Who Do You Say That I Am? Part 2

Self-identification as a social mask (10 min)

There are several reasons people might identify themselves as something they are not, outside of petty deception or crime. Though in this case I am not talking about criminal pursuits where deception is part and parcel. Nor instances like adultery, or seduction attempts, where a man might pretend to be a “CEO” in order to exaggerate his accomplishments and wealth to impress a woman enough to sleep with him. Nor am I talking about spy-craft, in which impersonation is essential to evade detection and to obtain critical information on behalf of another organization or nation. Even though these cases still highlight the problem of relying on another person’s self-identification alone as trustworthy. Instead, my focus is on an issue I described in part 1 regarding people’s religious or worldview adherence.

The problem is the fact that we recognize deception as something all people are capable of, yet we still make determinations on things that are based on self-identification alone when it comes to the religious identities that they have. If you look at the Pew Research data, you would see just how unreliable this is. People answer the surveys in ways that are nonsensical and clearly not to be trusted. Yet this data is relied upon to make pronouncements like we find in this article. Supposedly, “The United States remains home to more Christians than any other country in the world. By 2070, those demographics could see a shift and the religion that has long been the country’s majority denomination could become a minority, according to a new study.” According to the article and the study, the “religiously unaffiliated” are projected to be near or exceed the number of Christians in the US by 2070.

Yet this premise is completely bogus. The basis for this data is merely people checking a box from a list of “religions” that they claim to be. That’s it. We are supposed to trust how people are identifying here, despite the data showing extremely serious problems in these identifications. Like those we covered in part 1 (atheists who believe in God? Christians who don’t believe in heaven?). This is such a flawed and almost worthless analysis as to make much of it pointless. There are a lot of problems if people are actually using such data to get an understanding of social trends without recognizing the unreliability of the premises behind these data.

First, we need to recognize that people make claims about their religious identity for many reasons. A lot of these reasons create powerful incentives to lie or misrepresent your religion. There is also the fact that people’s understanding of what “religion” actually means is usually shallow, inconsistent, and even outright self-serving (especially those who think “religion” is a bad thing). On top of the large number of people who have superficial or just plain false understandings of the religions in question. A perfect example of that would be the high number of “Buddhists” who believe there is a heaven. This confusion likely stems from ignorant Westerners who confuse nirvana with heaven, overlook the Buddhist cycle of reincarnation, and are simply drawn to new-age concepts. They clearly have a very confused understanding of the actual religion of Buddhism.

Let’s cover the reasons people have for claiming a religious identity that make self-identification such an immense problem:

1) Status

Social status is an enormously influential reason people would claim a religious identity, regardless of the truth. That is because we all want acceptance to a greater or lesser degree. Nobody is immune to the desire to be perceived in certain ways by their peers. Identities, including religious identities, all have a major impact on how you will be perceived by others. The social context in which you exist determines what kind of perception you will have. All religions are seen differently by different people and different cultures at various times. Some will give you more social acceptance, whereas others will create more conflict. Identifying as a Muslim in modern-day Saudi Arabia is something that would provide more social acceptance (ignoring all other factors) whereas identifying as an Orthodox Jew will do the exact opposite.

Therefore, we all feel pressure to identify with a certain religious identity, even to the point of lying about it, in order to change our status in our social circles and broader culture. The people who pursue social conformity, popularity, and general social acceptance as a priority are the ones most likely to claim religious identities, regardless of what they believe and the life they live, simply to gain status among their peers. This is one of the primary factors behind the band-wagoners who either claim to be a religion that is gaining in popularity within their culture or who downplay or outright reject a former religious identity, if it declines in popularity.

This is one of the most important reasons to reject the narrative about a former “Christian majority” in the study mentioned prior. This is because Christianity is increasingly perceived negatively in our society, which pressures individuals to minimize or abandon their faith. Conversely, in the past, Christianity held a much higher social standing and enjoyed favorable public opinion, encouraging people to identify as Christian. A better explanation of the data is that Christianity is fading in popularity, and those who used to have an incentive to claim to be Christian no longer have the social status gain that it used to provide. In reality, they were never Christian to begin with.

