Religion and Religious Tolerance 1 Running Head: RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE When How You Believe Matters More than What You Believe: Religiosity and Religious Intolerance among Christians and Buddhists

In three samples containing Buddhist and Christian participants from several nations, participants of both religions manifested a generally similar relationship between religiosity and intolerance. In all three samples, devotional religiosity (e.g. prayer frequency, faith devotion), was strongly correlated with coalitional religiosity (e.g. organized religious attendance, fundamentalism). Yet devotional religiosity independently predicted religious tolerance while coalitional religiosity independently predicted intolerance. Buddhists and Christians showed no differences in religious intolerance when devotional and coalitional religiosity and other demographic variables were accounted for. The results suggest that differences in mode (What do you mean here by “mode?”) and intensity (by “intensity”, are you referring to fundamentalism?) of religiosity are more important than differences in religious affiliation for predicting religious intolerance. Religion and Religious Tolerance 3 When How You Believe Matters More than What You Believe: Religiosity and Intolerance among Christians and Buddhists "Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings.... Religious faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war technology, on an even footing with the longbow, the warhorse, the tank, and the hydrogen bomb." --Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene It is a commonly-noted irony that religions, which are supposed to make people more prosocial and moral, are major players in violent world conflicts that are anything but pro-social or moral. The rising share of worldwide violence attributed to extremists of one religion or another appears symptomatic of a worldwide resurgence in religionrelated conflict and religiously-motivated intolerance and violence (Atran, 2002, 2003). (the above sentence seems somewhat confusing and redundant to me) This rise has brought renewed public and academic interest to the role of religion and culture in motivating occupation (?), insurgency, intolerance and violence. As a kind of prejudice, religious intolerance has long been thought of by social psychologists as being conceptually distinct from racial prejudice, yet many of the same devastating social consequences of racial prejudice attend religious intolerance: e.g. persecution, violence, and war (Appleby, 2000; Dennette, 2006; Dawkins, 2006; Juergensmeyer, 2003: Kimball, 2002; Nelson-Pallmeyer, 2003). Popular explanations for the apparent relationship between religion, intolerance, and violence are varied. Enthusiasts of one religion often note how rival religions fail to achieve peace, brotherhood and the moral edification of its members. These failures are typically blamed on the specific beliefs and practices of the other faiths. On the other hand, those without religious beliefs tend to blame religion in general for much of the violence and war in the world, as the Religion and Religious Tolerance 4 opening quote from Dawkins illustrates. The ecumenically-minded often argue that all faiths have benign and toxic variations; the benign variations of all faiths embrace tolerance and peace, while the toxic versions foster prejudice and war. (new paragraph) The present paper argues for a nuanced version of the ecumenical position, though we ultimately conclude that tolerance-predicting religiosity and intolerance-predicting religiosity are difficult to distinguish from one another and tend to co-occur empirically. This paper also works from the lessons of past attempts to empirically investigate popular diagnoses regarding religion’s relationship to prejudice. (this sentence is unclear) Unfortunately, these investigations are generally considered inconclusive (Altemeyer, 1988; Kirkpatrick & Hood, 1990). Adding to the problem is the fact that much of the previous work on religion and prejudice has been done on racial prejudice and other forms of bigotry, and not on religious intolerance per se. Investigating religious intolerance, as a distinct form of prejudice, is the main focus of this research. In addition to the above, the present paper examines whether certain psychoreligious variables are related in similar ways in two very different faith groups (Buddhists and Christians), and whether these psycho-religious variables predict religious intolerance better than religious affiliation itself. The moral importance of understanding the relationship between religion and intolerance is relatively clear, though it is disputable whether tolerance is a greater virtue than other virtues, or whether the virtue of tolerance is always morally cost-free (e.g. being tolerant towards those who commit gross injustice, oppression or mass violence). Religious tolerance is not only a moral and theological matter, but also a matter of scientific concern: to understand the Religion and Religious Tolerance 5 origins of many psychological processes, it is important to investigate how religion—a universal feature of human heritage—functions psychologically to unite and divide people, including divisions that are characterized by intolerance and violence. Buddhism and Christianity are two religions which are often considered to be either very similar or different depending on how and by whom they are compared. Buddhism and Christianity are both religions of assent rather than descent, meaning that whether one is a Buddhist or Christian depends more on one’s claimed adherence to Buddhist or Christian teachings and practice rather than whether or not one’s parents were Christian or Buddhist (Cohen & Rozin, 2001; Morris, 1996). Buddhist and Christian moral teachings often overlap, and their social and existential insights