Belief Stories: Religion and the Social Construction of Reality

 

Belief Stories: Religion and the Social Construction of Reality

 

By

 

Matthew Smith-Lahrman

Professor of Sociology

Dixie State University[1]

 

Table of Contents

1.    Belief Stories, Religion in Washington County, Qualitative Research, Reasoning by Analogy, and the Sociology of Religion

2.    Moral Order, Identity, and the Maintenance of Social Structure

3.    Formal Belief Stories: The Case of Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod Services

4.    Religious Services as Places Where Belief Stories are Enacted and Observed

5.    Belief Stories and the Social Construction of Reality

6.    Distinctions: Us versus Them, One True Religion, Believers and Non-Believers

7.    Being Religious, Acting Religious: The Connection between Belief and Behavior

8.    Literary Belief Stories: Religious Texts Provide Stories for Living

9.    Belief Stories about God

10.   The Externality of Belief Stories: The Case of Born Again Stories

11.   Dealing with Contradictory Stories: How Religious People Counter Challenges to Their Expressed Realities

12.   Conclusion/Discussion

 

Chapter 1

Belief Stories, Religion in Washington County, Qualitative Research, Reasoning by Analogy, and the Sociology of Religion

      This is a book, grounded in observations of the activities of religious people, about the social construction of reality. More precisely, it is an examination of one way that people construct and maintain identities within perceived realities, the enacting of belief stories. Belief stories are interactional behaviors usually, though not exclusively, in the form of spoken language people use to tell others and themselves what they think is real. It follows that people act in situations based on what they believe to be real. Therefore, this is a book about people’s actions, grounded in an examination of the behaviors of people in religious settings. This chapter serves as an introduction to my argument. In it I establish the concept of belief stories, tell how I came to do this research, describe the setting and methods I used in doing the research, go over the research process itself, make a case for reasoning by analogy, and briefly summarize the sociology of religion.

Belief Stories: An Introduction

A basic sociological question revolves around human perceptions of reality: How is it constructed and maintained? This book addresses this question. One way reality is transmitted is through belief stories, tales about perceived realities. Through situated behaviors we present to others our versions of reality and our places within it. At the same time, we attempt to convince others of the actuality of our expressed realities. Of course, others are doing the same toward us. Coordinated actions occur because people, for practical purposes, agree about realities.

Following W.I. and Dorothy Thomas’s famous dictum[2], our actions are based on our perceived realities. If we belief it to be real, we act as if it is. Thus, the stories we tell have consequences. In specific moments they are meant to help us achieve desired goals. On a larger societal level, stories are used by some to maintain power over others, to justify stratification systems, to point out enemies. They are also used to create cohesion among group members: if we act the same, then we must believe in the same reality, and we are therefore, members of the same group.

We use stories as presentations of our personal identities. By talking about ourselves we tell others who we are. By presenting our beliefs in certain realities, we present ourselves as types of people within those realities. By suggesting we are types of people within realities we are presenting our beliefs in types of groups, because personal identity is integrally tied to memberships in groups. Because we believe we are types of people, because we believe we are members of types of groups, we act as if we are.

Belief stories express to self and others that one believes in certain things. For instance, by stopping at a red light I signal my belief that red means stop and I agree to the rules of the road. By attending a particular church and engaging in shared rituals, I signal my belief in the church’s creeds.

      In another sense, belief stories signal to others our interactional intentions. When I enter a classroom and declare myself the instructor, I signal to all in attendance that I will act like one. I will be in the room from 11:00-11:50 every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I will lecture, give assignments, grade assignments, and answer students’ questions. I am also signaling, of course, based on the previous proposition, that I believe others in attendance are, indeed, students in my class. By attending a particular religious congregation I signal my intention to act like people in that congregation do: engage in particular rituals, sing along to hymns. At the very least I am signaling that I will act reverent because that is what people at church do.

      Expressions of belief stories signal our expectations that others will act in particular ways. By acting as if I am the instructor in a class, I am signaling to others I expect them to act like students. I expect them to take their seats, not talk over my lectures, do the work I assign, and ask questions of me when they are confused. By presenting myself as a congregant at a religious service I simultaneously signal my expectation that others will be faithful to their statuses and roles: pastors will preach, other congregants will perform rituals during the service, drink coffee, and socialize before and after the service.

      By signaling our intentions to act in particular ways and our expectations that others will act particular ways, we signal our belief in particular realities and, therefore, make known our definitions of situations; we signal to others what we think is happening in the moment. By behaving like a congregant and expecting others to behave in their appropriate roles, I signal my belief that a religious service is happening in the moment.

      Part and parcel of our signaling beliefs in realities and definitions of situations is the presentation of personal identities to self and others. By acting as if a reality is true we tell others that we are particular kinds of people; we also confirm to ourselves that we are particular kinds of people. I act like a professor, therefore I am. I act like a congregant, therefore I am. Similarly, we recognize the identities and perceived realities of others by observing their enacting of belief stories.

      The enacting of belief stories signals our intent to convince others of perceived realities. It is in our best interests to convince others to agree to our realities in our attempts to achieve goals in situations. We are more likely to achieve our goals if others do what we expect them to do rather than act contrary to our presented realities. It works to my benefit, for instance, if others in my class act like students rather than disco dancers. It will be difficult for me to give a decent lecture if there is loud music, disco balls, and others are dancing rather than taking notes. Similarly, it benefits the pastor when others in the room act like parishioners rather than, say, bull fighters. We want others to go along with our realities so we can do whatever it is we intend within the situation.

This book is about belief stories: actions we take that present our understandings of reality and our places within it. A ground-level sociological concern is with reality and how it is shared and passed on by people. Belief stories are how this is done.

My Research

      When one thinks of religion in Utah generally, and Southwest Utah specifically, one thinks of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and since roughly two-thirds of the state’s population are members of the Church, this is a legitimate thought. However, as I found doing fieldwork in the area, St. George and its surrounding communities host a plethora of weekly worship services in addition to the Sacrament Meetings of the LDS Church. Not surprisingly most of these services are Christian, though there are Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist services, as well. Some of the congregations have 500 or more participants while others consist of only two or three.

      I work at Dixie State University (DSU), an open-enrollment bachelor’s and master’s degree granting college in St. George, Washington County, Utah. As a “teaching” college there is little pressure to publish. Faculty members’ advancements up the ranks are based primarily off indicators of teaching effectiveness. Research, especially of the non-student oriented variety, is not part of our job descriptions.[3]

      I write this about my university employment because it has played an important role in my research and writing career. I have always researched and written about whatever I want, sociological or not, and done so at my own pace. I am an ethnographer, a fieldworker, a qualitative sociologist. Some areas of life I have studied include a university Gay Academic Union, the peripheries of a radical environmental group, dart throwers, behaviors in coffee houses (Smith-Lahrman 2010), Chicago’s indie rock music scene (Smith-Lahrman 2010b), and the lyrics of Curt Kirkwood and the Meat Puppets (Smith-Lahrman 2014). I choose my research topics based on personal interest rather than substantive consistency: I am not a sociologist of religion, or rock and roll, or the Meat Puppets. I am a fieldworker who imbeds himself within the life worlds of groups of people.

      As an ethnographer it is not the substance of people’s activities or the specific meanings they attach to their worlds that are of primary interest. I am concerned with the interactional processes by which substance and meaning are constructed to shape activities and create structure, and the ways people use meaning to get through their everyday lives. For example, as a graduate student in the late 1980s I suggested that there are places, like Northern Arizona University’s (NAU) Gay Academic Union, where people go to be themselves. LGBTQIA+ students at NAU constructed an arena where they could be “out” without care. The Gay Academic Union was a dramatic example of a basic social process (Glaser and Strauss 1967) that ordinary people do in the courses of their ordinary lives.

      My study of micro-behaviors in Evanston, Illinois, coffee houses serves as another example of how specific meanings in specific situations serve as dramatic examples of basic social processes (Smith-Lahrman 2010). In it I show how coffee house patrons create meaningful personal spaces for themselves through the positioning of their bodies or the arrangements of their jackets and books, as well as how they invade each others’ spaces through violations of these same meaningful activities. Such behaviors are not unique to coffee houses. People construct private spaces for themselves all the time in all kinds of places.

      A third example of how people use meaningful gestures to create practical structure lies in my dissertation where I outline Chicago’s indie rock music scene of the early 1990s (Smith-Lahrman 1996). Here I show how low-level rock musicians and support personnel created a hierarchy of clubs and nights of the week as a yardstick to measure their success (or lack thereof) within the scene. Creating meaningful social hierarchies is a basic social process that occurs in the everyday worlds of many people.

      A final example of how I discovered basic social processes within empirically dramatic examples is within my study of the Meat Puppets (Smith-Lahrman 2014; 2011; 2015a,b,c,d,e,f). Although the book focuses on the lyrics of the band’s songwriter, Curt Kirkwood, there is also some band history thrown in for good measure. In the history sections I show how a group of artists, in conjunction with a revolving set of industry support personnel, created a meaningful career trajectory that made sense for them. It is a trajectory that emphasized the band’s eclectic musical tastes as well as their adamant do it yourself attitude gained from their experiences in punk rock art worlds of the 1980s. As with the above examples, the case of the Meat Puppets is a dramatic example of the ways that people construct meaningful careers in a number of different professions.

This Book

Following Robert Wuthnow’s argument in The God Problem (2012) I, as a reasonably educated person, have difficulty reconciling the idea of a personal god with a reasonable understanding of the way things are. I was raised in a none/atheist family in Chula Vista, California. At the age of five, I was given the option of staying home on Sundays with my father and watching football or going to church with my mother. I chose football. As a high school punk rocker in the early 1980s much of my suburban middle-class “anger” was aimed at the faux sincerity of organized Christianity. As a college sophomore at NAU I had an epiphany that, duh, there is no god. For the next 30 years of my personal and professional life I was adamantly pro-reason (i.e. science) and anti-delusional fantasy (i.e. religion).

Twenty or so years ago my younger brother was born again. His story is similar to many I have heard in the course of my research. He was living a life of partying and carousing. Somewhere in the process of sobering up he found God. It was not long until he was the co-founder of an independent Christian fellowship in Chula Vista. He is also the founder of an outreach organization that provides meals and daily living supplies to people in need.

I finished my Meat Puppets book in 2014 and was looking to engage in a more sociological project. I wanted to do some ethnography. My brother’s recent acceptance of Christianity, and what I perceive to be the good works he does as a Christian, piqued my interest. Maybe I could soften my stance on religion and hang out with some self-identified religious people and see how they perform religion within their lives.

My interest in the social construction of meaning and the use of meaning to create structure sealed the deal for me. Because substance does not matter at the heart of the type of research I do, it does not matter whether or not religious people’s thoughts and actions are perceived as irrational and absurd to those of us who claim to be rational and reasonable. What matters is there are people who live their daily lives within a structure created in part by their religious beliefs. Behaviors within religious settings seem perfect for observing the social construction of meaning; a dramatic example of a basic social process.

In this book, then, I highlight the importance of belief stories in the social construction of culture, identity, and behavior. Religious services and ideologies provide dramatic empirical examples of belief stories, but such stories exist in all sorts of arenas. Therefore, it is not religion that I am most interested in presenting here; this is not a book on the sociology of religion. It is a book on the basic social process of the use of belief stories to make sense of everyday life. Religion and religious services are springboards from which I make a generic sociological argument.

Setting and Methods

      For 14 months in 2015-2016 I engaged in fieldwork among religious congregations in Washington County, Utah, mainly in the cities of St. George and Washington. Washington County sits in the southwest corner of Utah along U.S. Highway 15, 120 miles northwest of Las Vegas and 303 miles south of Salt Lake City. Its population in 2015 was estimated to be 155,602 and it grew by 12.7% between 2010 and 2015. Its growth rate at the time was more than that of Utah (8.4%) and the United States (4.1%) (U.S. Census Bureau 2015). Washington County had a “Persons 65 and Over” population of 19.6%, higher than both Utah (10%) and the U.S. (14.5%). Ninety-three point seven percent of the county’s population was white, 10% “Hispanic or Latino,” 2% mixed race, 1.7% American Indian/Alaskan Native, .9% Asian, and .8% African American. The percentage of Washington County residents with bachelor’s degrees or higher was 27.1%, below the Utah (30.6%) and national (29.3%) percentages. A median household income of $49,498 placed Washington County lower than both Utah ($59,846) and the U.S. ($53,482). Washington County’s poverty rate of 12.9% was higher than Utah’s 11.7% but lower than the U.S. as a whole (14.8%).

These data not only paint a demographic picture of the population in which I did my research, but also show correlations between demographic data and religious activities such as congregational attachments and service attendance. For instance, in 2015 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints had a membership of less than 50% college graduates, as did Evangelical Protestant congregations (Religious News Service 2015); both of these groups also had relatively young memberships. On the other hand, mainline Protestant churches had older and better educated memberships.

      What I found in my research agreed with these findings. People’s perceptions of Utah in general and Washington County specifically as being predominantly LDS are correct. In Utah in 2010 the adherence rate[4] of Latter-day Saints as a whole was 691.2, twelve times the group with the next highest rate, Catholics at 57.9 (Association for Religious Data Archives). Washington County is not much different. The adherence rate for the LDS Church, at 682, is only slightly lower than Utah as a whole, with Catholics in second with a rate of 42.3. The third place group for both Utah and Washington County is the same, Non-denominational Evangelical Protestants, though the rate in Washington County (8.8) is higher than that for Utah as a whole (5.6). This last fact is explained by the fact that Washington County has a lower percentage of college graduates than Utah as a whole; Evangelical Protestant churches have congregations with high percentages of non-college graduates.

      My research began in January, 2015, when I dedicated myself to reading deeply, widely, and exclusively religiously-based literature, sociological and otherwise. I also began free writing memos concerning my readings. My fieldwork investigating religious groups in Washington County began in June, 2015, at which point I attended a different congregational service each week for a year. In that year I attended services with two different Episcopal churches, a Bible church, two Assemblies of God churches, three Baptist churches, a Methodist church, a Calvary Chapel, two Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints wards (in the same building), a Presbyterian church, a Foursquare fellowship, two Catholic churches, a meeting of Quakers, a Jewish congregation, three different Lutheran Church synod churches, a The Religious Science Institute, a Muslim congregation, a Church of Christ Scientist, a Unity congregation, three non-denominational Evangelical churches, a Church of Christ, a Unitarian gathering, a Buddhist gathering, and a Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall service.[5]

      The sizes of the congregations I visited varied greatly from 700 or more at the St. George Catholic Church on Easter Sunday, to a regular summer clientele of 350 at The Bible Church, to 200 or so attendees at the Washington City 7^th Ward of the LDS Church (there are 236 Wards in Washington County), to the 85 people at the New Life Christian Center, 65 at the Desert Ridge Baptist Church, 35 at the Muslims of St. George, 18 at the Church of Christ, 8 at the Unity Center for Positive Living, 4 at the Dixie Drive District SGI Buddhist service (2 attendees made the 2-hour drive from Las Vegas to pray), and 3 at the meeting of the Southern Utah Friends.[6]

      Some of the services I attended were in buildings owned and operated by the religious organization performing the service. For instance, The Episcopal Church, the St. George Catholic Church, and the Calvary Church all owned their buildings. A few congregations met in rented buildings: The Fellowship and The Community Church were in this category.[7] Some were granted space in the extra rooms of already existing churches: The Synagogue Jewish congregation met in the back classrooms of the Good Shepherd Presbyterian Church while the Unity Center of Positive Living met in the small chapel of The Episcopal Church. The Muslims of St. George met in a room at Dixie State University, the Southern Utah Friends rented a room in a private arts building. A number of groups had “storefront” residences: The Religious Science Institute and Desert Ridge Baptist Church were two. Finally, the Dixie Drive District SGI Buddhists met in the home of one of their members.

      Through my year of “church hopping” I gained an understanding of what religious services in Washington County looked like. Yes, there are many Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints wards with a lot of members who meet regularly, but underneath this veneer of a dominant religion is an active and diverse religious community. The largest of these congregations were Catholic, Protestant, and Evangelical Christians, but there were active Buddhists, Jews, and Muslims, as well as some New Thought Religious Science organizations. Most services, no matter the religion, lasted about an hour, with some as short as 40 minutes and others as long as 2 hours. Some services followed a strict liturgy with no improvisational activities while others seemed to fall into interactional and spiritual anarchy.

      I interviewed nine religious leaders as part of my research. I defined “leader” as whoever was conducting the service of a particular congregation. My interviews included preachers/pastors from The Episcopal Church, The Community Church, The Baptist Church, The Fellowship, The Bible Church, The Religious Science Institute, The Four Square Church, a reader from the Church of Christ Science, and the Rabbi at The Synagogue. The Christian Science reader later asked that I not use material from our interview in my writing and presentations, so I deleted it from my data base. Eight interviews is not a lot, but it adds to my understanding of what it means to be a member of a religious congregation in Washington County, Utah.