2) Ignorance

A lack of understanding of what a religion actually is and believes can lead to all kinds of ignorant religious identification. Especially when the lack of understanding stems from willful ignorance. One particularly relevant example of this (pulling from the Pew data) is the fact that 59% of self-identified Catholics believe that abortion should be “legal in all/most cases” and 74% who believe that homosexuality “should be accepted.” This phenomenon is not unique to Catholics (self-identified Catholics, that is) but is found in those who claim to be “evangelical Protestants” where 33% support abortion and 36% support the acceptance of homosexuality. What this really shows is a complete ignorance of Christianity. This is just a part of it, too. It is not unique to these specific beliefs in Christianity.

That self-identified Catholics support abortion is a particular problem here because, unlike Christianity more broadly, the Roman Catholic Church has very specific, official (and well-documented) doctrines on topics like abortion. The RCC is unequivocally opposed to abortion. To have such a high number of people outright defying the beliefs that the RCC holds shows how many self-identified Catholics are ignorant of their own religion. It is nothing more than a nominal identity that has no reflection on their individual beliefs.

Just review the fact that nearly 10% of atheists (which exceeds the margin of error) claim a belief in a god or universal spirit (it is unclear what “universal spirit” could mean). To call oneself an atheist while maintaining the belief in a god is a contradiction in the most direct sense. Many would dispute what Christianity is and teaches, claiming that one can be a Christian and still hold to the belief that homosexuality is morally acceptable. One cannot (by definition) hold to a belief in a god and be an atheist. Yet again, we have obvious ignorance of religious identification on display. Showing just how often people claim a religious identity while having little or no understanding of that religion.

3) Clout

When people are trying to make an argument that deals with right/wrong, public policy, or even overt religious disagreements, they might attempt to root their position in their religious position. For example, Hillary Clinton wrote an article in the Atlantic (an article I evaluate more specifically here) decrying the “MAGA movement” for its “war on empathy.” About a third of the way into this article she describes herself as a Christian and that her opposition to this “war on empathy” is because of her faith, what her reading of the Bible teaches her, and what she believes Jesus preached while on earth. She does this because she is using her religious self-identification in order to give some kind of authority to her claim. She is implying that “real” Christians (like her) reject the MAGA arguments that assert toxic empathy. She does this because she knows if she presented herself as an atheist, Humanist, Hindu, or some other religious identification, she wouldn’t have nearly as much clout behind her claims.

This happens all the time when people try to make their arguments more authoritative because of what religion they claim to have. Ex-Christians do this when attempting to debunk Christianity. They want you to think that they have “been there, done that” but escaped the falsehoods of Christianity once they “rationally” examined their faith. No doubt, some were truly Christian before they fell away from the faith. At the same time, many were never actually Christian to begin with. Not in any genuine sense. They think that having Christian parents meant they inherited Christianity, as if it were a hereditary thing like Jewish ethnicity. Or that being forced by their parents to go to a church when they were children meant they were actually Christian. They do this because they can present themselves as someone who “escaped” a cult or someone who isn’t motivated by hatred of Christians or Christianity.

This happens with Christians too. Those who claim to be ex-atheists or adherents of a previous religion will talk about that in a way that is meant to provide some sort of authority on the faults of their prior religion. That isn’t to say people are always manipulative or lying when they do this. The reality is that this situation creates an incentive to boost an individual’s perceived authority, leading people to be dishonest or to distort the truth. Individuals posing as “ex-Satanists” may exploit this to appeal to Christian groups excessively worried about Satanic infiltration. Furthermore, people might use their nominal religious identity for calculated self-interest, manipulating the public to support their political views, as exemplified by Hillary Clinton in the aforementioned article.

