blames her for the beating, this becomes an even more powerful statement of her worthlessness. When statements of blame are repeated often enough, the woman, who initially felt that she was unjustly treated, begins to have doubts” (p. 125). Thus, women in such relationships are controlled by several factors: First, they have accepted the ideology that says women should be defined by how good of a wife they are, which sets them up for failure. Second, their husband, regardless of the wives’ behavior, indicates they are not good wives through the abuse. And third, this abuse leads the wives to believe they have failed to live up to the ideology that set them up for failure in the first place.

The authors also note that many women do leave, but, they, “do so with varying intentions about the permanency of that act. Certainly, a few women never leave the house even for several hours, but most women have at some time left, sometimes with every intention of returning and sometimes intending to make a permanent break” (p. 144). Of the women interviewed by the authors, 88% left at some point, but most returned home within a week (p. 144). The reasons women don’t leave vary, but usually include, “a devastatingly low self-concept, isolation, and fear of living independently,” as well as concern for the children and feeling “trapped” because of a lack of education or occupational prospects (p. 146). There are certain factors that increase the odds of leaving, including particularly severe or frequent attacks (p. 146).

Not all women leave. Some die from the violence. Some commit suicide. Others kill their husbands. And yet others live with the abuse until their husband dies or they die. Unfortunately, there is no way to really know just how many women are living with this kind of abuse.

Review:

This is a carefully researched, well-written book. The only problem: it’s dated. The authors have another book out updating this research, which I’m hoping to peruse in the next few days. I’m sure much has changed. That said, the historical treatment of violence against women in this book is really informative. The book also offers an interesting snapshot of violence against wives in the 1970s. Because the book is dated, I’m not going to recommend it. I’ll see what I think of their newer book.

I’ll end this review with the authors’ concluding thought, “The struggle against wife beating must be oriented both to the immediate needs of women now suffering from violence and to more fundamental changes in the position of women. We now stand at a point where we may either work toward removing the very roots of wife beating by eliminating patriarchal domination or we may work only toward limited reforms which, while providing vital assistance to women currently being beaten, will do little about the problem itself. We must take up the challenge and address the issue in its fullest form, otherwise we will commit the errors of the past. The problem lies in the domination of women. The answer lies in the struggle against it” (pp. 242-243).

Jehovah’s Witnesses: Portrait of a Contemporary Religious Movement

Author:

Andrew Holden

Publisher:

Routledge

Date of Publication:

2002

ISBN:

0415266106

Rating:

9

Summary:

I picked up this book because I’ve been working on a paper comparing LDS and Jehovah’s Witnesses (JWs) growth and I needed a better understanding of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. This book definitely fits the bill.

The author is very clear in his intentions from the outset, “I write for an academic community, or indeed for anyone with a sociological interest in religious movements.” (p. xi). That said, the book is readable by a non-sociologist, but there is a substantial amount of sociological jargon in the book that might make it onerous reading for non-academics.

As I see it, the book basically has three elements. The first is the background information on the Jehovah’s Witnesses, from their history to their theology. However, it is not a detailed summary of the JW’s background nor their theology, and this is not, generally, laid out with the specific intent of describing the background or theology, but it is interlaced with the other information in the book. The second element is a description of the author’s research into the JWs. The author conducted interviews with many JWs and attended meetings and other activities for years. He also read much of their literature. In short, the book reports the results of the author’s ethnographic research into the JWs in the UK over a 5 to 10 year period in the mid to late 1990s. The third element of the book is the theoretical explanations provided for why people join, why the JWs are growing as fast as they are, and why people leave.

Just in case anyone reading this review is interested in some of the unique characteristics of the JWs, I thought I’d include a few explanations provided by the author. You may know that JWs don’t celebrate most holidays, either religious or national. But do you know why? “The Society forbids its members to participate in annual events such as Christmas, Easter, birthdays and national festivals. It teaches that Jehovah does not acknowledge these events since, wherever they are cited in the scriptures, they are always in the context of sin or apostasy… Though they recognise that the birth of Christ is presented as a joyful occasion by the synoptic writers, devotees refuse to partake in the celebration on the grounds that we do not know the precise date of an event that has, in any case, become tainted with secular images such as lights, trees, tinsel and mistletoe. As far as Easter is concerned, the egg is historically a pagan symbol for the celebration of the return of spring and the rabbit was an emblem of fertility, neither of which is connected with the resurrection of Christ. Furthermore, the Witnesses associate annual celebrations with immodest behaviour and excessive alcohol consumption…” (pp. 25-26).

