RAMP Findings and Making Sense of the ‘God Within Each Person, Rather than Out There’

Abstract

This research note provides selected ‘belief’ data from the RAMP (Religious and Moral Pluralism) survey—data of an apparently arresting nature. The present discussion is primarily directed at offering several hypotheses to do with interpretations and explanations of the data. The overarching aim is to contribute to a research agenda which is of considerable significance for the sociological study of spirituality and religion, with profound implications for policy makers.

Notes

NOTES

1. Another index of the ‘middle ground’ can be derived from data provided by Lynda Barley. With 25% of Britons believing in a personal God and approximately 68% believing in God, 42% apparently believe in some kind of non-conventional/less than conventional ‘God’ (Barley 2). ‘Religious experience’ data are also relevant—around 50% of the adult population of Britain, and rising (Heald; Hay)—as is other evidence, including surveys focusing on CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) where expressivistic, holistic themes are well to the fore.

2. Andrew Greeley provides an illuminating account of the history of RAMP (182–6, 215–6) as well as relevant data from the European Values Study and the International Social Survey Program (see, for example, Table 1.1 and 1.2). Heelas provided RAMP findings, together with other relevant data and discussion in “The Spiritual Revolution of Northern Europe: Personal Beliefs” and Spiritualities of Life (see also Dobbelaere and Riis).

3. Our own inquiries, with bi-lingual researchers (including Houtman) helps confirm this.

4. To illustrate output differences, we compare the ‘Soul of Britain’ survey (Heald) with RAMP. The ‘Soul’ survey finds 23% of Britons selecting a “something there” option. Introducing the “God within rather than without” option and dropping the “something there” choice, RAMP obviously has nothing to report on the latter. The 37% who chose the “God within rather than without” option appear to have absorbed a fair number of the 23% in the ‘Soul’ survey who responded “something there”. If one changes the options, one changes the reported ‘beliefs’! There is also the following point: in contrast to the fact that RAMP's “God within” figure of 37% is indicative of the popularity of the theme of the sacrality of the inner-life per se, and thus of the major theme of the so-called ‘New Age’, the 2001 census found that just 906 Britons stated that they were ‘New Age’ (Petre 5), with only 1,603 identifying with ‘pantheism’ (Crabtree). To compound matters, it is by no means apparent that there are always (propositional) ‘beliefs’ to report (Heelas, Expressive). Finally, it is highly likely that people often hold contradictory ‘beliefs’ at much the same time (Heelas, “Conceptualizing”).

5. We are awaiting the publication of Voas's analysis of the European Social Survey data to see whether it sheds more light on how RAMP findings are best interpreted (Voas).

6. The four categories are derived from two pivotal questions. These are, in the English versions: “Whether or not you go to church or a place of worship, to what extent would you say that you are a religious person?” and “Whether or not you think of yourself as a religious person, would you say that you have a spiritual life—something that goes beyond just an intellectual or emotional life?” (Barker 32).

7. Unlike the previous two tables, which are derived from the responses of all the RAMP respondents, Table 3 is based on a recalculation of data provided by Barker (38). It is important to keep in mind that respondents entering the neutral value of 4 between the extremes of 7 (for the definitely religious or spiritual) and 1 (for the definitely not religious or spiritual) are not included in Barker's table (33, 35) nor are they, therefore, in our reworking of her table. It should also be noted that most of the “row” percentages of Table 3 do not add up to exactly 100. This is because the original table contained crude percentages without decimals. Even so, the patterns are clear enough. Many thanks are due to Peter Achterberg (Department of Sociology, Erasmus University) for his invaluable assistance in making the necessary calculations.

8. While interpreting RAMP findings, it is worth bearing in mind that the detraditionalisation spectrum runs from traditional orthodoxy to relatively detraditionalised forms of the sacred—panentheism (“all in God”, with God being of an ontological standing to include the all), pantheism (“God is all”, with God and the all being identical), etc.—to stances which “believe” in the “God within” while rejecting transcendent theism, and to the realm beyond detraditionalised of the sacred, namely the ‘clearly’ post-traditional of the secular: most noticeably those who selected the RAMP response option “I don’t believe in any kind of God, spirit or life force”, who fall into the “neither religious nor spiritual” category. (See also Barker 38–9.) It is also worth bearing in mind that some or many of those ticking the “God within, rather than without” box think of themselves as ‘religious’ and ‘spiritual’, without holding propositional beliefs about ‘God’, instead ‘sensing’ or ‘apprehending’ a ‘religious/spiritual’ dimension (Heelas, Expressive). The ‘misattribution’ to ‘belief’ possibility applies to the “God within” data of all Barker's categories. On the extent to which the Holy Spirit can serve in a detraditionalised fashion, see Wuthnow.

