GOD-centric :

A life centered on the pursuit of a good and fair God of love

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Ch. 5 The Quest (continued)

Social Sciences & Religion

  If my college had offered a major in Religion, I am sure that I would have set my sights on it but Theology did not interest me. As I sought to explore the human condition from multiple angles, my undergraduate major was Psychology supplemented with minors in Philosophy, Sociology, and Political Science. At a public university, I may have not found God lurking so frequently in the halls of social science but God was well-represented in my studies.

  Sociologist Emile Durkheim believed that religion no longer concerned itself with the idea of God and instead focused on strengthening social bonds and exercising social control. Max Weber created an evolutionary model of religious development which indicated that there was a movement toward greater rationalization and abstraction in religious thought. Sigmund Freud believed that religion was an infantile projection of a protective father figure. William James thought that faith was a working hypothesis that was compatible with doubt. Gordon Allport categorized religious sentiment into the immature concerned with satisfying personal needs and allaying anxieties and the mature governed by the deep inquiry to uncover our true essence resulting in profound personal transformation. All of this was fine and dandy. At this juncture, I was no longer shocked by the academic study of religion. Sure, it did seem disrespectful to pragmatically assess the social usefulness of religion and unfortunately there were people who used religion as a psychological crutch because they were scared of death or life but I knew there was more to religion than that and so did William James and Gordon Allport. So, nothing earth-shattering for me thus far in my studies of the sociology and psychology of religion but that was about to change as my exploration of Kohlberg and Gilligan's theories of the stages of moral development led me to James Fowler.