Also, JWs don’t vote nor salute flags. Again, there is an explanation, “Despite their belief that Satan controls the world, the Witnesses do not generally go as far as members of religious organisations such as the Plymouth Brethren in isolating themselves completely from outsiders. None the less, their persistent refusal to engage in political activities such as voting in elections or joining pressure groups shows their disdain for secular society. The Witnesses continue to object to both jury and military service (on the grounds of pacifism and neutrality), and they do not support local or national charities.” (pp. 25-26).

The belief and behavior for which JWs are most well-known, however, is the refusal of blood transfusions. Ever wonder why they refuse transfusions? “The Society teaches that blood transfusions are strictly forbidden since blood is a source of life that is sacred to Jehovah… Genesis 9: 4 and Leviticus 17: 11-12 are among the scriptural references used by the Society in support of the doctrine, but it is Acts 15: 28-9 that is most frequently quoted in Watch Tower literature: ‘For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity.’ Blood transfusions are thus considered physically and morally unclean… receiving blood is tantamount to polluting oneself as well as offending the community.” (p. 28)

Something I didn’t know much about before reading this book was the behavioral codes of the JWs regarding appearance, alcohol and drugs, and sex. JWs believe cleanliness and nice clothing are illustrations of their purity, so they tend to wear nice, clean clothes. As far as the others are concerned, “Adultery, fornication, masturbation and homosexuality all flout the organisation’s teachings on sexual conduct. Anything other than highly controlled heterosexual activity is regarded as immoral, and sexual intercourse is confined to marriage. Drug abuse, smoking and the excessive consumption of alcohol, although not symbolically polluting, are believed to be physically polluting and offensive to Jehovah.” (pp. 25-26). None of this is particularly surprising, but I didn’t realize how anti-homosexual JWs are, “Of all these sexual activities, homosexuality is regarded as probably the most vile and unnatural. In a much earlier tract, but one still widely used by devotees, we read: masturbation can lead into homosexuality. In such instances the person, not satisfied with his lonely sexual activity, seeks a partner for mutual sex play. This happens much more frequently than you may realize. Contrary to what many persons think, homosexuals are not born that way, but their homosexual behaviour is learned. And often a person gets started when very young by playing with anothers’ sexual parts, and then engaging in homosexual acts.” (p. 27). I guess from a “control” standpoint, combining masturbation with homosexuality makes sense, but it obviously flies in the face of the preponderance of empirical evidence: masturbating doesn’t make people homosexual.

The author also describes the organization of the JWs, which was also something with which I was not that familiar. JWs don’t have paid clergy and all the members in good standing (called “pioneers”) are the missionary force. But I was never sure who ran the organization, “The Witnesses make use of two corporations – namely, the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania and New York, and the International Bible Students Association. The Pennsylvanian Corporation has voting members who live in all parts of the world. They meet annually and elect or re-elect seven directors of the corporation, who themselves elect officers. The President of the corporation is therefore, elected not by popular vote but by the directors, who choose one of their members for the post. The International Bible Students Association is a London Corporation. It owns property in Britain and is responsible predominantly for British affairs. The President is responsible for the central administration of door-to-door evangelism and travels extensively to check on the progress of the movement worldwide. Doctrinal edicts are the responsibility of a larger body of Jehovah’s Witnesses known as the remnant class – a spiritual committee comprising the President and other devotees.” (pp. 29-30). This makes the leadership of the organization seem as though it is more of a corporation than anything else, but this next quote illustrates some of the differences, “Until recently, members of the Governing Body remained completely anonymous to Witnesses at grass roots level. Their photographs were never to be seen in Kingdom Halls or in any of the organisation’s literature. Witnesses everywhere continue to believe that God is using the Governing Body as his channel of communication, and any correspondence for which it is responsible is endorsed only by the Society’s official rubber stamp… The structure of the movement and the intense loyalty demanded of each individual at every level demonstrates the characteristics of totalitarianism… namely, an elaborate total ideology making chiliastic claims with a promise of a utopian future, a single mass party, a monopoly of the means of communication and central direction and control of activity through bureaucratic co-ordination… the Watch Tower Society controls millions of people who are denied freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and freedom of conscience yet, paradoxically… devotees regard themselves as free, and non-members as oppressed or ‘in shackles’” (pp. 32-33).