      The next stage of my research, which began in June, 2016, was to engage in an extended residency with a single congregation in the county. By doing so I became familiar with how one congregation, The Lutheran Church, operated not only within themselves, but also within the larger milieu of organized religion in the county. A member of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, The Lutheran Church was a relatively new member of the Washington County religious community. It was planted in 2015 and had a regular Sunday attendance of about 15 people. I attended Sunday services and Thursday Bible lessons at The Lutheran Church from June through August, 2016.

      When I began my research I was ignorant of what happens in religious services. This is why I chose to study and write about them. I wanted to write an all-encompassing treatise about religion, a grand sociological theory that covered everything religious. This would require a broad understanding of the empirical realities of religion. I wanted to come to an understanding of all religions everywhere: Christianity (and its variants), Islam (and its variants), Judaism (and its variants), Buddhism, Hinduism, Satanism, Santa Muerte, Spaghetti Monsters. All of it.

      One way to do this would have been to immerse myself in a specific empirical faction of a religion – a congregation, maybe - and describe it in detail, but I was not in a life stage where such field work made sense. It would take many hours of time spent with a congregation and then many more hours at the computer writing about it. Maybe someday this would be possible, but not then.

      Another option, the one I ended up pursuing, was to come to a cursory empirical understanding of many different religious congregations or services coupled with a sociological understanding of religion. These are two different things. The first is an empirical understanding of as many religious services as I could handle. It would be great if such an understanding could be empirically thick. The second is theoretical, what sociologists have to say about religion.

Much of my understanding of religion was going to be through secondary data. I was confident that I am good at this, but I would have to make it clear in anything I write that I am using secondary data, that “so and so says this about this religion,” rather than “this religion is. . .” I would stick with the data I had and make it clear to readers what kinds of data I was using.

So I began by doing a lot of reading about religion. I listened to podcasts about religion, I watched a Great Courses series about religion, I tried to pay attention to things people said about religion, and to things in the news about religion. The goal was to write a sweeping theoretical treatise answering the question, “What is religion?” I thought I could do this with a passing understanding of the multiple religious services I observed.

      Eventually I realized I could not define “religion” outside of people’s definitions of it. I cannot define anything, if I am sociologically honest, outside of people’s definitions of anything. But I would have to try. I had to go somewhere and interact with some people within some type of setting that I and, presumably they, think of as religious. I would have to go to a church, for instance. I would have to observe how churches work. That is, I would need to observe people interacting with each other in situations that they define as religious.

      In the end I have not defined “religion” except to use the term within the interactional contexts in which the people I observed used it. Instead, I discovered a basic social process I call belief stories. Within religious settings people tell stories that solidify, or not, their perceptions of themselves and other people as religious, or not; as members of such-and-such congregation, or not; as believing in something supernatural, or not. As a basic social process, belief stories are told in many interactional settings: rock music fans tell them as a way of classifying the music they listen to as of one genre or another; sports fans use them as a way of defending their status as a fan of one team over another; families use them as a way to identify themselves as a coherent unit with a unique focus.

The Research Process

      My research progressed through five stages. Stage One, the Preparation Stage, began in late 2014 and lasted until June, 2015. It was during this time that I committed myself to, first, reading whatever I could on the Sociology of Religion and religion generally. I wrote analytic memos during this stage, a practice that continued throughout the entirety of the project. This was the stage in which I prepared for primary data gathering.

      Stage Two was the Data Gathering Stage. It began in June, 2015, with my first visit to my first church service, The Episcopal Church’s Wednesday meeting. Stage Two lasted for fourteen months, ending in August 2016. The first 12 months involved me visiting a different religious congregation each week, the last three with an extended research internship at The Lutheran Church. I interviewed nine congregational leaders during this stage.

      Nestled in toward the end of the Data Gathering Stage was my preparation and presentation of a paper on August 20, 2015, for the Association for the Sociology of Religion (Smith-Lahrman 2016). In the presentation I gave a description of the empirical reality of religion in Washington County, Utah, similar to the one I gave in this chapter, and moved into a discussion of “moral order reality structures,” ways the people make sense of their worlds so as to give meaning to their lives.

      The next stage was the Literature Review Stage. In this stage I wrote memos about each of the books and articles I read in the course of doing this research. I was selective in deciding what sections of which books and articles helped with the story I wanted to tell while also allowing the readings to help shape the story.

      Next came the Organization Stage. Here I coded and arranged my data. This included reading through and coding all of my interviews and memos. I then read through the codes and organized them into coherent and logically consistent sequences of ideas that might resemble a book. I used the qualitative software program In Vivo to help with the organizing of my data; it allowed me to do on the computer – create and group conceptual categories – what I have previously done by hand using three-by-five cards.

      Finally was the Writing Stage. At this point I smoothed out the edges that existed in the rough structure of ideas from the Organization Stage: I added or deleted sentences and paragraphs where needed, rearranged sections where necessary, and generally put together a book, like putting together Legos, out of the disparate parts I had already created.

Reasoning by Analogy

      The sociologist’s job is to document how people construct and maintain order. Sociologists also document the order that people say they perceive, because this perception is what they are trying to maintain. To this end I distinguished between formal and informal observations in my research. Formal observations were those where I dedicated a week to one congregation. I attended as many of that congregation’s sessions as possible and interviewed its leader. Informal observations were visits to services that I did not plan to write specific field notes about; no interviews took place related to informal observations. Informal observations happened every week. I tried to attend at least one service per week, varying the congregations I attended. Informal observations happened mostly between interviews associated with formal observations.

      Howard S. Becker (2014) refers to this type of research as “reasoning by analogy.” I attended the services of numerous religious organizations and hashed-out how they were similar to and different from each other. But I also wanted to know how religion is similar to and different from other things that people do. I wanted to isolate a certain human activity and highlight its generic qualities. I wanted to write that religion is a unique activity while at the same time showing how it has things in common with other activities. In parts of this book, for instance, I compare religious services with live rock music events. As an example, rockers utilize belief stories in the same ways religious folks do, to maintain group and individual identity and, thus, have a purpose for acting. I use my “construction of rock” as an analogically comparative case to understand religious belief stories.

      Reasoning by analogy provides the researcher with “a collection of connected researchable questions about a family of related phenomena” (Becker 2014: 60). All of my sociological research has focused on identity: how is it that one comes to see oneself as a specific type of person and, consequently, how is it that one comes to see others as types of people who are like or unlike oneself? My rock research focused on how rockers defined and enacted “rock” as a part of themselves and, consequently, themselves as a part of a larger “scene” of rockers. My religion research focuses on how people come to define themselves as certain types of religious persons and how, consequently, they define themselves as members of a larger congregations of people who are defined similarly. For both groups of people identity comes about the same way: through the construction and maintenance of belief stories.

Sociology as Science

      Scientists often allude to things as if they are so obvious as to require “neither logical argument or empirical proof” (Becker 2014: 168). “What about Murder?” asks Howard Becker. Is not murder obviously an evil act? Well, the taking of life can be defined in many ways. In specific sets of circumstances defined by certain groups of people, certain activities called “murder” are, indeed, evil acts. One cannot empirically prove that the taking of life is an evil act other than to point out the subjective nature of the label. What about Mozart? Surely he was a musical genius. Well, if one accepts certain definitions of what music is and what competent musicians do then, yes, Mozart was a musical genius. But not everyone agrees to this definition of music. One cannot show empirically that Mozart was a genius other than to say that some people created some rules of music and perceive that he mastered these rules as only a “genius” could.

      Is it possible to be too scientific? Peter Berger (1967: 128) suggests that increasingly complex scientific methods constrain rather than enhance the sociological agenda. Sociology has put itself in a methodological hole which minimizes micro-interactional processes and qualitative research at the expense of multivariate analysis and quick statistical presentations (Smith et al. 2013). Complex methodological techniques take us away from sociology’s purposes of describing, explaining, and predicting interactional behaviors. Such a purpose is best realized through direct observations of real people interacting in real situations.

      Becker continues that the goal of the best social scientific research is to reason from specific empirical cases which lead to the discovery of social processes and the details of social organization that produce them. Good researchers collect enough data to allow them to go beyond guesswork in explaining what is going on in the case being studied. (Becker, 2014: 5) Religious people and their activities, the empirical data for this book, provide dramatic examples for a more generic basic social process (Glaser & Strauss 1967): the construction and maintenance of belief stories.

      Robert Wuthow suggests sociologists should spend less time focused on the periphery, on the extremes of expression, and more time at the center studying the mundane (Wuthnow 2012: 252). If we want to understand what people do, what normal people do, then we need to observe normal people doing normal things. The virtue of survey/questionnaire research, argues William Bainbridge, is in its ability to map variations in beliefs, attitudes, and behavior across groups in a population (Bainbridge 1997: 42). The weakness of such research is that it overlooks, by design, the real-time empirical interactions of people within those groups. Becker (Becker 2014: 157) suggests that survey results and frequency distributions do not tell the whole story of any behavior. We must get close to the data, compare our findings with a multitude and variety of cases, and see how real people in real situations behave. Church attendance numbers, for example, do not tell the whole story of what it means to be religious. To get this one needs to be in the presence of people being religious.

      When we do sociological research comparing cases we should make our typologies more complex rather than simple (Becker 2014). We look at a case (say, a local church), describe everything we can about it, then look at another case that is similar to the first in some ways (say, another local church). We should then describe everything we can about Church #2 with the exception that the things we described in Church #1 guide our focus for Church #2. We continue on with this for as many cases as we can.

      Becker's methodological point is that sociology should be about describing complexity, not reductionism. We are not looking for that one variable relationship that describes everything, because it does not exist. Human behavior is much too complex for this. Instead, we should set a goal to describe all of the possible ways that different instances of similar cases are manifest, the way that a particular activity occurs in different cases.

      Reasoning by analogy, I asked the same two questions of every observation I made, and I found as wide an assortment of examples as I could (Becker 2014: 66). I asked, “How does this case lead to the recognition of personal and or group identity?” and, “What kind of belief story is this?” The answers to these questions provided a large assortment of belief stories that all lead to the same place: the creation of personal and group identities.

      Traditional social science, Becker writes, looks for correlations between input and output, independent and dependent variables. The sociologist tries to account for the existence of the values of one variable by measuring its relationships to the values of another. For instance, years of education is negatively correlated with number of children for women in most developed countries (Pradhan 2015). The independent variable, years of education, is seen to directly influence the dependent variable, number of children. Of course, since this is an example of correlation rather than cause, the variables can be flipped; number of children (independent variable) directly influences women’s years of education (dependent variable). The problem, argues Becker, is that such reasoning is too simplistic. It reduces a complex social phenomenon down to a few variables without trying to understand just how those variables work together.

      Becker suggests the methodological idea of a black box to deal with the complexity of human behavior. In this technique the researcher identifies an outcome (say, the construction of identity), studies it intensely over a number of similar and different cases, and discovers variables that seem to influence the outcome (say, belief stories). Instead of running a correlation, however, they try to explain, in as much detail as possible, all the ways the input is related to the output in as many different cases as possible. The black box is what sits in between the input and the output, all the ways the input is related to the output. The researcher should find as many inputs as possible, there is no limit. Each new input is, as with the ones before it, examined in as many different cases as possible (again, there is no limit to the number of cases the researcher should use except for the researcher’s own physical and psychological capabilities). It is what happens inside that black box that should interest the sociologist. The attempt is to explain all the ways the input variables work with the output variable and with other input variables.

      The data I gathered suggest an outcome of personal and group identity. We present ourselves to others as certain types of people and as members of certain types of groups. We act within specific situations as if we are these types of people. The input, the inside of the black box, is belief stories. The things people say and do, their stories, mix and mingle in myriad ways resulting in presentations of self as types of people and members of groups.

Sociology of Religion

      In 2013 Christian Smith and colleagues published an article in the Journal for the American Academy of Religion “on the status of religion in American Sociology.”[8]. In it, they argue that standard sociological methods “reflect assumptions about and treatments of religion that are so thin, skewed, and misleading that they constitute a serious obstacle to understanding and explaining the complexity of real religious phenomena” (Smith et al. 2013: 909). Most studies enter a limited set of variables into their multiple regression equations that result in reductionist understandings of complex phenomena. The solution, of course, is to engage in deep ethnographic analyses of specific empirical cases and, through comparison, the creation of theoretical insights about human basic social processes.

      Smith et al suggest the continued interest in the sociology of religion is driven by the fact that religion in American life is not going away. Sociologists of the nineteenth century predicted religion’s demise as societies industrialized (modernization theory), but they were wrong. By numerous measures, religion in American life is as strong as ever and sociologists are realizing that if they want to understand modern human interactional behaviors, they must account for religion (Smith et al. 2013: 907).

      There needs to be a two-way stream between religion and sociology (Smith et al. 2013: 926). Sociologists need to stop thinking they know more about religion than religious folks do (which, in some ways, they do), and religious folks need to stop thinking that sociologists are out to destroy faith (which is, unfortunately, what some want to do). Sociologists need to start listening to and involving religious folks in their studies; they need to start taking them seriously.

      Sociologists should be open to the role of religion in shaping current beliefs in science as a way to explain the world. (Smith et al. 2013: 930-31) Scientists, social and otherwise, tend to see religion as less than science as an explanation for things. For a more thorough understanding of what religion is and what religious people are up to, sociologists must start listening in an honest manner to the things these folks say. Sociologists need to take the belief stories of religious people seriously.

      Sociologists must be conscious of their motivations for studying religion in the first place (Smith et al. 2013: 922-23). We all have reasons for doing what we do. We all have definitions of the situations in which we act. This is as true for social scientists as it is for anyone else. If we are searching for the truth in our studies of religion, we must also acknowledge the truth of our studying it in the first place.

Organization of the Book

My motivation for writing this book was to discover basic social processes within the activities of religious people. As mentioned, this is not a book on the sociology of religion per se; it is a book about the social construction of reality within religious interactional settings. Chapter two is theoretical. It covers some salient sociological ideas about interaction, social construction of reality, moral order, and identity. In chapters three and four I describe the religious services I observed, including data garnered from the religious leaders I interviewed. In chapters five through eleven I describe the types of belief stories I discovered in my observations.

 

Chapter 2

Moral Order, Identity, and the Maintenance of Social Structure

      The thrust of my argument about belief stories and identity has to do with the social construction of reality as a moral order. People have beliefs. They act based on their beliefs. They believe what they believe based on interactions and experiences they have in their lives. They negotiate present definitions of situations with self and others based on the beliefs they bring to the situation. Others believe the situation to be something, self believes the situation to be something, too. Interactional negotiations are based on individuals in the situations trying to convince each other of their beliefs about what is going on.

      Peoples’ definitions of situations are their realities. Their definitions of situations include claims to self importance. Therefore peoples’ definitions of situations are beliefs about morality. Specific realities validate individuals’ claims to legitimate existences; therefore individuals have vested interests in convincing others to accept projected realities. Those who deny realities deny others’ rights to exist. Individuals want to have their existences validated, therefore they do what they can to convince others of the validity of certain realities. Others’ realities are more or less congruent with one’s own. Others who are perceived to hold different realities are seen as wrong to greater or lesser degrees. Those whose realities are seen to be way different are seen to hold identities that are way wrong, those whose realities are seen as a little different are seen as a little wrong.

One feels more or less dignified in a situation to the degree one’s perceptions of others’ perceived realities mesh with one’s own. To the degree that one perceives others’ realities to be different from one’s own one will act to restore one’s dignity. To the extent that people feel a need to dignify their own existence through the enforcement of their peculiar reality also must they spend time acting so as to confirm them. People spend a lot of time interacting with others in ways that confirm realities, beliefs, definitions of situations. Reality confirming interactions are some of the most common of human behaviors.

Reality confirming events create cohesion or, rather, the desire for membership in cohesive groups is a driving force behind reality confirming events. Religious services are reality confirming. The rituals contained within them, the participation of congregants in doing the rituals, create a sense of cohesion or attraction to the group. This attraction comes from the belief that others acting like one acts within the service believe the same things that one does and, thus, live the same reality as one does and, thus, support one’s identity presentations.

Levels of Thought

      In Social Mindscapes (1997), Eviatar Zerubavel argues there are three levels of understanding thought. The first is “cognitive individualism” where all thoughts belong to the individual and are completely unique. Second is “cognitive universalism,” there is something about thought that all humans share that separates us from the thought processes of other creatures. Cognitive individualism and cognitive universalism are seen as polar opposites on a continuum. At one end (individualism) all thoughts are unique, no two individuals think the same. At the other end, all thinking is the same, the thought processes of all human beings are the same.

      Zerubavel suggests there is a level of thought that rests between individual and universal, thought at the social level. “Thought communities,” as he calls them, are evidenced by the fact that we share our thoughts with other people. The words we use in thinking to ourselves are the same words that other people who speak our language use when doing the same, but they are different from the words that people from other language communities use when thinking to themselves. Furthermore, the things we pay attention to are things that we share with a culture of people for whom these things are important; people from other cultures pay attention to other things.

      Zerubavel’s thought communities are similar to Tamotsu Shibutani’s (1955) “reference groups” and Edwin Sutherland’s (1939) “differential association.” The idea is that our thoughts are the same as those with whom we associate. On a grand level, for instance, Americans think of leadership in different ways than, say, Saudis do: achieved versus ascribed statuses. On another level, African Americans generally think of the police differently than white Americans do. A botanist and an archaeologist will notice different things while hiking in the desert.