9. The most clear-cut example of non-traditional, post-traditional, possibly strongly detraditionalised forms of ‘spirituality’ almost certainly concerns respondents attributed to the ‘spiritual, not religious’ category, who also selected the questionnaire option “I don’t believe in any kind of God, spirit or life force”. This must be ‘secular’ spirituality, with many respondents quite probably drawing on the language of spirituality with regard to ‘secular’ experiences, such as the ‘deep’ friendship, the ‘moving’ aesthetic experience, etc. It is also possible that some reject the language of ‘belief’, because they associate it with what they take to be the dogmatism of (Christian, etc.) belief; further, they don’t think that their ‘spiritual’ sensibility has anything to do with ‘belief’—whether it be of God, spirit or life force couched in terms of the determinate specificity of ontological realism (Heelas, Expressive).

10. According to the European Values Survey, the percentage of Spaniards attending weekly service has declined from 43% in 1981 to 25% in 2000. During recent decades, Spain has incontestably become more liberal, humanistic, and, for many, more ‘permissive’.

11. Neither is there much doubt that, in measure, “God within” beliefs are used to affirm the values of quite strongly detraditionalised Christianity: the values which are ‘left’ when people have more or less ceased to believe in transcendent Christian theism; the values which people associate with ‘being a good or decent person’; the values which people are prepared to emphasise, or render ‘ultimate’, by drawing on the language of ‘God’; the values which are associated with, in order to exemplify, ‘being Swedish’ (paradigmatically, in the face of the ‘immigrants’ of Malmo). On the numerical significance of the humanistic among those describing themselves as ‘Christians in their own personal way’ in Sweden, see Eva Hamberg (51–3). It is indeed likely that the ‘humanistic’, in exclusivistic mode, is often bound up with the nationalistic, when to be a ‘good person’ is ‘to be human’ according to indwelling national tradition; is to ‘make’ the difference in the light of perceived threats to national ‘identity’. In exclusivistic mode, Catholicism in Italy, for example, can do a ‘good’ job in this regard. Arguably having veered towards the more secular, an immanentist ‘national’ or ‘cultural spirituality’ could well be quite strongly in evidence.

12. The criteria used in The Spiritual Revolution (Heelas et al. 36–7), together with the in-depth interviews and discussions of the Kendal Project, meant that we could only go some way in addressing this particular problem. However, Heelas would be the first to accept that the ‘dividing line’ under consideration was sometimes applied in rather arbitrary fashion.

13. Without attempting to be exhaustive, there is, firstly, the matter of ascertaining what exactly is indicated by the “God within” and related data; a more modest aim is ascertaining which of the interpretative possibilities raised by the data are the most plausible. Secondly, taking a more theoretical perspective, there is the matter of going deeper into explaining the detraditionalisation of what are almost certainly great swathes of Christianity (with other traditions, led by Hinduism, no doubt catching up in the future). Thirdly, there is the task of explaining dynamos of change, generating ‘God within’ and cognate ‘beliefs’, which operate among those who have never had much of a Christian background, if any (a formidable challenge for theory, which has yet to be tackled systematically on the basis of evidence available now, see Houtman and Aupers 305). Finally, there is the matter of explaining why many of those who ‘drift’ away from more direct forms of contact with Christianity appear to remain content with some form or other of ‘belief’ in the sacred—rather than becoming atheists. Thinking of the third of these explanatory tasks, in the Netherlands, around half of the ‘New Agers’ do not have significant Christian backgrounds (Houtman, Mascini and Gels 9). Given that the ‘New Age’ appears to be equally attractive to those who have never identified with Christianity and to those who have, the non-identified category directs attention to autonomous (with regard to Christianity, that is) motors of change and the identified point to the role played by prior Christian ‘priming’. Thinking of the fourth task, Houtman and Aupers note that “research has pointed out that post-traditionalists are equally likely to embrace post-Christian spirituality as to reject it along with Christian religion, adopting a basically secularist posture in the process” (316, emphasis added) and emphasise the importance of explaining this. Life for the sociologist of spirituality and religion, today, is thus far from simple.

14. One reason for attaching considerable importance to participant understanding is that it helps avoid the danger of circular argumentation. Circularity is in evidence when questionnaire outcomes are used to make interpretative ‘hypotheses’ about the same outcomes. There is also the danger of deploying contextual evidence of taking “God within rather than without” responses to mean just that, because they are found among those who are of an expressivistic, inner-self orientated persuasion, for example. Clearly, to use cultural context (for instance the expressivistic) to interpret ‘belief’—to explain ‘belief’ accordingly—is to fall into the trap so emphasised by Peter Winch in The Idea of a Social Science.