4) Self-interest/preservation

There is the fact that people will claim a religious identity solely out of self-interest, including self-preservation. One might seek to avoid embarrassment or association with unpleasant things, or conversely, protect themselves from persecution and physical harm, even up to death. The reasoning can be extremely petty and selfish, such as taking on a religious identification out of contrarian spite. Such as many Distrephists (see here for an overview of this terminology) who “convert” to Islam out of spite against the perceived connection between the Republican party and Christianity or “solidarity” with Palestinians. Alternatively, to obtain welfare or charity contingent upon a specific religious identity. People can also do this to preserve their careers, specific relationships, or circles of friends.

This reasoning increases in relevance whenever there are more perks or dangers for having a specific perceived religious identity. Countries with significant persecution of specific religious identities reward hiding a persecuted religious identity and reward claiming majority religious identification. Especially if there are material benefits, such as favored legal status, that coincide with some religious status.

5) Compromise/Syncretism

Finally, we have a factor that is not really a single reason per se, but more of a combination of other influences that exist in opposition to one another. Compromise is best understood as conflicting pressures upon a person that result in a corrupted or hybrid belief system. With syncretism as the resulting hybrid belief system from significant enough compromise. The reason this is important to take into consideration is that syncretism creates a new religion. Yet, people’s language often struggles to convey this due to various factors. Especially when those who compromise have every incentive to still identify as the religion that is being compromised (for example, see here [put link to Disintegration not Transformation article here]).

All religions comprise several individual beliefs that are interrelated. Followers of a religion do not, and cannot, hold to only a few of them. There are exceptions, since some religions deliberately reject the concept of truth or require consistency. Unitarian Universalism is an example of this kind of exception. Other than religions that are inherently universalist or perennialist, most religions contain truth claims that are mutually exclusive with other religions. The beliefs within the religion are interlocking parts of a whole, or individual threads woven together. Some are more essential than others.

When people disregard this or start accepting beliefs that exist in conflict with a claimed religious identification, they compromise. If they do this enough, they can no longer accurately represent their prior religion. No matter what they claim as self-identification. Take the example of someone who claims to be Christian, yet believes in reincarnation, rejects Christ’s divinity in favor of the “Christ Consciousness”, still believes in “god” and in heaven, and appeals to Scripture selectively while rejecting inerrancy. This is a perfect example of syncretism. Their significant compromise rejects essential Christian doctrines and views, so they cannot be considered Christian. They also accept things that don’t really make any sense when you understand what Neo-paganism is. Making them inconsistent and weak Neo-pagans, holding to Christian principles that contradict the Neo-pagan principles they pull from.

They believe in a hybrid religion that is not Christianity; it merely pulls from Christianity in a syncretistic fashion. Though they identify as Christian and will claim to revere the “Christ”, their compromise has caused them to abandon meaningful and correct identification as Christian. They exist in a conflicted state with both the initially identified and compromised religion and the other religion they compromise with. Syncretism is inherently illogical and contradictory. The prevalence of compromise and syncretism, where individuals conform to competing (even mutually exclusive and hostile) influences by diluting their religious convictions, is a frequent basis for questioning the legitimacy of self-identification.

All told, many different reasons exist why we cannot trust self-identification. People cannot be trusted, through identification alone, to actually have the identity they claim to have. We cannot categorize people through such methods because of the inherent untrustworthiness of human beings. One can identify as whatever one wants, but that clearly doesn’t make it true. The obvious reason so many organizations lean on this extremely flawed heuristic for the religious categorization of people in society is because it is a lot harder to identify people otherwise. It would require a lot more than a handful of questions. You would have to put them to the test, and you would have to more carefully and properly define religion itself and the religions we name, in order to do so. However, despite the inherent difficulty of doing so, this isn’t an excuse to rely on data that is entirely unreliable. If we only measured sentiment and religious self-identification, this would help us understand people’s views. However, we shouldn’t use this measurement as a proxy for accurate religious identity. Next, we will cover the difficulties and problems that exist for religious identification. Highlighting how problematic it would be to do so, but with an eye to the fact that it is possible to get more accurate data by approaching things through more objective measures.

- Victoria Gratiae -