      Rather than focusing on the cognitive similarities of people, argues Zerubavel, sociologists should pay attention to cognitive diversity, the understanding of the ways people have different thought processes based on the communities of which they are members. The differing belief stories of different religious communities, for instance, account for differing thought patterns among congregational members and, thus, differing behaviors based on these differing thought patterns.

      What Zerubavel calls cognitive socialization allows us to enter the intersubjective worlds of others. Becoming social implies learning not only how to act, but also how to think. Through socialization we come to assign the same meanings to the same objects as others within our environments.

      Zerubavel continues that the roots of modern cognitive pluralism are partly structural. Modern mobility patterns create people who are members of multiple thought communities and, thus, have multiple ways of thinking about things. Thought communities compete with one another for the allegiances of people and their thoughts and actions; religious congregations compete with one another for members’ thought allegiances.

      Optical pluralism is the idea that there are multiple lenses through which we see objects (Zerubavel 1997). Optical pluralism is a direct result of cognitive pluralism. People of different communities use different words to label their worlds. Therefore, people of different communities actually see the worlds around them in differing ways. As members of different thought communities we become receptive to different views of reality. Members of different religions are receptive to different ideas about what is true and what is not.

      The presence of society is ubiquitous in our minds (Zerubavel 1997). We adopt what we believe to be the realities of our community members as our own beliefs, and they are always there, and we always act as if they are. Our private thoughts are not so private after all. We tell ourselves the same stories that our community members tell each other and, presumably, themselves. What actually enters our minds, then, those things we are attentive to, are by no means entirely personal. They are the product of our interactions with others in our thought communities.

      The normative delineation of our attention is a form of social control (Zerubavel). The communities of which we are a part, through socialization (through the telling of belief stories), essentially control what we see and think and even what simply crosses our minds. Of course, we are complicit in the dissemination of these same belief stories and, thus, complicit in the control of our fellow community members.

The Social Construction of Reality

      Sociologists have a conundrum. They agree there is such a thing as social structure. The problem is that we cannot actually see it. We see some of the physical world. We see the moon. We see ice. We hear coyotes singing. But can we see society? Can we see race? Or gender? Or class? We agree that these things exist, that they exist above and beyond individuals, that individuals are born into already existing societies that have races and genders and classes into which they are placed, into which they move in and out. But can we see them?

      The answer is no. We cannot see social structure. Empirically speaking society does not exist, race does not exist, gender and class do not exist. What exist are people who perceive that such structural entities are real. People perceive that race exists above and beyond themselves. They perceive that there are some number of races out there and that everyone belongs to one or two. Therefore, within individuals’ own thought processes one belongs to one particular race or another, a particular gender or another, a particular class or another, one society or another.

      Individuals share their ideas about social structure with each other. We tell each other what we think about race or gender and class or society. We talk about “America” as an entity. We have symbols, like flags, and rituals, like the Pledge of Allegiance, that stand for the structural entity “America.” We socialize our young people, in school for instance, to recognize “America” as something that exists out there, as something we can see just like rain or gravity.

      People act by projecting meanings onto their experiences. Things happen to individuals: they touch hot stoves, light shines in their eyes, dogs bite them, girls touch them, horns honk. People exist in worlds in which things are happening; some of these things happen to them, most things happen around them. One of the things that happen in the worlds in which people exist is that other people act toward them and, in turn, people act toward other people. To understand how people act in relation to things happening to and around them, we must understand the meanings people place upon them.

      One of the ways people act is based on goals they have in situations. This is pragmatism. People want to attain their goals (though they do not always succeed in doing so); they pick out things in their environments to help them do this. They then act toward these things in ways they think will help them attain their goals. Thus, things have meaning based on how people intend to use them within situations.

      We have vested interests in encouraging each other to recognize the existence of objects and goals, for in order to attain our individual goals we need others to act in ways that make such attainment possible. Therefore we actively encourage others at every interactional moment to take on a perspective of the situation that fits our own.

      People act as if structure exists. They use structure to attain their goals in the same way they use other objects in the situation; they manipulate objects (structure included) so as to succeed in accomplishing tasks. We are all doing this at the same time. I manipulate situational objects, including you, while you are doing the same to me at the same time.

      We share perceptions of objects and structure with others. We are often after the same things; our goals are complimentary. Together, through interaction, we label the objects in our realities similarly so as to accomplish goals together.

      People’s religious beliefs, then, are perceptions of social structure. We believe God exists “out there,” that our religious group (i.e. Catholic, Muslim, Mormon) exists “out there,” outside of ourselves. We present our selves as types of religious people. We have goals within situations, often of a religious nature. We manipulate objects in situations in attempts to attain our religious goals. We share perceptions of religious structures with others we consider members of our congregations. Together we create goals, we share realities, we act.

World Building

      Using religion as an extended example of the social construction of social structure, Peter Berger (1967: 3) argues that society is an enterprise of world-building that provides stability for individuals. Not having the biological stability of other creatures, people build stability for themselves in the form of culture (Berger 1967: 6). Culture thus becomes “second nature,” though it is the construct of men, not nature. People’s cultural worlds confront them as facticities outside themselves (Berger 1967: 8-9). Culture stands outside the subjectivities of individuals just like rocks or oxygen. Cultural worlds are perceived by people as not created by people.

      Human built societies, then, provide worlds for people to inhabit (Berger 1967: 13). These worlds encompass the biographies of individuals which are only seen as objectively real so far as the worlds in which they live are seen as such. Individual’s own lives seem objective only as they are located within worlds which themselves are seen as characters of objective reality.

      This “cosmization” of reality provides individuals with subjective senses of their own rightness (Berger 1967: 37). People’s roles are reinforced through their interactions with supporting others who believe in the same cultural worlds. To place their realities within a larger ordering of the cosmos allows people to place themselves within that order, giving them a sense of purpose, a role to play.

Social Structure as Moral Order

      The vested interests we have in maintaining our perceptions of reality work at many levels. This is what sociologists mean when they say that culture is shared. We align our perspectives with others in order to maintain realities, in order to maintain moral orders. But the alignment is not enacted at a structural level. Order is always maintained at an individual level. I maintain my view of reality that I am a teacher, for example, in my individual acts as what I believe a teacher is (which is, of course, tied to what I think others I am acting with think a teacher is). Others help me maintain this reality, not because they care that I am a moral character in a moral order, but because they want to maintain their place within what they perceive to be a moral order. The students within a class, for instance, want me to perceive them as “students” within a reality in which students are valued. They act like students because they want me to act like an instructor who acts toward them as students. In this way they can achieve their goals within a situation they perceive as being morally correct. We cooperate. We try to be compatible. We are complimentary.

      There is more to the story than simply people wanting to maintain their sense of a moral order. People have other reasons for acting with one another than simply wanting to maintain a perceived reality of some kind. It is more empirically complex than I am suggesting. Sometimes people interact with one another because they genuinely want to help each other, or they genuinely want to engage in an economic transaction, or because they genuinely want to make love to one another. They probably never think, “Hmm. . .I should interact with this fellow because I want to maintain my perceptions of a moral structural reality.” Instead, they simply feel that such and such a behavior is appropriate for such and such a situation.

      Cooperation also happens within relationships that are not in the immediate presence of others. For instance, the cashier at my university who runs the program that direct deposits money into my checking account twice per month does not know me and I do not know her. I do not know that we are ever even in the same room together. When we are, we do not acknowledge each other or our structural relationship. The cashier and I, however, unintentionally maintain each others’ perceptions of reality and moral order. Her job exists because there are people at Dixie State University who act like they do (teachers, custodians, registrars) because they get paid to do so. My job exists because someone (a number of someones) agrees that a job like mine should exist within a particular reality and moral order. The cashier does not consciously think about me when doing her job and I rarely think about her. But we are both participants within a shared moral order and reality. By acting like a cashier she allows me to act like a teacher, and by acting like a teacher I allow her to act like a cashier, even though we are buildings apart, have different hours of work, and never see each other.

      Even further, the cashier and I act within a larger social structural moral order of people that recognize a university as a legitimate bureaucracy, as a legitimate place to act like something (a teacher or a cashier). Beyond this we act within a social structural moral order of people that recognize having a job as a legitimate thing, and that “teacher at university” and “cashier at university” are legitimate jobs to have, legitimate ways of acting that are deserving of receiving resources in the form of money; they are ways of acting that are deserving of positive sanctions because they support and maintain a shared perceived moral order.

      We have vested interests in maintaining perceived realities. By acting like a teacher who gets other people to act like students and cashiers I get other people to pay me. In getting paid I can do some things and have some stuff that I perceive of as being worth doing and having within my perceived reality and moral order. By my acting like a teacher who gets others to act like students and cashiers I allow others to act like, say, football coaches and provosts and administrative assistants. Our cooperative actions are complimentary.

      This is what sociologists mean by “structure.” It is the cooperative and complimentary repetitive patterns of behaviors that we all engage in that support and maintain shared realities. The key empirical reality to remember is that all of this moral order and reality maintenance is done at the interactional level. It is by acting like a teacher in a specific classroom with specific students at a specific time that I play my part in maintaining the order. I project my vision of a desired reality upon that situation and act in certain ways in an attempt to attain that reality, and so do the students in that classroom.

      We have vested interests in the maintenance of perceived moral order reality structures. Their continued and successful existence means our continued and successful existence. The alternative, suggests Berger, is chaos and the end of reality. If things were not the way they are then things would cease to be. If things cease to be, then we cease to be. We must do what we can to maintain the status quo so that our perceived moral order reality structures can continue on. At the very least we must continue to act within our perceived place because that place has a part in maintaining reality as it is.

      Within our perceived moral order reality structures is the belief in the interconnectedness of everything. We think that not only do we as individuals have a place sui generis within the order, we think that everyone else does too. We believe there is a “purpose” to it all and that “proper” behaviors are self-evident in accordance with this purpose and “improper” behaviors are self-evidently not in accordance with it. To this end we come up with ideas like “nature” and “religion” and “science” to legitimate our perceived moral order reality structures.

      We say things like, “It is human nature” to eat meat. The implication is that, within a shared moral order reality structure, humans eat meat. It is as if we have no real choice in the matter. There is a purpose to life and, in this example, eating meat is part of it. Importantly for my argument here, using “human nature” to explain eating meat legitimates meat eaters’ meat eating activities. “Of course I eat meat. I am human, am I not?”

      My perceptions of reality legitimate myself to my self. “Why do I act this way?” I ask myself. “Because this is who I am. I have no choice.” Also, “I act this way because it is the right way for someone like me to act.” We place moral evaluations on the ways things are and the ways they could be and, therefore, judge our own actions based on these evaluations. We believe ourselves to be good or bad based on our perceptions of our actions as they align with our perceived moral order reality structures. We also evaluate the actions of others based on our interpretations of them within our perceived moral order reality structures. We notice others doing things, imagine how those things fit within our perceived moral order reality structures, and then judge them as good or bad.

The Maintenance of Moral Order

      We are born into worlds that are populated by people who have ideas about reality. They are more or less convinced that their ideas about reality are correct. Being newly born, we have no ideas about reality. The people who inhabit our new world have vested interests in convincing us that their versions of reality are the correct ones.

      Our parents, for instance, have a vested interest in convincing us that their form of parenting – their rules, their arrangement of furniture in the house, their dinner time – is correct. They have invested a lot of time and energy into accepting this way of doing things as the right way and to suggest otherwise is to challenge their moral compasses. Adherence to the norms and values of a situation is adherence to a moral order. Our parents do things a certain way because they believe it to be the right way. They openly criticize other ways of doing things as immoral. Letting your children run around the neighborhood unsupervised, for instance, is just wrong (from the perspective of parents who do not let their children do this). To think otherwise is to suggest to one’s self and to others that one’s way of doing things is the wrong way, that one’s vision of reality is the wrong one, that one’s existence is wrong.

      The same notion holds true for other segments of “society.” Americans believe their ways of educating children (public education for all kids ages 5-18, for instance) is the right way and, therefore, other ways of educating children are wrong because morally righteous people educate their kids this way; it is the right thing to do and good people do it this way. We believe our economic system, capitalism, is the best not just practically, but morally, and that other systems, socialism for instance, are morally wrong. We believe that our ways of choosing political leaders, democratically, are right and other ways, theocratically maybe, are wrong. We invest our identities in these morally held beliefs.

      Our understandings of our selves are wrapped up in our understandings about reality. As Berger (1967) suggests, we project our internal/psychological beliefs out onto the world. Included in these projected beliefs is a place for our selves. We fit our selves into reality in the same way we fit everything else into it. The table goes over there, the lamp goes on top of the table, I am a certain kind of person. So in attaching moral beliefs upon one’s vision of reality one is attaching the same beliefs upon one’s own existence.

      Thus we have vested interests in actively maintaining our visions of reality because we have vested interests in maintaining our visions of our selves. We actively negotiate our selves in all situations. I am a teacher. I am teaching at the moment. I am manipulating my students (and others) into seeing me as a teacher. I arrive at class on time. I wear a button-down collared shirt and corduroys and dress shoes. I keep my hair a certain way. I turn on the computer and write something on the board. I open my notebook and go around the room saying “hello” to my students. I do these things because it is what I believe teachers do and I believe myself to be a teacher. I do these things to maintain a moral order. I do these things to maintain a reality.

      People do not go through their lives thinking this way. That is, they do not usually arrange their living rooms or wear corduroys because they are consciously trying to maintain a moral reality. Rather, they just do things. In fact, people will often challenge such sociological mumbo jumbo when directly confronted with it. For instance, I shared some of what I have written with Pastor Gordon of The Lutheran Church, and he commented on my suggestions that “religious people” (“This needs careful definition & handling,” PG) “must act” as if they are religious. He suggests that “If the ‘act’ is an act or simply to gain a notice or nod from my peers I would be far less than what Jesus made me.” When I list some things that religious people do in their religious performances (e.g. knowing hymns, having well-worn Bibles), Pastor Gordon responds, “I personally do not need to show myself in these activities for fulfillment. I need my lord to show me (thru his word) how Christ himself is my fulfillment.”

      Pastor Gordon is saying that he does not act for others. He is who he says he is. He acts for his Lord. His Lord Jesus made him this way. Indeed, he says he needs for his Lord to show him, rather than the other way around. God shows Pastor Gordon how to act and Pastor Gordon follows.

      The above taken into account, Pastor Gordon must believe in the Christ story for his behaviors as a Pastor to make sense and for him, as a person, to have dignity. Indeed, for the entirety of his life to make sense and have dignity he must believe whole-heartedly in the Christ story. His entire life, from the time he was in his teens, has been based on the Christ story.

Weber (1978: 399) suggests that with religion, as with just about everything else, we can only understand people’s behaviors from a subjective perspective. To understand why a person does what they do, one must understand why said person thinks they did what they did. This is the thrust of my argument, people act based on how they see the world. They see the world through thoughts that consist of symbols they have picked-up through various types of participation within various types of interactional situations. Since we have vested interests in having other people act in ways that further our own subjective agendas, we attempt to convince others to see the world in ways complimentary to our own subjective definitions of situations. The world is a morality play, and we have a moral place within it as we see it.

      What is an alternative to all this perceived moral order reality structure? The absence of order, or at least the absence of a moral order. There is no reason to be. There is no particular reason to do anything in particular. There is no reason to have a particular relationship with any particular person. There is no reason to share, to love, to respect other’s property or life. No reason not to kill or steal or plunder or destroy. No reason to support or help or build or learn. In our thoughts we would see no reason for acting in any particular way. We would, therefore, see no particular place for ourselves within any type of preexisting social structure. We would just act, “animal” like.

      The perceived possibility of the lack of a moral order reality structure seems to be at the root of our active maintenance of the same. We are afraid of a lack of structure or, more accurately, we are afraid of the lack of something to legitimate our own being. We are intensely interested in our own individual existences having a purpose. We dearly want a reason for our being.

      Is this wanting a reason for our being a social construction of its own? It is hard to separate the chicken from the egg. Does our subjective projection of reality come before our being socialized into having a particular projection of reality? This cannot be answered. But it does seem to be true that we, people of many different cultures, spend a lot of time convincing each other on an interaction-by-interaction basis that a certain type of reality does indeed exist and that we each have a particular place and reason for being within that reality. Consequently, we tend to perceive that this reality is true and, on an interaction-by-interaction basis, do our best to convince others that this is so.

 

Group Identity

      Our presentations of self as part of moral order reality structures are claims to memberships in groups. Others’ acceptances or rejections of our presentations signal their acceptance or rejection of our claimed group memberships. Groups, like all objects, are things toward which we act (Hewitt 2000). They exist because we perceive them as existing, and we act as if they exist. We make real decisions about what to do, how to behave, and who to consider friends, based on the groups we perceive to exist. The groups we want to be members of are the ones we behave so as to stay members of.