Another tidbit about the JWs that most may be somewhat familiar with is the fact that it is a millenarian movement awaiting the return of Christ. The JW leadership claimed Christ was going to return multiple times, “The years of 1874, 1914, 1918, 1925 and 1975 were all earmarked, to a greater or lesser extent, as times for the Second Coming of Christ, yet all brought bitter disappointment.” (p. 1). As is the case with many religious movements, disappointments like these are easily justified (e.g., followers lacked faith or the coming was spiritual, not physical, etc.).

Why are the JWs growing (and growing faster than Mormons, by the way)? The author attributes their appeal to two factors: the close-knit community converts find upon joining and the certainty provided by the totalitarian belief system that converts find comforting in light of the uncertainty brought about by modernization (p. 56). It is the chaos of modernity that pushes people toward the JWs, who provide answers and certainty for individuals who feel lost in the modern world.

The author also notes that JWs use some tools of modernity to convert others, namely they try to persuade through reason and logic rather than through appeals to emotion. While the “logic” is generally fallacious and tortured, appeals to reason are attractive to potential converts. The lack of charismatic worship is also somewhat unique to JWs, “…preparation for Watch Tower ministry is largely devoid of supernatural invocation. One indicator of this is the fact that the familiar stories in which born-again Christians declare how lost they were before they saw the light were missing in the testimonies of Witness converts.” (p. 60). The author also notes that JW meetings are devoid of glossolalia, weeping, and other displays of intensity or emotion – they are pretty rational affairs. Thus, JWs benefit from the very modernity they use as their foil in trying to attract converts.

Review:

The author is actually quite fair to quotidian members of the organization, but is dutifully critical of the leadership, particularly the founder of the JWs, “In a court in Ontario, Canada, in 1913, he [Russell, the founder of the JWs] declared under oath to be an expert scripture scholar, but when handed a Greek New Testament he was forced to admit that he did not even know the Greek alphabet. Neither did he know Latin or Hebrew. Few, if any, academic theologians in the universities of the world today acknowledge Russell as a scholar in any sense of the word.” (p. 19). The author is skeptical of many of the claims of the movement, but he is quite respectful of those who affiliate with the movement. It seems as though his years of experience around these people have led him to admire them for their devotion even though he does not find their beliefs compelling.

One claim of the author that I was skeptical about was the assertion that JWs are not particularly interested in education, “It would be a mistake, however, to think that, because Witness children are disciplined readers and listeners, they are high academic achievers. There are two main reasons why this is not generally the case. First, the passive ‘learning’ that takes place in the Kingdom Hall and at Book Study meetings fails to procure the critical thinking, less still the analytical skills, required for high-level academic performance; and, second, the Society’s message is unequivocally spiritual, which means that, whatever the academic potential of its younger members, evangelistic activities take priority over educational success. Young Witnesses who intend to undergo baptism rarely progress to college or university.” (pp. 134-135). While I’m not really surprised by this claim considering there are no social scientists studying religion who are Jehovah’s Witnesses are far as I know, I did think it warranted closer scrutiny. So, I pulled out the General Social Survey and ran a quick analysis on the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the data set. The mean educational attainment reported for JWs from 1972 to 2006 is 11.29 years, which means just less than a high school diploma. The mean for the US generally is around 12.40, which means some college. Intriguingly, when you limit the GSS to just 2006, the mean for JWs drops to 11.24; JW educational attainment is not improving. This would seem to indicate that the author is right: JWs do not value educational attainment nearly as much as they value devotion to the religion.

I only have two very minor criticisms of the book. First, the author doesn’t clearly spell out his methods, though there is a brief section on his approach early in the book. A little more detail on his ethnographic methods would have been nice. Second, the book is missing one bit of information I was hoping it would have: The membership increase ratio of converts to children. In other words, what percentage of new members are converts vs. what percentage are children of existing members? Given my interests in religious growth, I was hoping he would answer this but he didn’t, even though he did say that about 70% of the children of JWs remain members.

Overall, this is a superbly-written book that does a remarkable job explaining a religious movement. The book details the theology and history sufficiently for his purposes and for readers to understand the movement, but it is not a detailed exegesis. The theoretical arguments for the appeal of the religion and its growth are also sound and well-reasoned. Finally, the author presents a good balance between skepticism of the movement’s claims and respect for the adherents. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in understanding how sociologists think about religious movements.