are potentially amenable to each other in tone if not in content (Hanh, 1995). The explicit religious teachings of Christians and Buddhists, however, are often widely divergent. There is fundamental disagreement among most influential Buddhist and Christian religious authorities on matters that appear to have tremendous religious importance (Smith, 1991/1958, Tweed, 2001), e.g. belief in a creator God, valuation of an eternal afterlife, and being “exclusivist” in one’s beliefs. Less belief in God, less enthusiasm for an eternal afterlife, and less willingness to be religiously exclusive might be considered, from a Christian perspective at least, to be an indicator of less religiosity among Buddhists. In fact, given the surface divergence of explicit beliefs like these, to class both Buddhism and Christianity as “religions” might be a serious error. Religion itself is often criticized as an ethnocentric Christian classification into which most so called “religions” (other than Christianity) do not fit very well. Derrida (1998) asserted that “the history of the word ‘religion’ should in Religion and Religious Tolerance 6 principle forbid every non-Christian from using the name religion (36)”. Others have countered that as an ethnocentric classification, “religion” actually works remarkably well cross-culturally (Guthrie, 2001), perhaps because at least a few social and psychological dynamics among Christians might often reflect universal human patterns of thought and behavior likely to be found in any cohesive belief or practice-based group that makes frequent principled reference to the esoteric or supernatural. Whether empirical investigations will eventually remove all reasonable doubt on this matter or not, we acknowledge at the outset that when we say “religion” and “religiosity” we may mean little more than “culturally Christian understanding of religiosity.” To the extent what we call religiosity is only a culturally Christian understanding of religiosity, however, then it is likely not only that (a) Buddhists will be lower in our measures of religiosity than Christians, but more importantly that (b) the dynamics of what we call “religiosity” within Christianity will be radically different from those dynamics within Buddhism. Further, the aspects of religiosity predict religious intolerance by Christians may be radically different from the aspects that predict religious intolerance by Buddhists. The potential for radical cultural contingency in religious constructs has been recently demonstrated by Cohen & Hill (2006), who found that Allport’s classic constructs of intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity (Allport & Ross, 1967) were inversely correlated among Protestants, uncorrelated among Catholics, and positively correlated among Jews, with significant differences between the correlations. If the relationship between intolerance and the measures of religiosity used in this paper is as culturally contingent as that between intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity, then a radical and systematic difference should be found between Buddhists and Christians in the Religion and Religious Tolerance 7 interrelationship of religiosity and intolerance. However, to the extent that the dynamics of our measures of religiosity and intolerance differ little between Christians and Buddhists, this would be strong evidence that our religiosity and intolerance constructs may travel well even outside Christian samples. (Ian – these last few paragraphs seem somewhat distracting and disruptive of your paper’s flow. Perhaps a better alternative (and more “saving” in terms of paper length) would be to simply refer in a sentence or two to some previous research or statements by others who have noted the issues between Christianity and Buddhism which you refer to here). Establishing the potential cross-religious utility of certain religiosity constructs is essential to addressing the much speculated-on relationship between religiosity and intolerance and violence. Whether taking a position like Dawkins’ and condemning all instantiations of religiosity as grounding violent intolerance (?) or taking an ecumenical position that distinguishes between some forms of religiosity as potentially intolerant and others as potentially tolerant, one assumes that the relevance of religiosity to intolerance does not vary much by religion. However, religious intolerance, religious violence and certain other undesirable religious attitudes and behaviors are frequently discussed as unique properties of certain religious groups (see, e.g. Manji, 2003, Nietzsche, 1895/1968). If inclinations to violence and intolerance are indeed religion specific, i.e. cultivated by some religions but not by others, then the relationship between religiosity and intolerance should differ categorically from religion to religion: for some religions, religiosity should be associated positively with religious intolerance, while for others it should be orthogonal or even negatively related. If there are any two religions in which we could expect to find such a difference, they would be Christianity and Buddhism. Religion and Religious Tolerance 8 Many would argue that Christianity has historically used faith and religious sentiment to cultivate violence and intolerance in order to establish its relatively strong cultural influence in the world, while Buddhist influence has spread much more by the appeal of its teachings and the fecundity of its adherents (?) than by, say, violent crusades in the name of Buddha, or the killing and persecution of those who adopt non-Buddhist religious beliefs and practices. It is also possible however, that the way that religiosity relates to intolerance may have more to do with the kind of religiosity examined than the religious affiliation whose teachings and practices give doctrinal shape to one’s religiosity; that is to