      The action orientation of a group, the agreed upon activities in which group members engage, consists of its meaningful objects and, of course, the symbols members use to refer to the objects (Blumer 1969). The more formal the group, the more well defined are its objects. In less well defined groups objects are more ambiguous, there are more objects that need to be defined through spontaneous interactional negotiation and belief stories. Thus, members in less well defined organizations spend more time negotiating the meanings of group objects (rules and procedures) and less time pursuing stated group goals.
      The continued existence of a group in a stable form depends upon the flow of negotiated behaviors by those who perceive themselves as its members. We reaffirm our group memberships with other members everyday and all the time. By behaving according to group expectations we communicate our willingness to be group members. Our conformity to group expectations and agreed upon rules and procedures establishes our level of group membership. In more formal groups (the military, for instance) we are more convincing in asserting our membership because the rational nature of the rules and procedures validate our membership claims. In less formal groups we must engage in intense interactional negotiations to ascertain membership statuses, there is no formally written down evidence that backs-up our membership claims.

      When situations become problematic, when groups’ definitional existences (and thus people’s definitions of self) become ambiguous, group members insist on orthodox behaviors from other members (Dewey 1922). When we do not know what to do, we refer back to the rules and procedures of our organizations for guidance, and insist that other members do as well. If group rules do not supply us with appropriate behavioral responses, then we negotiate new behaviors, we work with other members to bring definitional clarity back to the group situation.

      Some groups, our reference groups, provide our everyday actions and behaviors with consistency because, no matter what the interactional situation, we look to reference group objects, and role-take reference group people and roles, in making our own roles and supporting our perceptions of reality (Shibutani 1955). When viewing ourselves from the perspective of others, in knowing ourselves as members of groups, our reference groups come to mind more often than other organizations. Reference groups consistently influence our behavioral choices, whereas less referenced group memberships influence our behaviors only in isolated incidents.

      Reference groups serve as social controls on our behaviors, they limit alternative types of behavior for us (Shibutani 1955). When making decisions about behavioral choices in isolated incidents, we must select between a myriad of choices, each espoused by different others, different group members, and members of different groups. We will most often choose the path, the behavior, we feel will fulfill our membership in our reference groups, and least often choose the paths preferred by members in our most isolated groups. Reference groups provide consistency of behavior, and thus the reaffirmation of reality structures, because we will make the same choice, with regards to similar situations, on a routine basis, choices that reflect our view of members in our reference groups.

      Reference groups, therefore, provide us with our most consistent motive talk (Shibutani 1955) and storytelling. We use reference group motive talk in numerous situations, whether we are in the midst of reference group actors or not. What motivates and influences us to make the choices we do comes more often than not from our reference groups, not from isolated groups.
      When we are in the company of our reference group members we feel “like ourselves.” We see objects, and see others seeing objects, in a comfortable, seemingly natural way; in a way we understand and enjoy. We share visions of reality with these others.

Conclusion

      People have the ability to transcend their subjectivity and adopt others views as their own. We see the world from an impersonal perspective (Zerubavel 1997). A group identity is a collection of people who adopt each others’ views of reality as their own, they share identity belief stories. If, as I argue, people perceive their constructed realities as moral orders and their selves within those realities as moral selves, then they will do what they can to convince others to share in their perceptions. People’s pronouncements of religious beliefs are dramatic empirical examples of the process by which we use belief stories to announce our understandings of moral order reality structures. We announce we are one religion rather than another, we read one good book rather than another, we observe certain holy days at the expense of others, because we see our selves and our professed religion as morally right.

      In what follows I detail the types of stories the religious people I observed tell in their efforts to create and maintain their realities. I begin with a discussion of belief stories on a programmatic level, literally analyzing the layout of a set of Wisconsin Lutheran Church service programs. I then provide some ethnographic data describing features of some of the services I attended, features that factored into the stories the religious folks were telling. In the second half of the book I outline some salient categories of religious belief stories told by the people I observed. It is through these stories that they maintained their realities, gave each other guidance on how to act within them, and supported each other’s identities in a moral social structure.

 

Chapter 3

Formal Belief Stories: The Case of Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod Services

      I focus on the empirical reality of religious belief stories for the rest of this book. First, in Chapter 3, via an examination of a few service programs, I describe what a typical Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) service looks like. In Chapter 4 I provide snapshots of the goings-on of a variety of the religious services I observed during my fieldwork. Finally, in the last seven chapters, I describe some categories of belief stories that religious people use in defining their religious realities.

Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Programs

 

      In this chapter I compare some Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) service programs. I compare The Lutheran Church (LC) “Eighth Sunday after Pentecost” service with that of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church and School (PoP) in Taylorsville, Utah. I attended the service at PoP and have the program from LC. I also compare the LC “Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost” with the same service program from Mt. Calvary Lutheran Church (MCLC) in Flagstaff, Arizona. As I show, there is uniformity in the programs from the three churches, suggesting a top-down, formal belief story, one that is tightly controlled by people at the higher reaches of a status hierarchy. This top-down style ensures standardization of stories across WELS churches, thus creating evenness of religious realities among members from different parts of the country and world. Most of what follows comes directly from my field notes, with some editing for clarity.

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost 2016

      The first thing I notice has to do with the writing on the programs themselves. All four programs write “The Eighth [or Eleventh as the case may be] Sunday after Pentecost” in the same way. Block letters, though different fonts, all first letters in capitals except for “after,” which is lower-case on all four programs. The only difference in the four versions of the Sunday after Pentecost is that PoP writes “The” in front of the line, LC and MCLC do not.

      Why is the printed program title interesting? Well, it suggests a formality in the presentation of the services; a cultural code, if you will. All three of these churches are WELS churches. As such, each one is under the “leadership” of the larger centralized WELS bureaucracy. It is apparent that proclaiming the Sunday in writing in this way is standard practice in the WELS cultural community. Cultural codes, no matter how small or subtle, are parts of belief stories. Whether or not anyone consciously notices that the Sunday after Pentecost is written in this way, and it could be that I am the only one, it is still “the way things are done” in this cultural niche of the world. It is part of the story of “who we are” if, of course, we are a members of a WELS church or, if not, it is part of the story of “who they are.”

      All the programs, including MCLC’s, are printed on 8 ½” x 13 ¾” paper, folded into booklets that are anywhere from 7 (LC, both booklets) to 20 pages (PoP, “The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost”). Pastor Gordon of LC said he uses Microsoft Publisher to make his programs; it looks as if the others do, too. All programs have on the front page, along with the number of the Sunday after Pentecost, the date (“July 10, 2016” [Eighth Sunday] and “July 31, 2016” [Eleventh Sunday]). The date on all four programs is placed immediately below the Sunday after Pentecost line, centered.

      Along with the Sunday after Pentecost line, and the date, PoP and LC give a title to the week’s sermon. For the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost the LC program prints the title “The Parable of the Good Samaritan”; PoP titles theirs “Christ’s Love Moves Us to Love.” This title refers to the content of the day’s sermon. The sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost for both churches is Old Testament: Deuteronomy 24:17-22 & Colossians 1:1-14 and New Testament Luke 10:25-37. The PoP program titles the Old Testament readings as “Scripture Reading” while LC calls them “FIRST” (or “SECOND”) “LESSON from HIS WORD.” That PoP and LC are using the same Bible readings suggests they are on the same place in the WELS Lectionary: “Lectionary: Three Year Series, Year C, Pentecost 8 (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod 2014).

      Another commonality that LC and PoP have on the first page is in the form of a picture that illustrates the day’s New Testament teaching. Pastor Gordon told me that he simply Google searches the name of the lecture for the week and there are tons of images he can use for the cover. Indeed, when I Google “Parable of the Good Samaritan” I come across a lot of images related to the story. The story is of a man beaten and left to die by some brutes. Many travelers pass the beaten man who lies near the path. But one man, from Samara, riding by on an ass, stops and helps him out. The images on the front page of LC and PoP are substantively identical. Each has a shirtless beaten man, eyes closed, being cared for by a robed and turbaned man with oil or wine. An ass is a few feet away, staring at the two men. A path, the path they had been traveling, hugs the side of a cliff behind the men. There are two travelers on the path in each image; travelers we assume have passed by the injured soul. In the far distance we see the city of Jericho, to which both men were traveling and to which the Samaritan took the injured man and paid for his stay in an inn. The only difference in the images is in style. The LC program has a more “realistic” drawing than the PoP image, which is a wood engraved-type image.

      There is a belief story being told across WELS churches, and part of that story has to do with how services are presented to parishioners in the programs. On the eighth Sunday after Pentecost, in the “Three Year Series, Year C, Pentecost 8” Lectionary series, the Parable of the Good Samaritan takes center stage. The people who create the programs for the day are presenting the service in much the same way, with one notable difference: the title of the sermon. Other than this, the first page of the programs is virtually identical. Reality structures are being maintained through the telling of identical stories, on the same day, in distinct churches. “We are Lutherans and we know this because we are enacting the same stories at the same time.”

      PoP counts their title page as page 1 whereas LC does not start page 1 until the first page after the title page. The first thing in both programs, after the title page, on the first inside page, is the title of the church and a symbol as the church’s logo. MCLC does not do this quite as PoP and LC do. They wait until page 3 (second inside page) to post their logo. They do announce the name of their church as the first order of business, but they do it in a more conversational tone rather than professional, as do LC and PoP, and they wait until the second inside page to introduce their logo.

      Next for both PoP and LC is some general information about the church. LC manages to do this in half a page, whereas PoP takes two pages. LC mentions “Rev. Gordon” as the minister and states that LC is “a member of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS).” It then provides web addresses for the WELS Synod and for LC specifically. It lists the day and time of worship services and Bible Studies. They then again mention it is the eighth Sunday after Pentecost, the date, and the time of the worship service. They provide a “special greeting to those joining us for the first time or who are joining us as our guests.” Then a “Key thought for this Sunday.” That is the LC half-page general information.

      PoP starts with a “Welcome” which is similar to LC’s welcome in that it gives a special welcome to guests. It directs readers to the “end of this worship folder” for church contact information, which is in the form of phone numbers for the ministers rather than email addresses as LC did. Next PoP provides a section of “INFORMATION FOR OUR GUESTS” where they explain how to use the program – “The parts marked M are spoken or sung by the minister.” – a paragraph explaining there is a “cry area” outside, with speakers, for parents with a “restless child,” information about the restrooms, an invitation to sign the “Friendship Register” later in the service, and an invitation to join the congregation for “coffee and conversation” after the service. This section, consisting of five paragraphs, takes up three-quarters of a page and takes us to the end of PoP’s page 2, the first inside page.

      PoP’s page 3 is equivalent to LC’s three-line “Key thought for this Sunday,” only it takes up the entirety of a page. PoP provides segments introducing both the Old Testament readings – “TODAY: CHRIST’S LOVE MOVES US TO LOVE” – and the day’s Gospel readings – “CHRIST IS ALL IN ALL: THE LETTER TO THE COLOSSIANS.” These are a paragraph each. A third section – “THE SEASON OF THE PENTECOST” – discusses, well, the meaning of the Pentecost. This section takes two paragraphs and brings us to the end of the PoP Introduction and readies us for the service to come.

      Both programs begin with an “Opening Hymn.” LC simply lists the name of the hymn and what number it is in the hymn book. PoP introduces the hymn in a couple sentences and provides musical notation for it in the program. Therefore, PoP’s hymn takes up 1 1/3 pages whereas LC’s takes up one line. The two churches have different hymns. Pastor Gordon told me he picks the day’s hymns, I assume the PoP pastor does the same, the result being different hymns for different churches.

      The next step in both the PoP and LC programs is a “GREETING,” which is practically the same in each:

LC:

“P: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you.

C: And also with you.”

PoP:

“Minister: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you.

Congregation: And also with you.”

Other than a comma instead of an “and,” and a “God the Father” instead of simply “God,” and “Minister” instead of “P,” the greetings are identical. Not only are the lines the same, the minister’s lines are plain in both while the congregations response is in bold.

There is formality here that suggests a top-down enforced belief story. WELS churches are following a set liturgy which, in turn, provides a way to formally worship the Lord. Pastors see this more clearly than congregants. Pastors have gone to college, they have ministered at numerous churches where they have seen and participated in this systemic liturgical belief presentation. They have been indoctrinated into the formal liturgy belief system. There are presenting a moral reality in a formal fashion.

Congregants, on the other hand, may only be familiar with the church they attend, they may not pay much attention to the similarities between church services. On the other hand congregants, when traveling, probably seek out WELS churches to attend. If they have attended enough “other” churches, they would pick up on the liturgical similarities. Indeed, being familiar with a formal liturgical belief presentation across churches is part of what it means to classify oneself as belonging to one religion or another, as believing in one reality over another.

      Next in both programs comes the confession of sins. LC writes “Confession of Sins,” PoP writes “Our Confession of Sins.” This begins on page 1 in the LC program, going on to page 2, and on page 4 in the PoP program. The organization of the sections is similar. The pastor or minister invites parishioners to confess their sins to God, then the parishioners read a confession from the program. The written messages in the two programs are a bit different, but they have the same point: We are sinners and deserve your punishment, please forgive us.

      Next, “OUR LORD’S ABSOLUTION,” written the same in both programs. Note: LC includes, in small font off to the side of the “Confession of Sins” and “Our Lord’s Absolution” sections, annotations. For instance, to the side of “Confession of Sins” is the following: “God’s grace allows us to directly approach Him for forgiveness. We do so directly at this point in our worship.” PoP does not offer annotations.

      “Our Lord’s Absolution” section is explained by LC as “For the sake of his Son, Jesus, the Lord has forgiven all of our sins! It is pastor’s joy to proclaim our full pardon in Christ.” After confessing that we are sinful creatures and deserving of God’s punishment, we are pardoned. It is the same in both programs, though it is written differently. They both end with “I forgive you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Congregants: “Amen.” The pastor, according to each program, though written a bit differently, is a “called servant of Christ” (PoP) and thus has the authority here in this service to forgive congregants of their sins.

      This is a beautiful part of the Christian belief story. We are sinful by nature. We cannot do good in God’s eyes. We throw ourselves at His mercy, as Christians, pleading for forgiveness knowing He does not have to give it to us, though He has promised it. Then, the pastor, with the authority of Christ Himself, forgives us. This is attractive. It is social psychologically healing. We are all bad. We feel bad about all sorts of things we do during any day or week. But if we are a sincere Christian we know, with God’s authority, our pastor will forgive us each and every week. It takes very little on our part for this to happen. Simply be sincere in our confessions. Be sincere in our belief in the story and we can be confident in our absolution. The moral order of the WELS universe rests on this belief.

      Next in the programs are similar but different segments. LC has a section titled “RESPONSE TO HIS MERCY” where the congregation sings verse six of Hymn #376 from the hymnal (“Jesus, Your Blood and Righteousness”):

Jesus, be worshipped endlessly!

Your boundless mercy has for me,

For me and all your hands have made,

An everlasting ransom paid.

      PoP, on the other hand, has a section here called “LORD, HAVE MERCY” where the pastor says a line, and the congregation responds with “Lord, have mercy” or “Christ, have mercy” or, on the fourth and last round, “Amen.” There is not a lot in common between the two segments here, other than they both have “mercy” in their titles.

      PoP next has something completely missing from the LC program, a “SONG OF PRAISE” titled “O Lord, Our Lord.” In the two previous sections at both churches congregants confessed their sins and were absolved by God. In these mercy and praise sections the congregants are thanking God for His mercy, thanking Him for absolving them of their sins. Because He does not have to do this, He does so voluntarily because He loves us. That is the pattern: confession, absolution, praise.

      After the praise sections in both programs comes the “PRAYER OF THE DAY.” (We are now on page 2 of the LC program and page 9 of the PoP program.) Both prayers have two sentences. The first sentence and a half is different for the two, but the last half sentence is similar with God/Jesus living and reigning with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the last nine words being the exact same: “and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.” The “mother ship” (as Pastor Gordon jokingly refers to the higher-ups in the WELS hierarchy) leaves some discretion to individual pastors and congregations in the first part of the prayer, but the end is institutionalized. A check with the July 31, 2016 programs from LC and MCLC confirm this suspicion; unique opening prayer lines, standardized last nine words.

      Both PoP and LC’s “Prayer of the Day” segments end with the congregation saying “Amen.” The LC program simply has:

C: Amen.

PoP, on the other hand, has amen played out musically which encourages the congregation to sing the word.

      The next six sections of each program are virtually identical, only differences in the titles and explanations, as well as the substance of the hymn and sermon, separate the two. First comes a reading from the Hebrew Bible (Deuteronomy 24:17-22), then a New Testament reading (Colossians 1:1-14), then the “Alleluia Verse,” then a gospel lesson, a “HYMN OF THE DAY” and a “SERMON.”

      LC titles the scripture readings “FIRST LESSON from HIS WORD” and “SECOND LESSON from HIS WORD” whereas PoP calls these sections “SCRIPTURE READING” and “SCRIPTURE READING.” They both, on the same lines as the titles of the sections, provide the chapter and verse for the readings. They both then provide a summary of the readings. The summaries are different in the two programs, suggesting that pastors write their own. LC’s summaries are short, once sentence each, whereas PoP’s summaries are longer, two and three sentence paragraphs. Then each program provides the written scripture in the program so that congregants can read along with the pastor.

