Here's an illustration of some of the ideas in action. In Chapter 3, I go into a detailed case study of religious credence by examining ethnographies of The Vineyard. This is an originally American association of Evangelical charismatic churches, though it now has many congregations around the world as well. The two ethnographies I focus on are Tanya Luhrmann's When God Talks Back and Jon Bialecki's A Diagram for Fire.
Vineyard members practice everything from "hearing" the voice of God, which Luhrmann portrays as their having auditory mental imagery they interpret as God's voice, to setting a place for Jesus at the dinner table. So the imagining and make-believe elements in that religious movement are clear from the start. But perhaps even more strikingly, Jon Bialecki describes a scene in his ethnography where a well-known Vineyard "prophet" comes to visit the particular prayer group where Bialecki was recording notes. This event has to do with "speaking in tongues," which is supposed to be when someone is so infused by the Holy Spirit that they speak a language that transcends human languages (to an outsider it might sound like a wordless chant). Bialecki writes the following passage about this "prophet," which I also quote in my chapter:
When all the chairs in the living room were filled and people had started to sit on the floor, one of the coleaders picked up the guitar, prayed "come, Holy Spirit," and started playing plaintively and slowly the songs that were familiar from church services and worship music CDs and downloaded MP3s. The prophet covered his face with his hands as he started rocking back and forth in time to the music. In the background, the rustling whisper of the "polite," subvocal speaking in tongues could be heard. After a while, the prophet joined in speaking in tongues with his eyes closed, though at times he would open them, stop speaking in tongues, and check his watch—as a sign not of bad faith but of nonchalance.
Think about that. This man is supposed to be so overcome by the Holy Spirit that he speaks in tongues. Yet he is concerned enough about the time to check his watch. I think this is an example of a two-map cognitive structure in full force: the religious credence map layer represents the presence of the Holy Spirit, but the factual belief layer is still taking updates about the actual time. Religious credence is thus compartmentalized, even among the most charismatic. And one's evidence-based factual beliefs still keep track of the time.
My hopes for this book are two-fold.
First, in offering a more nuanced portrait of the dynamics of different kinds of "belief," I hope to give researchers in the psychological sciences and beyond resources for crafting interesting and more discriminating hypotheses than were possible heretofore.
Second, I hope to offer people something personal. In fervent religious and ideological contexts, people, myself included, can become muddled in their own minds in what sense they "believe" something they think they're supposed to believe. People wonder: "What is it I actually believe?" By distinguishing the notions of religious credence and factual belief—along with related cognitive attitudes—I hope to have given people seeking self-knowledge about their own "beliefs" something they can use in personal life.