say that when predicting intolerance, how one believes may matter more than what one believes. (this seems to be your thesis statement and so should be quite strategically placed to punctuate, as much as possible, the “plunge” into the specifics of your study) Coalitional and devotional religiosity In the present paper, we rely on a theoretical distinction between two major constructs that we expect to see as distinguishable in both Christians and Buddhists: (1) coalitional religiosity or the defensive inclination to identify strongly with a certain group, ideology or traditional culture and (2) devotional religiosity or the passionate inclination to understand and engage life with an orientation to a numinous or “divine” entity, e.g. God or Buddha. Coalitional processes are natural to the human social animal and also play a significant role in the formation of religious groups (Atran & Norenzayan, 2004; Navarette & Fessler, 2005). For securing loyalty, widespread conformity to norms and effective coordination within a coalition, there are obvious psychological benefits to Religion and Religious Tolerance 9 exalting one’s own belief system, religious group or cultural tradition as uniquely true and good. Such an exclusive exaltation is likely, however, to be associated with intolerance (potentially including violence) towards those who fall outside the boundaries of one’s imagined coalition. Personality styles (which ones?) tapped into by scales like religious fundamentalism (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992) and authoritarianism (Altemeyer, 1981, 1988, 1996) may once have contributed to adaptive coalitional processes (Kirkpatrick, 1999), though at present the most salient criterion they predict is prejudice (Hunsberger, 1995). “Religion” as it is commonly understood, especially by its opponents, appears highly inclined to cultivate this epistemologically and ideologically rigid grounding of coalitional cohesion. (difficult to follow; can you say more simply?) To define “religion” only in coalitional terms, however, is to neglect the aspect of religion that is directed to the transcendent, the divine, and the numinous. It was this aspect of religion that was originally investigated by early psychologists of religion for its potential to promote tolerance rather than intolerance (Allport, 1950; Allport & Ross, 1967). Critics of religion may be pessimistic about this divine-centric orientation, but there is some evidence that even with something like anti-gay prejudice, which the prejudiced often attempt to justify on religious grounds, there is a potentially negative relationship between religious devotion and prejudice when coalitional inclinations like authoritarianism are controlled for (Laythe, Finkel & Kirkpatrick, 2001). (again, wordy and difficult to follow) Our devotional vs. coalitional theoretical framework is based on recurring distinctions drawn by theorists from various fields between a kind of personallyfelt/natural religiosity and a propositionally-held/cultural kind (see Hansen & Religion and Religious Tolerance 10 Norenzayan, in press, for a discussion). The framework is consistent in some ways with Allport’s distinction between intrinsic or personally felt religiosity and extrinsic or socially-derived/instrumental religiosity. Yet, unlike Allport, we do not treat devotional and coalitional religiosity as two orthogonal or inverse (opposing?) modes of religiosity, but rather as strongly correlated constructs that have the potential to make very different predictions. That is, we do not hypothesize a world in which all religious individuals or groups can be neatly divided into the devotionally religious and the coalitionally religious. Rather, we expect devotional and coalitional religiosity to co-occur in various religious groups and individuals. In general, we expect that to be more religious is to be both more devotionally religious and more coalitionally religious; correlations between what we consider devotional variables and what we consider coalitional variables have been found to be robust and reliable (e.g. Duck & Hunsberger, 1999; Kahoe, 1975; Leak & Randall, 1995; Moghaddam & Vuksanovic, 1990; Watson, Sawyers & Morris, 2003). The relationship between each form of religiosity and religious intolerance may be a different matter, however. The potential for overcoming religious intolerance may be encouraged by devotional religiosity even as it is discouraged by the coalitional religiosity that devotional religiosity co-occurs with. Devotional religiosity may be related both to the transcendence of narrow individual self-interest that makes coalitional cohesion between individuals possible, as well as to the transcendence of narrow group self-interest that makes tolerance between groups possible (Hansen & Norenzayan, in press). Stated metaphorically, devotional binding can be linked to coalitional breaking, but binding and breaking are very different, even opposite, processes. (hard to follow and vague) Religion and Religious Tolerance 11 In sum, (I made a larger deletion here) we expect with the ecumenically-minded that all religions carry the potential for both tolerance and intolerance, peace and war, in spite of what their distinctive religious teachings are (see also Kimball, 2002). Moreover, while it may matter what one’s religious doctrines are in other ways, we expect that how one believes matters more than what one’s specific religious affiliation is when predicting intolerance. Present Research In sum, while the literature on religion and prejudice has clarified the relationship between religion and prejudice, it has overlooked a key type of prejudice—religious intolerance—a widespread form of prejudice which has been implicated in many cases of mass violence. Moreover, there has been very little cross cultural research on the robustness and nature of this relationship. The