      Next in the LC and PoP programs is, in LC, the “VERSE OF THE DAY,” and in PoP, the “ALLELUIA VERSE.” The gist of the section in both programs is the “Alleluia” verse, printed exactly the same in each program, including music notation. As mentioned, they have different titles. In addition, they have different introductions to the verse. PoP, right-justified on the same line as the title, has printed “John 20:31.” The verse suggests that by reading John’s gospel one will believe that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.” The point is that believing in Jesus gives one life; believing in Jesus is a key component in the WELS moral order reality structure. So, too, the PoP introduction to the “ALLELUIA VERSE” suggests that “through these words God gives us faith in Jesus.” These lines are congruent. LC’s introduction does not suggest faith in Jesus as much as fealty to Him: “The Word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.” Obeying is similar to faith, but LC’s introduction to the section puts the parishioner in a more subservient role than does the PoP one. Again, after the introduction to the section, both programs provide the same Alleluia verse, to be sung by the congregation.

Conclusion

      Belief stories are told by individuals who are members of groups. Members more or less align their stories with those of the group as a whole. Some members have more influence and authority than others in the crafting of stories. In the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, liturgy is pronounced from on high and has gathered through the centuries. This creates rigidity to the service stories WELS members tell and the realities to which members adhere. The programs described above give evidence to this. They are similar in structure and content. To call oneself a member of this church is to proclaim one’s belief in the stories told in the programs and at the services.

 

Chapter 4

  Religious Services as Places Where Belief Stories are Enacted and Observed 

      Services are a place where religious belief stories play out. In this chapter I provide detailed observations of some religious services I attended, annotated with how these represent stories about reality and identity. I describe formality of dress and service liturgy, contents of service programs, structure of physical space, political nature of services, forms of praise and worship, modern versus traditional services, familiarity of congregants with each other, music and hymns, and the diversity of parishioners, as places where belief stories are enacted and can be observed.

Services

The Episcopal Church

      The Episcopal Church has three services during the week: Wednesday afternoon, Saturday evening, and Sunday morning. Wednesday Eucharist happens in a small chapel in the complex. The service I attended consisted of only women except for me and Father Tom. It was a short service with few ritual formalities save for communion. The Saturday evening Holy Eucharist was in the church sanctuary and had all the ritual of a full service, though congregants and celebrant dressed casual, some wearing shorts and t-shirts. The Sunday Holy Eucharist was a full service as well, mimicking Saturday’s but with congregants in their “Sunday best” and celebrants in formal church attire.

      June 10, 2015. Wednesday Eucharist. Because Wednesday services draw a small crowd it is held in the small chapel, rather than in the sanctuary. Here is a description of the Wednesday service direct from the EC webpage:

We gather in the beauty of the chapel for a mid-week worship service. Using readings from the new “Holy Women, Holy Men” (formerly, “Lesser Feasts and Fasts”), the service deepens our knowledge and understanding of the communion of Saints who have gone before us, as we learn how their life stories influence our own. This accessible, informal service provides a refreshing of spirit for many, to stay centered in God’s grace during the week. Usually 15-25 attend this service.

I gather from looking at the EC webpage that the three Eucharist services have different themes. The Sunday service, according the web page, is a “traditional service, done well.” It includes choirs, songs, and a formal sermon. The Saturday service is described as contemplative, done in candlelight, with an informal gathering afterwards.

      In today’s sermon, Father Tom held true to the description of Wednesday services as deepening our knowledge of communion saints by discussing Ephrem of Edessa in Syria. Ephrem lived during “the all important 4th century” (Father Tom’s words). He ended up “retiring to a cave,” eating flax and seed, drinking nothing but water, his clothes full of holes. But he was not a hermit. He went into town and preached.

      The chapel is about 625 square feet in size[9]. There were around twenty chairs set up, with a small table in the front for the Father to speak at. A large cross (for the size of the room) on the wall behind the speaking table; nails in the cross where Jesus would be affixed. Candles representing the light of God were burning. The table was draped in a green cloth. The Father wore a white robe with green sashes coming down each side (the colors of the sashes of Episcopal teachers change with the changing of the religious seasons). On each chair were two pieces of paper: (1) “Prayers for Healing Body and Soul,” (2) “PRAISE & THANKSGIVING for answered prayers. . ./PRAY FOR THE REPOSE of the souls of . . .”

      Somewhere around the middle of the service (which lasted about 25 minutes total) the two papers mentioned above were put to use. The “Prayers for Healing Body and Soul” pamphlet has, inside, a “Litany of Healing.” According to the hand-out, the Celebrant (Father Tom) introduced the “Litany of Healing” with a bidding: “Let us name before God those for whom we offer our prayers.” At this point we, “the People” in attendance, went around the room reading the names of people on the prayer list (“PRAISE AND THANKSGIVING for answered prayers. . .”). There are roughly 70 names on the list. Each of us, in turn, said four or five of the names out loud. The list is divided into three sections. First is the “CURRENT PRAYER LIST.” This has about 24 people on it. Next is the “THOSE IN ACTIVE MILITARY SERVICE” list; it has only one person on it. Finally is the “LONG-TERM PRAYER LIST” which expressly states that these people “Will be mentioned in the Healing Prayers of the People at weekly Wed Eucharist. Please continue to remember these people in your prayers during the week.”

Once we were done reading the names of the people on the list, Father Tom led us in the “Litany of Healing” prayer in which he would read a line and then we, the People, would offer a response. All of this is written down in the “Prayers for Healing Body and Soul” pamphlet. The prayer is one in which we first recognized God the Trinity, then ask Him in a number of different ways to heal people in different types of situations (sick, depressed, people in difficult relationships), and to help those who work in the healing professions, to help the dead have holy deaths, and to help the nation and the world.

      The Wednesday Holy Eucharist that I attended at the EC was attended by elderly women only. I and Father Tom were the only men there, and the ladies were all in their late-sixties and, mostly, beyond. I will tack this up to the day and time of the service: Wednesday at noon. Younger folks are mostly working at this time on this day of the week. One lady in the front, who seemed like the oldest of the bunch, did not do most of the standing and sitting with us; my assumption being that she physically was not able, though she did go up for communion. One of the ladies had a name tag that identified her as a worker or volunteer within the church. She made sure to introduce me to every lady in attendance; she knew all their names. The ladies engaged in small talk while waiting for Father Tom. They talked about what would be for lunch after the service (“chicken salad”). They talked about how the Wednesday Holy Eucharist is “feast or famine” as far as attendance. They asked me about my attending. Was I a visitor or member? It was obvious that they knew this was my first time in attendance. They, especially the lady with the name tag, were kindly figuring out who I was and what my purpose was for attending.

      I was greeted immediately upon entering the chapel. I said I had talked with Carol the day before, so the lady with the tag went out to the connecting corridor and found Carol for me. Carol and I exchanged pleasantries and then Carol left back into the hallway; it was obvious that Carol had stuff to do. Indeed, Carol sat in a seat to Father Tom’s left during the service. She, as well as the lady with the name tag, helped Father Tom prepare and administer the sacrament.

      Once Carol left I was told that I could sit wherever I liked. Remember, it is a small room, not a lot of space to hide. I sat in the middle of the second row (there were only three rows), two seats away from one of the helpful ladies. At different points in the service one of the ladies gave me instructions as to what to do. For instance, when it came to me in the reading of the names for prayer, I looked at one of the ladies and she nodded that, yes, it was my turn to read some names. Shortly before communion was taken, one of the ladies told me I could take it or not, it was totally up to me. At one point one of the ladies told me a page to turn to in The Book of Common Prayers. She was wrong about the page, but she was trying to help me out. At the end of the service the ladies invited me to go to lunch with them. They ate at the church’s soup kitchen. I regret that I chickened out on the chicken salad.

      June 13 and 14, 2015. Saturday and Sunday at EC. I attended the EC Saturday Holy Eucharist and Sunday Holy Eucharist. The church provides a hardcopy program for each of these services. The Saturday service, according to the program, is “3 PENTACOST – B” and the Sunday service is “3 PENTACOST/TRINITY – YEAR B.” Both services were in the sanctuary of the church rather than the chapel. The sanctuary is a much bigger room than the chapel, with formal pews rather than fold out chairs. The sanctuary has a more elaborate pulpit, still with a cross on the wall behind it (many congregants, upon entering the aisle between the pews, and facing the pulpit and cross, would genuflect to the cross). There is a stained glass window in the sanctuary, a series of fairly large images of the passion of Christ across the walls on the right and the left. The pulpit is elevated on a stage with kneeling boards in front of it (the congregants, at both services, would get out of their seats and move to and surround the pulpit to receive communion). There is a lot of space behind the pews in the sanctuary where, both Saturday and Sunday, there are portable tables set-up (on Saturday the congregants had pizza after the service, on Sunday there was coffee, lemonade, and various coffee cakes shared by the attendees; they sit at the tables and/or mingle in the back portion of the sanctuary at this time). There is a window that separates a kitchen attached to the sanctuary where, on Sunday, coffee and lemonade are made available. The pews have retractable kneeling benches attached to them and pockets on the backs on the pews in front of them with copies of The Book of Common Prayer and The Hymnal 1982 as well as a supplement to the hymnal (in the Sunday service we sang hymns from The Hymnal 1982, but on Saturday we did not). In the front of the sanctuary, behind the pulpit where everyone could see, were the numbers of the hymns we were to sing so we could turn to the hymn number in The Hymnal 1982 and sing along. Some of the singers were loud and proud, others were subdued.

      The Sunday service was more formal than Saturday’s, which was more formal than Wednesday’s. On Sunday, for instance, there was a greeter immediately as one entered the courtyard, this being a good twenty yards in front of the doors to the sanctuary. She gave sincere and convincing hugs and greetings to the three or four people who entered the courtyard immediately before me. She talked with them and asked how they were, then gave them big hugs. She asked me if, maybe, I usually attend Wednesday’s or Saturday’s or if I was a visitor. I told her I was just visiting, she welcomed me, telling me “we give hugs here,” and we embraced. The Saturday service did not include the courtyard greeter.

      There were a number of folks dressed in “formal” church garb at the Sunday service, they engaged in various and sundry duties throughout the service. For instance, a couple different times one of the assisting clergy carried a ten-foot tall cross on a staff down the aisle between the pews, from pulpit toward the back. Other clergy and vestries helped prepare and serve communion. Again, all of these helpers wore formal garb during the Sunday services; such garb was absent at the Saturday service, not that the helpers were absent, just the garb.

      Coming into the Saturday service there was a man (Craig, according to the program) playing the piano. He also played it a couple more times during the service. The musical accompaniment for Sunday, however, was an organ played, according to the program, by Carla. The EC webpage suggests that for much of the year there is a choir as well, but they take a break in the summer months. I do not remember any actual singing in the Saturday service, but we sang at least four hymns during the Sunday Eucharist.

      The content of the two weekend services were similar. They both opened with “THE WORD OF GOD,” “THE COLLECT FOR PURITY,” “THE GLORIA,” and “THE COLLECT OF THE DAY.” Numbers 1, 2, and 4, of the above have the Celebrant, Father Tom, speaking a line, and the People (the congregation), answering him. “THE GLORIA” was recited by the congregation as a whole. I get the feeling that these first four segments of the service are prescribed by the Episcopal Church beyond the EC; Episcopal churches across the land/world say these same collects in the same order. Next came readings from the Old and New Testaments. Instead of having someone from the congregation read them, as was done on Wednesday, a predetermined Reader came to the front and read them. The readings were the same (1st Samuel 15:34 – 16:13; Psalm 20; and Mark 4:26 – 34) for both Saturday and Sunday. Then, both Saturday and Sunday, Father Tom taught us about these readings (the temple is here, on Earth in our physical bodies, not in some far off spirit place). This was the most creative part, for Father Tom, of the service.

The Fellowship

      A unique characteristic of The Fellowship (TF), at least among the services I attended in Washington County, was the praise and worship segment of their service. For an hour or more congregants and celebrants alike were taken over by the Holy Spirit. There was crying, speaking in tongues, fainting, moaning, and the laying on of hands during this time. Many participants seemed to truly be “out of their minds” for awhile. Nothing remotely similar to this occurred at other services and I can only assume this praise and worship was an attractive feature, a pull, for members of the church.

      July 5, 2015. The Fellowship had a distinct feeling of conservative style patriotism. One congregant, a man who sat in the front row of the service, was wearing a red, white, and blue shirt with an eagle on it. He was active in his behaviors during the service, raising his hands, palms out, closing his eyes, getting into it. There were flag-style bandanas around the service room, on the stage, around the church. The service began with a video that paid homage to veterans of war. The preacher asked for anyone in the congregation who was a veteran to stand, and we gave them a round of applause.

      A main reason this patriotism occurred on this particular Sunday at the TF was because it was July 5, the first service following Independence Day. It is interesting, however, that the priest’s lesson on that day and, so he said, for a few weeks to come, was on the end times of Revelation and that on the Wednesday church meeting they would be discussing things one should have at one’s disposal in preparation for the end times. I got a feeling that the TF leaned toward a conservative cultural outlook, that they are actively pro-military and untrusting of the federal government.

      The TF was the most ethnically and racially diverse of the churches I visited. There were a number of Latino members (a fifth or so of the entirety), and an African American family of four or five were there. One of the helper/band members sang a song in Spanish (translated on the screens for non-Spanish speakers).

      The TF also seemed to have more of a lower/working-class congregation than the other churches, though I have a hard time writing how I came to this conclusion. I suppose their dress was a little more less than casual than the other churches. There were a few people in the TF congregation that looked as if they came in direct from a hard night’s partying.

      The height of the TF prayer session was cacophonic. There was quiet prerecorded piano music playing over the speakers, two or three people were in the front being prayed over, hands laid upon. Pastor George introduced one woman as having recently lost her husband and she was now a single mom. Earlier in the service, while a song was playing about falling to one’s knees in the presence of the Lord, this woman actually did fall to her knees. She was at the service on her own, sitting/standing/singing in the very front row. At one point, while singing, she fell to her knees, hands reaching upward, her face looking upward though her eyes were closed. She sang.

      It was this same woman who was introduced as having lost her husband; this was after Pastor George “stood in for” a woman in the hospital in Las Vegas; as in the former instance, so too with this woman. Pastor George came up to her, as did Elder Lee and a number of women from the congregation. They prayed for her. As with so many other instances during this service, all of the people around her were praying individually, but aloud. The woman being prayed for began to cry, loudly. She was wailing, her body convulsing. She fell to her knees and the prayers followed her down.

      The men would only physically lay their hands upon men and women only upon women. When not physically laying hands upon someone, the prayer will place their hands close to, as if, but not actually, touching.

      During an early song at TF one of the back-up singers moved from stage left, where the singers were stationed, to stage right. She began to “sign” the song for the audience. The thing is I do not think she was using any standard sign language.[10] I think she was signing in “tongues.”

      Pastor George saves his Bible sermon for the end of the service at TF, and this part only lasts half an hour of the hour and forty-five minutes service. Ten minutes or so are spent with greetings and morning business. An hour and fifteen minutes are spent in the prayer session described above. The praying is the key component of the TF service; it is what attracts people to it. The Bible sermon is secondary.

      During the height of the prayer session the room is ecstatic, like the middle of a good rock show or a party where people are on psychedelics. There are behaviors going on that are frowned upon when exhibited in everyday life. To lose control of one’s body, mind, and language in this way is contrary to the self-control expected of adult people. Pastor George’s role is to be both member and conductor of the prayer session at TF. He begins by getting people into the mental state to engage their spirit selves. Last Sunday he began the prayer session by standing in for the hospitalized woman in Las Vegas. Well, he starts even before this. In between the first few songs, he prays quietly, but loud enough for the microphone to catch and, thus, for the congregants to hear him, “Praise Jesus. Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.” Quietly. But he is setting the mood.

      The sign language woman began her thing early on during one of the first songs. Her presentation was very much public. She was standing behind Pastor George, who was playing the guitar and singing, signing in tongues. At the same time the guy to my left was praying and crying. Some in the crowd presented their spirit selves before the “official” prayer session began.

      Once the prayer session reaches a point of self-sustainability, once Pastor George can stop stoking the spirit fires, he becomes one of the participants. He stays quite for ten minutes with one of the people being prayed for and then, seemingly satisfied their needs are taken care of, moves to the next person for an equal amount of time. Sometimes he moves away from any spirit circle and does the quiet prayer thing before moving to another circle.

      There is activity throughout the room. Some congregants sit in their chairs, heads down in personal prayer. Others move around the room from congregant to congregant, hugging, talking. Some pray out loud. The lady three or four chairs down from me, with a young girl (her daughter) would be quiet for a few minutes and then break into fairly audible prayer of unintelligible words interspersed with “Jesus,” her hands outstretched toward the stage and pulpit. Pastor George’s wife, sitting directly in front of me, with three teenage boys (one being her son) behaved much the same as the woman just discussed: “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” Some people simply watched. At its peak, it is a sublime event.

      At some point Pastor George decides to wind down the spirit praying. He mentioned that we were on God’s time, not man’s. While on the surface this seemed like an open and transparent statement, letting others know that we would keep spirit praying until everyone was satisfied, it was also a subtle suggestion that the praying has a finite amount of time. At just the moment when it seemed like the spirit prayer session was to end, Pastor George’s wife came forward from her seat in the middle of the room and walked up to Pastor George. She whispered in his ear. He did not seem to hear her too well, so he leaned forward and she leaned inward, whispering more. The fact that his wife came up at this point, after his statement about time, affirmed that we could go on for more time, and we did. Who more could we trust in the room than the preacher’s wife.

The Community Church

      Most religious services occur in distinct physical spaces. The Baptist Church (BC) had the smallest building of any of the churches I visited, but at least it was a building made to be a church. The Community Church (CC) had more space than BC, but they inhabit a building made for generic purposes, any old business might rent it out. The Catholic churches, both in Tucson and St. George, have vast complexes compared to other churches I went to. The Catholic Church in St. George, for instance, has a thrift store attached to it, a three-story business center, and one or two other buildings. It is, literally, a complex that takes up half a square block. The same is true with St. Francis Catholic Church in Tucson, but it takes up a couple of square blocks due to its much larger congregation. The Fellowship (TF) houses itself in an old restaurant. It has a lot of space, but the building was not made for a church. The Bible Church (TBC) has a decent amount of space in their own building. It was much smaller until a couple years ago when they added on a large chapel/auditorium. They come close to having a complex. They take up three-quarters of a square block in a suburban neighborhood in Washington City. They also increased the size of their parking lot a number of years ago. Living Christ Lutheran Church in Flagstaff was housed in its own church-specific building. It was of medium size compared to other churches I attended.

      Most all the churches were much more than just chapels. Some have coffee break rooms, nurseries, and teen hang-outs. Most have office space for the pastor and helpers to work. The Episcopal Church (EC) has a working soup kitchen, a large chapel, and a small chapel. Pastor Morty holds Bible Study in a smaller, more intimate section of BC. No church is simply a chapel, all are multipurpose establishments.

      July 19, 2015. Common to most churches, there were a number of greeters at The Community Church. There were two greeters at the front door, I shook their hands and said “good morning.” As with many churches I attended, there is a foyer that separates the auditorium, where the service takes place, from the outside. CC is in an office building, it does not look as if it were built to be a church. They have their offices through a door next to the entrance of the church proper, offices and church being in the same building. The members of the church seem pretty excited that next week they will be officially breaking ground on a new, designed for church, building.[11] Pastor Scott mentioned this many times during his sermon. He really wants as many congregants as possible to attend next Sunday’s ground breaking, he even invited the mayor!

      Outside the church there is a banner strung between two trees that announces the name of the church and the times of the services. The church webpage suggests there are other meetings that happen, such as a men’s Bible Study. The first speaker today, the one who gives announcements after the second or third song of the morning, mentioned that the church is putting together a “1929 Initial Interest Meeting” (the announcements are also listed on the back page of the day’s program). The “1929” is a college age group common to many churches that meets separately from the regular Sunday services. The announcer mentioned this new group would be meeting next Sunday after the service, if anyone is interested.

      Inside the foyer there are tables and shelves with CC related material. A number of people are milling about (it is five minutes before the service starts). There are greeters who hand out programs in front of each of the two entrances to the service auditorium. The auditorium is off to one side of the foyer. Off to another is a welcome room complete with a desk staffed by a couple of helpers (two today, one last week, all of them women; the front door helpers today were one man and one woman; the entrance to the auditorium helpers were both men). There is some coffee in the welcome room and a regular flow of people filling their cups. Off of the welcome room is a room with a split top-bottom door, the top open, staffed by a helper. A sign on the door announced it was for kids 5-15. Another room, this one off of the foyer, announced itself as a preschool age room.

      Most of the bible churches had children’s rooms and, sometimes, teenager rooms, places where parents could drop off their kids while the adult service took place. There was an understanding that the general service is not a place for kids. They are seen as either not mature enough to get it, or there is a certain type of presentation of self expected in general service that kids cannot maintain.

      The CC service starts with the worship team playing a song. The lead guitarist says, “Good morning. Please stand and sing with us.” The band had two electric guitars, bass, keyboards, drums, and two singers (both women, neither of whom played an instrument). One of this week’s singers was different from last week, as was the bassist. Last week there was a singer who sang lead on all the songs, she was not here this week. This week the two women took turns singing lead and harmony. The band played a song, we were then asked to say “hello” to each other (greetings) while they played another, the offering happened while they played a third. There were five songs before announcements and then Pastor Scott gave his sermon. A song or two was then played at the end of the sermon, after Pastor Scott left the stage.

The Baptist Church

      The Baptist Church (BC), like The Episcopal Church, has a number of services during the week, each one a bit different than the other. For instance, BC’s Sunday evening service is more informal than its Sunday morning service, and the Wednesday evening Bible study is less formal still. Furthermore, BC has a homey feel. It has existed for 30 or more years with the same pastor, it is small in size, and has a group of congregants who enjoy each other’s company. This homey feeling fosters a personal type of belief storytelling, one immersed in the personal relations of its members.

      August 16, 2015. The Baptist Church falls between contemporary Bible churches and traditional institutional churches. They have hymn books, for instance, which are placed in the backs of pews in front of where congregants sit. There are King James Bibles in the pews for everyone to read along with the Pastor. Pews, hymn books, and King James Bibles, are characteristics of more traditional, institutional churches. Bible churches (TBC, TF, CC) have live worship teams playing “contemporary” pop/rock Christian songs the lyrics to which are broadcast on screens in the front of the church for all congregants to read and sing along. The institutional churches (EC, St. Francis, LCSC, BC) have organ/piano players playing traditional songs (or no accompaniment at all) that congregants sing along to.

      To start the service, Pastor Morty asks if there are any announcements. Different congregants raise their hands and make them. One woman offered that Walmart was eliminating an entire shift, of which she was a part. Workers were given the choice of leaving the company or changing to a less attractive graveyard shift. Congregant Laura raised her hand and said that her husband, congregant Larry, had made it successfully through his surgery. They had spent much time during the last week at the hospital for various complications of the surgery, but things, “Praise God,” are looking better. However, they have a granddaughter in Illinois who has been diagnosed with cancer, and she is pregnant. Most of the announcements are of this sort, asking congregants to pray for the easing of rough times, although they never come right out and ask for the prayer. Laura did thank the congregants for the prayers they had in relation to Larry’s illness. Pastor Morty said, in the first example, he does not usually pray for corporations, but in this case he will pray for Walmart to make the right decisions in relation to their workers.

      After the “prayer announcements,” Pastor Morty announced some upcoming events in the church: Bible Study on Wednesday, quarterly business meeting next Saturday. Both Sunday mornings I have attended BC Pastor Morty is waiting on his wife, who plays the piano, to arrive. She shows up a few minutes late to both services. She rides in an electric wheelchair.

      After the announcements, and his wife is in place, Pastor Morty calls a hymn number out and, moments later, she plays and the congregants sing, Pastor Morty leading the way. Sometimes he tells us to only sing versus 1,2, and 4. Sometimes he shouts out, at the very end of one verse, “verse 3,” indicating to us that we should skip verse 2 and go straight to number 3. We sing three hymns and then Pastor Morty tells us that after verse 1 of the next hymn we are to greet one another. Now, at BC (and here is a difference between BC and other institutional churches) we do not say “peace” to one another, we simply greet each other with a “good morning” and “nice to see you.” This takes awhile. Indeed, this morning Pastor Morty was ready to resume the singing but the congregants were busy greeting one another and he had to wait. At both the beginning of the morning’s service and in trying to end the greeting session, Pastor Morty could not get congregants to stop interacting with each other. It seems this is one of the joys of going to church for the BC folks, saying “hello” to friends they have not seen all week.

      Most of the male congregants at BC wear ties, probably 12 of the 15 in attendance on Sunday morning, less at the evening service. Pastor Morty told me, when I asked about the difference between Sunday morning and evening services, that the evenings are less formal. Pastor Morty did wear a tie for both the morning and evening services, though I do not know if it was the same one, and it was catawampus for the evening service.

      Pastor Morty told me there was less singing at the evening service, but (although I did not count the songs) it did not seem that way to me. For the morning service there is a program that lists all the songs we will sing, and Pastor Morty sticks to this. There was no program for the evening service and, after two or three songs, the congregation started shouting out what songs they wanted to sing. First the pianist suggested one or two songs and Pastor Morty decided we would sing them both. Then Pastor Morty thought out loud, “Why don’t we sing one more,” and someone in the congregation shouted out a song and Pastor Morty agreed. In the end, we sang as much at the evening service as we did in the morning, it was just a more spontaneous decision on the part of Pastor Morty and the congregation to do so.

      For the morning service Pastor Morty stands behind a permanent podium on a stage in the front of the congregation, he brought a portable podium up front for the evening service. There were fewer of us at the evening service than in the morning: 10 adults at the former, 25 at the latter. Both services included numerous children who were “dismissed” after the singing. They went to a back room with some of the adults who, I presume, supervised them. The evening service was more intimate than the morning one.

      After the announcements and singing in the evening service, Pastor Morty opened up a Fun Bible Quiz Book. He asked trivia questions of the congregation and we answered. A kid (maybe 10 years old) behind me (one child of, probably, five, who was there with his parents) answered a number of the questions correctly, more than anyone else in the room. His face was full of concentration; he enjoyed this game. He was obviously into the Bible.

      The family mentioned in the above paragraph came to both services on Sunday. The father was an usher at the morning service, his wife made sure to say a warmhearted “hello” to everyone during the greeting period. The father went back with the children during the evening service while the wife stayed for the service. Laura and Larry made it to both Sunday services as well. Pastor Morty’s wife, as the pianist, made it to both, along with her daughter and her daughter’s infant/toddler child.

      There was no greeting period for the evening service.

      It is worth going back to the friendship exhibited at BC. I entered the chapel for the morning service about six minutes before the start of the service. The congregants were circulating and jovially talking with one another. They were pretty loud. They hugged and asked about each other’s medical conditions and discussed the state of politics. Pastor Morty, as he had trouble getting control after the greeting period, had trouble getting the congregants to calm down to start the service. One or two people walked in after the service started and would say “hello” to others as they found their seats. The same happened at the evening service, but there were so few congregants that Pastor Morty was able to wait them out as they talked. The evening service took an informal beginning as Pastor Morty stood at the podium for awhile waiting for the chat to die down and then, as a matter of course, started into the service. At the morning service Pastor Morty sits on a bench behind the podium for five minutes prior to the service. He then comes to the podium and waits, only kind of patiently, for the congregants to get seated and quiet down (he is also waiting for his wife the pianist to arrive).

      The BC building itself is kind of run down. The lot is dusty. There is a marquee out front that announces the name of the church and its service times. The parking lot is small (no need for a larger one) and cracked from time. The windows have stained glass coatings or stickers on them that are wearing/peeling off. The general feeling is that the building is pretty old and has not seen a lot of repairs. Pastor Morty mentioned in his Sunday evening service a story about a Dixie College basketball coach who used to come to the church maybe 15-20 years ago, the point being that Pastor Morty and the physical church have been here for a couple decades at least.

      Many, though certainly not all, of the congregants at BC seemed to be in their late-seventies, eighties, and nineties. There were a few young families, and a few middle-aged folks. I estimate that 60% of the congregants were elderly, 25% were between 25-55, 10% were children under 10 (at church because they came with their parents). BC had the congregation with the oldest average age of any church I attended save the Wednesday The Episcopal Church (EC) service, and EC had probably the second oldest congregation overall.

      August 19, 2015. The Wednesday evening Bible Study at BC was held in a room that looked like a public study located towards the back of the church building. There were maps of biblically significant regions of the world past and present on the walls. There was a rectangular foldout card table in the middle of the room and a number of chairs spread around facing the podium, some comfy, others not. A piano was in the southeast corner and another foldout card table with coffee and treats also on the east wall. On the west wall was a stool behind a podium standing on a small (6”) stage. There were bookshelves with books.

      Overall, the BC church building has a dog-eared, used, time-worn, old but comfortable family kind of feel, like a grandma’s house. The atmosphere of the church is family-like. Everyone knows each other by name. Of the fifteen or so people in the Bible Study room, at least seven of us had been to both Sunday services as well. Laura and Larry were there. The husband and wife with the numerous kids were there. This time, as I came in through the chapel, the wife was in the chapel foyer talking with some other women. They welcomed me and pointed me in the direction of the Bible Study. The wife did not come into the study, only the husband and his older boy who was a wiz at the bible trivia game on Sunday evening. Actually, the couple’s younger son “entertained” (he used that term) us while we waited for Pastor Morty to come lead the study. The young boy introduced himself as the pastor, sat on the chair, and with a little prodding from his father who was sitting at the card table in the middle of the room (he and the older son being the only attendants to do so) started singing a memorization song about the books in the Bible. He first sang one naming the books of the New Testament, and then one of the Old Testament. This family seems to be very church-centered.

      While 15 or so of us were in Bible Study with Pastor Morty, an equal number of people, including a fair number of kids, were playing, running, and chatting in the hallways and byways of the building. Some people brought kids and other people, wives mainly, watched the kids while we had Bible Study. For instance, the wife in the family of a lot of kids stayed in the hallways with the kids while the husband and the oldest son attended Bible Study. There was another couple who sat together near the door and had kids (I do not know how many) playing in the hallways. At one point the mother got up and checked on them, occasionally the father (who was right next to the door) would look out and wave at them.

      As soon as the study was over, Pastor Morty walked out to what is, I assume, his office and took hold of and held an infant who, I assume, is his grandchild. His wife, the pianist in the wheelchair, started talking to me immediately as I left the study room and walked the ten feet to Pastor Morty’s office. She welcomed me back to the church. I told her I missed her piano playing at the study group (there were no songs at Bible Study). She went on to tell me how she has never had lessons and that the playing is good for her hands (which seem to be arthritic or otherwise “deformed.”). The tattoo father, the one who sat next to the door and occasionally looked out at his kids, was standing at Pastor Morty’s door and chatting with the pastor and his wife. As I got in my car to leave a woman cheerfully smiled and waved at me; this woman had been to at least one of the Sunday sessions and at the Bible Study. Her smile was sincere, like you might give to a family member.

      The study itself consisted of Pastor Morty leading us through sections of the New Testament: John and, mostly, Hebrews. The focus of his lecture was about the blind faith that characters in the Old Testament had to have. They knew nothing of Christ (He hadn’t happened yet) but searched, traveled, journeyed, and lived their lives on the promise that something like Him would happen.

Calvary Chapel

 

      August 9, 2015. Calvary Chapel (CaC) is physically the largest and “nicest” chapel I attended. It had a large entry way, a coffee stand (with a barista), a bookstore room, a hallway with numerous classrooms to the sides and upstairs, and a large parking lot. It did not have pews, but instead comfortable folding chairs, pockets on the back. One of the Calvary Chapel greeters insisted that I take a copy of the Bible (free of charge). CaC has a large hall. There were more people at the service than any service I have attended (and they have two per Sunday). Even with all the people in attendance at CaC, the pastor picked me out as new to the congregation. He said “hello” after I had made my way into the chapel. The overall feeling at Calvary Chapel was of a grand happening, as opposed to the homey, family feeling of BC.

      Part of the CaC service consisted of sending off a family to serve a mission in North Africa. The pastor’s son, his son’s wife, their two young children (and child-to-be), and who I assume is a nanny, got on stage with Pastor Morty who told us of the type of mission they would be serving (planting churches), how dangerous it might be (“Christians are persecuted in some of the places they will be.”), and how we as a congregation can support them. There are cards at the church where congregants can pledge regular prayer, organizational activities, gift boxes, and, of course, money. They were leaving in two days. Pastor Rick anointed each member of the missionary team on the forehead with oil: “Father, Son, Holy Spirit.” In sending this family on a faraway and dangerous mission, the church tells the story that Christians take risks in order to spread the Word.

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

 

      A salient feature of services for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and, as I will show, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, is the feeling of routine exhibited by the congregants. There is talking, mingling, and kids roaming the aisles of the hall. Part of the story seems to be that this is a normal, routine part of our lives. It is not something set apart from everyday living, it is everyday living.

      September 6, 2015. I went to the Main Street, Washington, Utah, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Sacrament Meeting assuming that a 9:00am session of the LDS Church on a Sunday is the equivalent of a 9:00am (or other morning time) service of any other “Christian” church. It had more a feeling of a meeting than a church service. The room was loud. Many of the attendees were families, parents and children of all ages. Therefore there was a lot of noise, mainly in the form of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers crying or talking, and parents not being overly concerned with this, in ways I did not witness in other churches. Most of the congregants behaved as if the noise was natural and welcomed. No one ever gave parents a dirty look for having loud children. The speakers at the meeting went through with their talks never missing a beat for the loudness in the room. They spoke through a microphone so that all could hear, and the noise continued unabated. At one point a child (maybe 5 years old) made it all the way from the back of the room to the front and started to plunk on the piano while a woman was giving her testimony; the woman looked down at the child and smiled while never missing a beat in her testimony; it was as if the child was absolutely within her rights to do this. The mother of the child slowly made her way from the back of the chapel to the front, picked up the child, and made her way back.