present research addresses these two neglected questions. Our specific hypotheses are (1) there will be little systematic difference between Christians and Buddhists in how coalitional religiosity, devotional religiosity and intolerance relate to each other, and (2) coalitional religiosity and devotional religiosity will be positively correlated, but coalitional religiosity will independently predict religious intolerance while devotional religiosity will independently predict religious tolerance. We investigated three samples to test the above hypotheses. Since we analyzed all samples at once to address each hypothesis, we introduce them together. Sample 1 Sample 1 consisted of Christian and Buddhist responses to a 10-nation survey conducted in 2004 by ICM research associates on behalf of the British Broadcasting Religion and Religious Tolerance 12 Corporation (BBC) (2005). The survey asked representative samples in the U.S., U.K, South Korea, Indonesia, Israel, Lebanon, Nigeria, Russia, Mexico and India a range of questions about their religious beliefs. All items were translated by the BBC into the languages spoken by surveyed participants in each country. We examined items assessing (a) prayer frequency—a devotion measure, (b) frequency of religious attendance—a measure of behavioral cohesion, and (c) exclusivity—also coalitional(confusing) —in predicting (1) religious scapegoating: the inclination to blame religious others for the world’s problems, and (2) sacrificial scapegoating: the combination of scapegoating with a willingness to die for one’s God or beliefs. These measures and how they were scored are listed in Appendix A. Since sacrificial scapegoating is a subset of scapegoating, we examined both measures as two different manifestations of intolerance. In another study (Ginges, Hansen & Norenzayan, 2006), we found that these measures of scapegoating were positively related to national demographics suggestive of intolerance and conflict: military spending and number of refugees fleeing the country. Participants Although there were 10,068 survey participants total, we limited our analyses to the responses of Buddhists and Christians. We analyzed all 254 Buddhist participants in the survey; 113 male and 141 female; 5 from India, 7 from Indonesia, 1 from Russia, 225 from South Korea, 7 from the U.K. and 9 from the U.S.A.; 47 were between 18 and 24, 68 were between 25 and 34, 54 were between 35 and 44, 52 were between 45 and 54, and 33 were 55 or older. We also analyzed all Christian participants in the survey; 2031 male and 2679 female; 31 from India, 156 from Indonesia, 14 from Israel, 294 from Religion and Religious Tolerance 13 Lebanon, 935 from Mexico, 646 from Nigeria, 774 from Russia, 337 from South Korea, 711 from the United Kingdom, and 812 from the U.S.A; 883 were between the ages of 18 and 24, 1019 between 25 and 34, 917 between 35 and 44, 797 between 45 and 54, and 1091 over 55. Sample 2 Sample 2 was drawn from Chinese Christians and Chinese Buddhists in Malaysia whose devotional and coalitional religiosity were assessed along with (1) disapproval of personal “multireligiosity” (anti-pluralism) and (2) antipathy towards religious others. Both of these were considered measures of religious intolerance. (with what instrument did you measure these constructs?) The religious psychological (would it be better to call these variables “psychoreligious”?) variables considered in this sample were (1) a religiosity scale measuring devotion to one’s faith, adapted from the Intrinsic Religious Motivation Scale (Hoge, 1972) (“faith devotion”), (2) Altemeyer’s (1999) Right Wing Authoritarianism scale (“authoritarianism”), (3) Altemeyer’s (1996) DOG scale measuring dogmatism (“dogmatism”), (4) Altemeyer and Hunsberger’s (1992) religious fundamentalism scale (“fundamentalism”), and (5) a scale that we devised to measure religious exclusivity—the conviction that only one religion or understanding of the divine can be true and the others must be false (“exclusivity”). (Do you have any sort of psychometrics on your scale? How reliable and valid is it?) The items for faith devotion are listed in Appendix B. Originally conceived as a more internally valid measure of “intrinsic religiosity”, the items of the scale are more intuitively understood as devotion to the beliefs, practices and values of one’s faith, as well as to God or the Divine (see also the comments on the scale Religion and Religious Tolerance 14 by Batson et al, 1993). All scales were assessed on the same metric, with 1 indicating “totally disagree” and 9 indicating “totally agree” and 5 “neutral.” Items of the religious exclusivity scale are listed in Appendix C. All scales had some items amended to accommodate the multi-religious Malaysian sample. Some items were also simplified to be easier to understand since not all Malaysian speak English as their first language (though English is the first language for many Malaysian Chinese, who were the vast majority of the sample, and the language of instruction at the universities surveyed was English. For copies of the complete scales, please contact the authors.) Resistance to “multireligiosity” (anti-pluralism) was measured by how much participants disliked and expected damnation for the fictional character Piscine Patel, the central figure in Yann Martel’s (2001) international bestseller, Life of Pi. We extracted and edited a passage from this novel where Piscine describes his sense of religious devotion to God and to three religions—Hinduism, Christianity and Islam—and then later finds himself at the center of a heated verbal conflict between the authorities of those three religions—a Hindu pandit, Christian priest, and Muslim Imam. We measured religious antipathy by how negatively participants evaluated the personal qualities and likely afterlives of the characters in the story who did not share the same religious beliefs.