      The noise at the LDS sacrament meeting made for a different atmosphere than in other services I attended. It felt more like a community gathering than a church service. The congregants were comfortable to the point of nonchalance. This was a normal place for them to be, a regular place, like a community picnic, and everyone liked it this way.

      I arrived just before nine. As with all the other churches I have attended there was a greeter in the foyer between the outside doors and the chapel. He shook my hand and gave me a program, just like every other church. Also, just like every other church, I told the greeter that this was my first time to this church, that this was my first time to any LDS service. He welcomed me and introduced me to another man who happened to be standing nearby. As I entered and sat at a pew (there were pews, with fold-out chairs in the back to handle overflow and late coming attendees) an elderly woman introduced herself to me and I told her my story.

      As with other churches, one of the first things people asked was if I was visiting; it was obvious to the congregants that I was a stranger. The tone of their inquiry suggested that they were wondering if I was a Church member just passing through or visiting a friend in the neighborhood, rather than a non-member person passing through and choosing a church at random to attend. They asked if I was new to the neighborhood. There seemed to be an assumption that I was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

      The LDS Sacrament Meeting was run entirely by lay folk. A small choir sang hymns as the congregation filed in. We then sang a few hymns, a conductor (woman) standing in front helping us along (I did not see this conductor role at any other church). Then a member of the congregation (man) came forward and gave an opening benediction.

      May 29, 2016. Both Church of Latter-Day Saints services I attended included programs that provide a schedule of the meeting for congregants to follow along. They also provide a list of the important characters who directly participate in the service.

      The September 6 service was the first Sunday of the month and, like all similar Sundays, it was a Testimony meeting at which members of the congregation are encouraged to go to the front of the room and give their testimony about their relationships with Jesus. The program for the meeting has the title “Importance of Receiving a Personal Testimony.” It has a picture of Joseph Smith in the woods speaking to Christ and God the Father, and a lengthy quote from Robert D. Hales (a member of the Quorum of 12) about the importance of having a personal testimony.

      On page 2 of the September 6 program is a list of the important actors in the service (Presiding, Conducting, Chorister, and Organist) at the top, under the name of the church and the date. There is then listed “Welcome and Announcements,” the “Opening Hymn” and its number in the hymn book, the “Invocation” and the name of the person giving it, “Ward Business,” the “Sacrament Hymn” and number, the “Sacrament Service” given by the “Aaronic Priesthood,” the “Bearing of Testimonies” (which took up the bulk of the meeting), the “Closing Hymn” and number, and the “Benediction” and who would give it.

      On page three of the program is a “Calendar and Announcements” including “Relief Society,” “Primary Activities,” “Ward and Stake,” “Ward Choir Practice,” and “Weekly Birthday Greetings.” The fourth and final page asks us to “Please Pray for our Missionaries” and lists four such people, lists the “Ward Leadership” including the Bishop, Bishop’s Office, First Counselor, Executive Secretary, High Priest Group Leader, Elders Quorum President, Ward Mission Leader, and the people filling these positions and their phone numbers. Page four also lists the “Auxiliaries” including Relief Society President, Young Men’s President, Young Women’s President, Primary President, Sunday School President, and the names of the people filling these positions. It also lists the Building Scheduler and, finally, the names of two Sister Missionaries and a Senior Missionary Couple.

      From a dramaturgical perspective, the programs of the LDS Sacrament Meetings offer a script for congregants to follow. The Bishop in the May 29 meeting acted as a director, reading from the program to begin the meeting, then coming up between each act to announce what would happen next. The quote on the front page provided a narrative that any regular (lifetime) attendee would understand: today’s meeting was about the priesthood. The woman who gave the opening invocation reminded us of the narrative, and both speakers spoke along the priesthood narrative as well.

The Religious Science Institute

      The Religious Science Institute (RSI) represents a hybrid of existing religious stories while not being connected to any one tradition. Structurally their services look like those of mainstream religions but the content and theology borrows from Christianity, Islam, and Native American totemic spirituality, while adding parts of their own. They offer a novel experience reminiscent of familiar pieces.

      December 6 and December 13, 2015. The Religious Science Institute is a non-traditional (i.e. non-Christian, Jewish, Muslim, LDS, Buddhist, Hindu) type religion. Indeed, they seem to be a mix and mish-mash of these. Reverend Joan and the RSI do believe in God, but they have interesting ways of referring to It. First, she does refer to God as “It.” She does not use masculine or feminine pronouns for It. She also says “God who is referred to by many names.” The implication is that there is only one God (monotheism) and that all the different monotheistic religions are worshipping this God, just in different ways.

      Before the RSI service is a meditation session. The Institute is located in a store front of office buildings in St. George. It looks to me that the other store fronts in the strip mall are also occupied by religious-type organizations. The main room does not feel like it was built for religious services. It has a number of chairs arranged in a semi-circle (or U) around a podium. There is a video screen to the right of the podium. The room is nicely decorated with plants, a bookshelf. The seats are pretty standard semi-portable metal chairs with padded seats and backs. The two restrooms have signs on them proclaiming “Whichever” rather than “Men” and “Women.”

      Most of the music during the service is played from Reverend Joan’s smart phone plugged into a speaker system. It is easy listening popular spiritual music. During the meditation session Reverend Joan’s husband, Ricardo, played a Native American flute. This is the only time I witnessed live music at the RSI.

      There are no direct signs of Christianity at the RSI: no crosses, no images of Jesus, no colors, no stained glass. There are words around the room like “peace” and “spiritual.”

      The message of the RSI was focused on the idea of One. There is one god and It is everywhere at once. It is within us and outside of us. It is non-dualistic. We are not separate from God, we are God and God is us. We are the consciousness of God. We are Its eyes and ears.

Muslims of St. George

      Muslims of St. George (MSG) is an example of a global belief story enacted in a local context with a diverse array of congregants. Participants in MSG services are from many places and speak many different languages. MSG belief stories are told in the one language common to them all, English.

      November 20, 2015 and June 27, 2016. The Muslims of St. George meet every Friday at 1:30 in the Dixie State University (DSU) North Instructional Building (NIB). I arrived eight minutes before the service was to begin. Both times the NIB building was pretty darned empty. The second time a young man walked by and said “hi.” He seemed to be there for the service.

      The MSG are a diverse and international group. A number of them are students at DSU, from Nigeria. But there are others: a doctor from Bangladesh, two people from Pakistan. On the whole, there do not seem to be many MSG congregants born and raised in the U.S. There is one man, the only noticeably white person at the service other than me, who seems to be from the United States, though I have not spoke to him and have not verified this.

      Maybe of more interest than what the attendees at the MSG looked like and where they may or may not be from is that the services are conducted in English. It was the one language common to them all. This said, they do parts of the service in Arabic.

      Eventually a man and his three kids (two boys and a girl) go into the room and turn on the light. I still wait a minute or two before entering. For a couple minutes we are the only ones in the room. Then others start to trickle in. These early birds brought their own prayer rugs to kneel on. At some point another guy comes in who has a bag of prayer rugs.

      The prayer rugs are set in rows; a row in front for the men, and one in back for the women. One rug is put in front for the service leader. I was told there is nothing really special about who runs the service. He (both times a man) must be an experienced and knowledgeable Muslim is about it. They do decide ahead of time so that the leader can prepare a talk.

      The leader’s talk is not unlike the type of talk heard at an Episcopalian, Lutheran, or Catholic service. Members engage in salah/prayer (in Arabic and in almost total silence) then the imam/leader gives a sermon. At the 2016 MSG service the sermon was about the significance of fasting during Ramadan. According to the imam it is a way of reminding oneself that self control is essential to being a Muslim. The Christian denominations I mentioned also follow liturgy and then, in the middle of the service, allow the preacher to give a sermon, followed by more liturgy. The MSG is similar.

      At some point, and I do not know what triggered it, one of the men in the congregation (not the leader) began a call to prayer. He stood and “sang” some things in Arabic, a number of men and women stood on their rugs and did some ritual motions (touch their faces, bend down and put their hands on their knees, got on their knees and kneeled, faces to the floor, stood back up). This went on for a minute or two. Then they all got on their knees and started doing some very quiet praying, breathing words rather than actually speaking. They would put their faces to the floor, sit back up, look back and forth.

Church of Christ, Scientist

      Belief stories at the Church of Christ, Scientist (CCS) do not allow for embellishment on the part of service leaders. They have a set liturgy and stick to it. Attendance at the St. George CCS was low and, between the time I attended and the writing of this piece, the Church abandoned the building and stopped offering services.

      November 13, 2015 and January 10, 2016. I went to two Church of Christ, Scientist – Christian Science Society – services within a couple months. Both were at the church in St. George. The church itself is housed in a modest, skinny, old house in St. George’s downtown area; it is probably no more than 1000 square feet in size. They have a small parking lot and a sign outside declaring who they are and that the public is welcome. “Christian Science Society” (CCS) is written in large black letters on the building, facing the street. The building itself is all white. There is a covered plastic pocket attached to the outside of the church that offers “Free Literature” to anyone interested.

      There are two doors to the church, one of which is the official entrance. Maggie (Second Reader) greets me by opening the door as I arrive. She and Becky (First Reader) run the church. There are two rooms inside: The service room and the reading room. The service room consists of 14 or 15 rows of comfortable “church chairs,” evenly distributed on two sides of a small aisle. There is an organ covered by a blanket with flowers and books on top of it; I would be surprised if the organ has been played recently. The paint in the service room (and reading room, for that matter) is all white. The chairs are an off bluish brown. There is a nice looking wooden podium behind which Becky and Maggie read for the congregation; it is ornate and looks solid and expensive.

      The first time I attended CSS there were a total of five attendees, including the sister Readers. This last Sunday there were seven of us. I dare say I was the youngest attendee save, maybe, Becky. In the church chair pockets there were Christian Science hymn books and a Christian Science Quarterly. The Quarterly contains all the lessons for all the CSS churches, I suppose, in the world for three months. The Readers follow this word-for-word in conducting their service.

      As with many churches, there is a “marquee” in the room that lists which hymns we will sing for the day. Becky, the Reader, welcomes us according to the welcome required of her by church dictate.

      Readers at CSS do not stray from the readings. The Quarterly, for instance, tells which Biblical passage to read and which Science and Health correlatives to read. The Guidebook tells how a service is to proceed. The Quarterly provides the “call and response” readings for the Readers and congregation. There is no straying from the readings. There is no interpretation of the readings by Readers or congregants. The service is entirely scripted from beginning to end. There is no greeting session within the service. The Readers never even really tell us the service is over. No “goodbyes” or “go be fruitful.” Becky simply gives a little smile, nods and, since we are following along in our Quarterly, or we know the routine, we know it is over.

      For the hymns, Becky stands and tells the congregants which hymn we will sing. She then reads the lyrics to the hymn, then sits while Maggie starts the song (on a CD player I think, but it may be an MP3 player). The opening refrain plays, then we all stand and sing. There were three, maybe four hymns sprinkled throughout each service.

Church of Christ

      Consistent with national data (Pew Research Center 2021), evangelical congregations in Washington County have a conservative political bent which plays out in their services. I have already shown what this looks like in The Fellowship, here it is again in the Church of Christ.

      February 7, 2016. The Church of Christ owns its own building on the west side of St. George. I got the strong feeling that the folks in attendance at the church were in line with the perspective on government held by the occupiers of the Oregon preserve.[12] The wish for religious freedom from government was mentioned a number of times in the lesson and prayers. Leaders asked, in the prayers, that we continue to be a nation that allows its citizens the freedom to practice religion in any way they choose. The underlying theme is only through God’s Grace can we keep government from infringing upon freedom of religion.

Jehovah’s Witnesses

      The Jehovah’s Witness (JW) services have some similarities with those of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. As mentioned, there is an air of familiarity among members in both services. Ironically, also in both services, members dress more formally than in any other congregations I observed. The JWs, however, had a stricter liturgy than the LDS.

      March 20, 2016. Jehovah’s Witnesses’ dress was formal. Men wore full suits, coats and all, ties, and fancy shoes. Women were in dresses. The service I attended was the Riverside Congregation (there is also a Red Cliffs Congregation that meets in the same Kingdom Hall in the college area of St. George). The inside of the hall was set-up much like other traditional Christian churches. There was a pew at the front on a slightly elevated stage. A chair and table sat on the stage on either side of the pew. There were then rows of standard “church chairs” arranged in a standard U-shape facing the pew[13].

      As opposed to most of the other services I attended where older women are the ones to make me feel “at home,” the men were the aggressors at the JW service. One would engage me in conversation and then, most naturally, lead me to another who would, in turn, lead me to another; this was all before the service began. At one point I was introduced to a retired university scientist. He proclaimed that he was a scientist who “believes.” “Do you believe, Matthew?” he asked.

      I was lead to the back of the room where a bar was manned by a Witness (at one point I was asked by someone if I was a “Witness”). He gave me a Bible and a book of JW songs so I could follow along with the service. First he asked if I would be following along on my phone or tablet. When I said “no,” he gave me a copy of the Bible. He asked if I had a Bible of my own. I said I did, a KJV. He said this version, the JW version, will be much easier to follow, not so many “big old words.” After the service one of the Witnesses showed me the apps, and they are impressive. The JW Books app includes numerous versions of the Bible in many languages and, with easy to use buttons, one can quickly get to whatever book and chapter the sermon leader asks the congregants to follow along with. I was left to fumble through the pages of my hard copy Bible and, sometimes, did not find the verse in time. It was impressive to see how many people in the congregation followed along with their smart phones and tablets as opposed to the few of us who had hard copy bibles.

      The service began with a song. The songs were on recordings that we sang along with. I did not know any of the hymns. A director of sorts then came to the pulpit and told us how the service would be conducted. First there was a guest speaker from Cedar City. I honestly do not remember of what he spoke, but he would ask us to follow along with him as he read passages from the Bible. The bible from which he read was oversized.

      Next, the part of the service that was unique to the JW as opposed to other Christian faiths, was a Watchtower discussion. The unique part was how it was conducted. A young man, a Witness, who was now sitting in a chair on the stage to the director’s right, could come to a microphone and read a paragraph from the day’s Watchtower reading. There was an entire reading, four or five pages, designated for the week. The director would say a word or two about the reading and then congregants were invited to comment on the paragraph. The director would ask if there were any comments and then wait until someone raised their hand (sometimes this was immediate, other times we wait 20 or 30 seconds). He would call on them, usually by name (“Sister Smith”) and an usher would give the congregant a microphone and they would say what they thought about the paragraph, how it applied to their lives. Men and women of all ages were allowed to comment, the youngest was no more than 5 years old. Many of the congregants had underlined parts of their Watchtowers and written notes in the margins; they were assigned the week’s readings beforehand and were prepared. The director would allow for some number of comments and then move on to the next paragraph. I got the impression that he would allow a certain amount of time for each section without concern for how many comments there were. This went on for about an hour and then the service was over (there were two or three more hymns thrown in and a brief section of “Announcements”).

      The comment portion of this particular service was about how to tell the anointed ones among us and, importantly, how to tell if you are one of the anointed (“If you have to ask, you are not.”) Apparently God chose 144,000 people, in the history of all people, as the anointed. These people ascend to Heaven to be with God while the rest of humanity, the great crowd, will exist for eternity in paradise on earth. One lady claimed that her uncle was one of the anointed, he told her that “He just knew, without a doubt, that he was.”

      The JW service reminded me a bit of an LDS Sacrament Meeting I went to. Both were attended by full families (no childcare separate from the service). This resulted in lots of child noises and parents moving around with their kids during the service. Both services seemed well-orchestrated; a certain amount of time for this and a certain amount of time for that. Also, and I see this in the Catholic service, too, a certain number of congregants seem bored, as if the services are routine week after week. Also, the formal dress in the two (JW, LDS) are similar; most other congregations I went to were casual wear (though the Baptists like to dress up, too).

 

The Lutheran Church

      The Lutheran Church (LC), a Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) church,­­­­ presents a longstanding and traditional religious service. They fall within what can be referred to as mainstream Protestant Christianity. The rituals and stories they enact go back centuries. They are the stories from which more recent religious movements derive.

      June 17 – August 13, 2016. The Lutheran Church (LC) is on the second floor of a modern-looking office building in St. George that houses a number of other businesses. On the first floor of the building is a day spa that is not open on Sunday. There is an elevator and stairs to the second floor. Upstairs there is not only LC, but a yoga class that happens at the same time as the church service. LC closes their door for the service. We hear nothing from the yoga folk and I imagine they hear nothing from us.

      Chairs in LC are arranged in typical Christian church fashion, a U-shape around the pew from which Pastor Gordon preaches. They are not typical church chairs in that they do not have pockets holding Bibles and Hymn books in them on their backs. They are portable chairs, however, that get placed back up against the walls when the service is over. The room is well-lit with east and west facing windows. There are a number of restaurant or coffee house type tables with chairs in the room. These tables are pushed to the sides for the service, but placed center stage around the room after the service, once the chairs are put back against the wall. There is a billiard table in the room. Against the south wall is a table with symbolic-type stuff on it. Three banners hang above the table. The one on the left is a picture of Christ’s tomb with the stone entrance pushed aside; written on it is something to the effect that “He has risen.” The banner on the right states “It is done.” The center banner is raised a little higher than the other two, which are on the same level as each other. To the right as one walks in is what looks like a bar, complete with barstools.

      The overall physical atmosphere of the LC space is of a coffee house or restaurant, a place where one can hang out. Indeed, LC advertises in their monthly and weekly bulletins that they have a “Morning Refreshment Lounge” Tuesday through Friday mornings from 8:30-11:30. I get the sense that this is when Pastor Gordon gets much of his preparation and office work done, but it also supports the feeling of LC as a hangout.

      A small table sits front and center as one walks in the door to LC. On the table is a “Voluntary Offering” plate (no collection is taken during services), a stack of hymn books, and the day’s program. Another couple of tables against the north wall, to the left as one walks in the door, hold a host of literature, including Bibles, videos and monthly bulletins.

 

      Bible Study at LC is more organized than studies at other churches. Pastor Gordon created a course. He has PowerPoint slides and a binder that follows along with the presentation that each student receives. He puts all of this together himself. My first impression was that the WELS administration put it together for him, kind of like how book publishers put together presentations that go along with their books for college instructors to use in their classrooms. But Pastor Gordon assures me that he puts the classes together himself. The class Pastor Gordon is currently teaching is called “Course 1: Essential Old Testament Accounts.” It is organized around a number of “Parts”: Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham. It takes Pastor Gordon a number of weeks (one class per week) to get through the entire course.

      Course 1 is part of a larger ongoing Thursday night study called “THEIR STORIES: our story: An examination of Biblical Christianity via Bible History.” Course 1 delves into the books of Moses. Pastor Gordon was also offering a Wednesday night course called “Digging Deeper” for a month or so. The course did not last very long, and I am not sure why. Maybe it is because LC congregants are not ready for courses on Wednesdays and Thursdays, it might be too much for them. He says he might bring the Digging Deeper course back on Thursday nights once Course 1 of “Their Stories: Our Stories is done.”

 

      At one LC Bible Study Pastor Gordon introduced me to congregant Jim. Jim’s home church is the Desert Ridge Baptist Church (DRBC). Somehow Jim came in contact with Pastor Gordon. Jim really likes the LC Bible Study classes and wants to start coming to LC for Sunday worship, but he does not feel he can do this right away. I get the feeling that for Jim at least, changing churches is a big deal. He is not simply going to stop showing-up at DRBC cold turkey. He wants a transition of some kind. It was Pastor Gordon that told me Jim attends DRBC. When asked, Jim told me that he goes to a church “on the other side of town.” He was not specific and I did not press.

      Jim told me he likes the overall atmosphere at LC better than other churches. He said he thinks going to church should be an experience all to itself. It should not mimic outside secular activities. Too many other churches, he said, have brought in contemporary activities that feel less like church and more like a social activity. Church should be a spiritual sanctuary separate from the world.

 

      At one service, Pastor Gordon served the Lord’s Supper for the first time “publicly.” He told me that he has done it privately a few times since opening the church but, since he does not (or did not) have a liquor license, he could not do it publicly.

      I did not do the Lord’s Supper because Pastor Gordon would not have wanted me to. He and I have talked about this during Morning Refreshments, and he reiterated it to the congregation as a whole today. He says that one should not take the Lord’s Supper if one does not fully understand what it is about. It is a most sacred activity and should not be taken lightly. He told them that if they feel they truly understand what the Lord’s Supper is about then they are welcome to take it. If you want to learn what it is about, he continued, then tell him and he will make sure you come to understand it. He has an entire “class” devoted to it. One who wishes to take Lord’s Supper at LC would first take this class with Pastor Gordon.

      Those of us who could not confidently say we understood the meaning/importance of Lord’s Supper were still invited up front where the wine and bread were offered, but instead of taking Lord’s Supper Pastor Gordon blessed us by putting his hand on our shoulder and saying a blessing. This is what I did. He administered Lord’s Supper to the two people on my right and, when he got to me, put his hand on my shoulder and blessed me. A family that sat behind me today did not go up for Lord’s Supper or a blessing. I noticed the husband asking the wife if she wanted to go up with the children, she said she could not or was not supposed to. I do remember a girl of 5 or 6 going up with my group, she must have been with that same family, and Pastor Gordon blessed her.

 

      In comparing his church to Pastor Gordon’s, Steve, a pastor at a WELS church in Pennsylvania talked about the Biblical sophistication of the congregations. His congregation is more Biblically sophisticated. “I can throw out passages from the Bible and they are right on top of it. I don’t need to explain.” But Pastor Gordon’s congregation is not so. “And Pastor Gordon does a good job of helping the congregants through Biblical passages,” said Steve, insinuating that since LC is such a new church its congregants probably are not in tune with how a WELS preacher understands the Bible. Thus, Pastor Gordon needs to help them through it. This shows how ministers need to read their audiences and preach based on numerous variables. In this case the variable is how well the congregants understand the Bible. Indeed, the last part of the sermon today was Pastor Gordon calling on congregants to read their Bibles. “Know your Bible,” he said, “and then share what you know when the opportunity arises.”

 

      I arrive at an LC service five minutes before it starts. Shelly, Pastor Gordon’s wife, is playing Christian hymns on the piano. There are a few people sitting in the u-shaped rows of chairs, a husband and wife I recognize from Bible Study, a family of four (two small children) I do not recognize. A few more people are standing, mingling. Pastor Gordon talks with a young man and woman (boyfriend and girlfriend), then moves on to someone else. He recognizes me as I walk through the door. He nods in my direction, welcoming me to the service. Eventually he gets around to shaking my hand and saying “hello.” Small talk. He tries to make the rounds in the few minutes before the service starts.

      The church itself occupies the southern third of the second floor of an upscale business office building on Bluff Street in St. George. I park in the west side parking lot. A sandwich board sits in front of the door announcing that LC is in session. I walk in the west door, past the day spa on the north side of the first floor, up the stairs on the east side, and onto the second floor. A hair salon is on the north side (behind me as I walk south down the hall to LC), a yoga studio on the right (west). Two sets of double-glass doors must be passed through to enter LC. They are both propped open until the services begin. Pastor Gordon starts the service right on time. We all take a seat quickly once he does this. Pastor Gordon is in a suit and tie. Shelly stays at the electric piano. Some of us sit alone, others with families or partners. Pastor Gordon’s sons and daughters (those in town, anyway) sit to his left. There are 14 of us here, including Pastor Gordon and his family.

 

Conclusion

      Belief stories are constant and omnipresent. They happen in all interactional situations. We are always in the act of convincing others and self of what we believe to be real. It follows, then, that religious belief stories take many forms and happen in many places. In this chapter I described the events of some of the religious services I observed. The point of all the services was the same. They were rhetorical reality performances. They happened in different places and consisted of different rituals, but their goals were the same: believe in these things and act in these ways.

 

Chapter 5

Belief Stories and the Social Construction of Reality

Belief stories are socially constructed and interactional. They are created by people acting as if a particular reality exists. In this chapter I discuss the nuances of belief stories and their importance for people’s perspectives of self, others, and situations. Along the way I detail some religious belief stories as examples of their socially constructed nature.

Belief Stories

      A pastor on the Christian Satellite Network (CSN) told the New Testament story about Jesus being in a house with Martha and Mary (Luke 10: 38-42). Martha was working in the kitchen, Mary was at Jesus’ feet. Who was in the best place? Mary was. It was not that Martha was not doing good work, she was. It is that Mary was doing better work. Mary was having a relationship with Jesus. The pastor then related this story to our own everyday lives. We are often so busy that we do not make time to develop personal relationships with God and Jesus. It is not that we are not doing good works, we usually are. But the key to salvation is having personal relationships with Jesus. Satan loves it when we spend inordinate amounts of time on good works because they distance us from God. We need to make time for Jesus. We need to take time out of our busy days for Jesus, otherwise we are just going through the motions.

      In the movie God’s Not Dead (Cronk 2014) a believing young man attends a traditional university where the academically liberal philosophy professor challenges his students, on the first day of class, to write “God is Dead” on a piece of paper. The Christian student refuses to do so. The professor presents himself as an atheist throughout the movie. Eventually the student manages to get the professor to confess that he is mad at God for letting his wife die. He takes out his anger on his young graduate student wife, on his students and, really, on anyone else who will listen to his atheist rants. The final scene of the movie has the professor being hit by a car as he tries to cross the street. As he lay in the street dying, with his last breath, he admits that he believes and makes right with God.

      The point of this story is that it does not matter when one renews one’s relationships with God and Jesus as long as one does. We have all been given God’s grace, otherwise we would not be here in the first place. All that is needed to get to heaven is belief. If one believes then one will naturally lead a Christian-value life. If one does not believe then one will not live such a virtuous life. Remember, though, from the Martha, Mary, and Jesus story that living a virtuous life is not enough in and of itself to reach salvation. One must also believe. One must also develop a personal relationship with Jesus and God.

      Nouman Ali Khan, an Islamic internet teacher, recites a story of a woman who tells him how Allah has always answered her du’a. However, recently she has been going through some rough times, she is engaged in du’a, and Allah is not answering. She does not understand why. Ali Khan’s answer was that Allah does not answer du’as. He does whatever he wants, when he wants. This is a misperception many Muslims have, says the teacher. They think they can call out to Allah and He will answer, immediately.

      The full answer Ali Khan gave was that Allah takes care of us. He makes sure we get what we need. It may happen immediately upon our calling out to Him, it may happen in a few years or decades, or it may not happen until heaven, but Allah provides. He may or may not provide relief for what one is asking for, but He will provide.

      The importance of du’a, according to Ali Khan, is to communicate with Allah. There must be dialogue, and that comes through personal du’a. Sometimes we do not believe the messages Allah sends to us, what He tells us. Ali Khan tells the story of Mary, Mother of Jesus. Allah told Mary, an unmarried virgin, that she would become pregnant. She did not believe Him. How could she get pregnant when she is not married and, thus, has not and will not have sex with anyone? “Trust me,” says Allah. “What I say is true.” Add to this that Mary knows she will be scorned by her community for being unwed and pregnant. She does not want this to happen. But Allah says it will happen, so it will. It is such a horrible situation, in Mary’s mind, that she leaves her village so as not to be seen by anyone, she wishes to be forgotten by everyone in the village, forever. What Allah has done to her, she believes, is horrendous.

      Mary’s story reminds us that Allah often acts in ways we do not understand. What appears to Mary to be a bad thing is, indeed, a good thing; the prophet Jesus is whom she births. It is in our open communication with Allah that we better understand how He uses us for good, but we have to believe. We have to believe that Allah is working good in us rather than bad, and du’a is one of the ways this happens.

      The above stories are belief stories. Their purpose is to lay out what it means to be Christian, in the first two, and Muslim, in the latter. What do Christian do, the stories ask. They develop relationships with God. What do Muslims do, the story asks. They trust Allah to do the right thing. Belief stories give directions for what to think and believe, and how to act. They are internalized by individuals and presented to others as identities.

Belief Stories and Definition of the Situation

      Here then is the organizing theoretical principle of this book: belief stories. People behave based on belief stories. They organize their definitions of situations on belief stories. They pay attention to some objects in situations and not others based on belief stories. They attribute meaning to the world’s many wonders based on belief stories.

      Belief stories are created through interaction. People talk to one another using belief stories. Thus belief stories are always in transit, never stopping and settling down. Pieces are added and subtracted to the stories, adjusted this way and that by individuals in interaction with their selves as well as with others.

      Individuals embrace numerous belief stories, some grand and overarching, others miniscule and situation specific, that get them from situation-to-situation and day-to-day. Additionally, societies of people, whether large or small, share belief stories. The intersubjectivity of belief stories is what allows groups of people to act together. When people share definitions of situations, including definitions of selves within situations, they act in coordinated fashions.

      A basic symbolic interactionist assumption is that the cause of action is definition of the situation. People act in specific situations based on their specific interpretations of the reality of the situation. All the noticed and assumed parts of the situation play a role in how it makes sense to the individuals involved. Indeed, the individuals involved work together to maintain certain definitions of reality in specific situations. To complicate the matter, each individual pursues their own line of action, puts forth their own definition of the situation supporting their desired goals, against the lines of actions of all other actors in the situation.

      Definitions of situations are part and parcel of belief stories. Belief stories contain definitions of situations within them and they are definitions of situations. Definitions of situations arise from belief stories and they are belief stories. Belief stories and definitions of situations are analytically distinct as ideal types, but they are indistinguishable in the actions of real people in real situations.

      Analytically, belief stories are macro-culture. They occur in situations in which “the meaning of life” is being presented: in church, for instance. Here large scale meanings are presented in well-structured settings. Pastors, believed by parishioners to be experts in interpreting and explaining reality, expound upon what it means to be Christian. “Christianity” is a reality to be believed and parishioners listen to pastors as experts on the subject. “To be a Christian,” the pastor says, “is to believe that Jesus is God, not just the Son of God, but God Himself.” Then they will point to passages in the Bible where Jesus tells his followers that, for instance, “before Abraham, I am” (John, 8:58). Here is the cornerstone of Christian reality. Jesus is God.

      A pastor on CSN was discussing this very point when he argued that Mormons are not Christian. They do not believe, he argued, that Jesus is God. They focus a lot on God the Father, but not on God the Son. Therefore, they are not Christian and, thus, they are heretics. “They’re making stuff up!” said the CSN pastor about members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. What makes religion a dramatic example of a basic social process (Glaser and Strauss 1967), the construction and implementation of belief stories, is that their stories are based on non-empirical premises. Many of the things that religious folks believe are not within the realm of observation, that is why we say they are based on “faith.” One just has to believe these things are true, and then act as if they are. For one group of Christians, the CSN call-in radio show experts, to claim that other religious folks (Mormons) are making stuff up highlights my main point: Empirically speaking, both groups are “making stuff up.” Observationally, both groups believe things that cannot be verified.

      Peter Berger tells us what passes for “knowledge” in any community of people serves to explain social experiences and social order (1967: 29). Belief stories create, maintain, and justify community knowledge. It is through the telling and acting out of belief stories that people reinforce what they believe they know.

      Religious belief stories legitimate human realities by locating them within sacred and cosmic frames of reference (Berger 1967: 33-34). They are used by tellers and listeners to make sense of it all. Belief stories give justification as to why people act how they do. Our behaviors are God-ordained, just like us. If we act differently we are acting against the meaning and purpose of our existence.

      This “cosmization” of reality provides individuals with a subjective sense of their own rightness in the world (Berger 1967: 37). People’s roles are reinforced through interactions with supporting others. To place their realities within a larger ordering of the cosmos allows people to place themselves within that order, giving them a sense of purpose, a role to play. Cosmization is enabled through the telling and acting out of belief stories.

      Cultures, norms, stories, and reality are established and reestablished against the threat of their destruction (Berger 1967: 53). Belief stories are how realities are established and reestablished. By telling and acting out stories we support each other in our perceptions that perceptions are real.

Belief Stories are Socially Constructed

      Sociologists focus on interactions of individuals rather than imputed properties of single individuals (Coser 1956: 56). Belief stories exist as interactional constructs, as parts of people’s collective definitions of situations. They are not part of individuals’ psyches except as the people see them as such and, thus, act towards others as if they are such.

      As Goffman tells us, “(W)hen a multitude of independent signs tell the same story, this can be taken for the way things are” (Goffman 1969: 61). When one is in the presence of a multitude of others who express the same belief stories, one internalizes the stories, believes them to be the way things are, and acts as if this is true; one presents oneself as the kind of person represented in the stories.

      The construction of belief stories happens through language. The construction of religion happens through language. Language assists in resolving the relationship between uncertainty and faith (Wuthnow 2012: 36). Belief stories create certainty. Where uncertainty rears its head, belief stories are created to crush it. The construction of certainty of belief is a key component of human interaction.

      People in conventional United States society tend to believe in an afterlife, though these beliefs take different forms (Wuthnow 2012: 155). Ideas about an afterlife are social constructions based on empirically specific belief stories (Wuthnow 2012: 167). Heaven is cultural because it is discussed in public (Wuthnow 2012: 168). People talk about it, write about it, sing about it, make art and movies about it. The certainty of heaven as a destination is a social construction. It is a publicly negotiated belief story.

      Evidence that our mental horizons and belief stories are socially constructed stems from the fact that they vary by culture or, in this case, by religion (Zerubavel 1997: 42). Different belief stories “cause” people to see the world in different ways. Separating the relevant from the irrelevant is a social act (Zerubavel 1997: 47). We learn what to ignore and what to focus on. Our preferred belief stories contain rhetoric suggesting what to pay attention to and what not to, what religious accounts to believe and which to deny.

      Different cultures create different islands of meaning, they cut the world into different sorts of pieces (Zerubavel 1997: 56). Belief stories are what create these islands, expressions of stories maintain the islands. Language is a signifier. It represents, or stands for, something else (Zerubavel 1997: 68). Belief stories contain culturally created signifiers that point to objects in the world “out there.” Religious belief stories consist of denominationally specific signifiers which point to denominationally specific realities.

      Religious belief stories are bound by the social, spiritual, and cultural stories in which they arose (Aslan 2005: 17). Particular belief stories do not exist in isolation from other stories; they are part and parcel of each other. Therefore, religious stories work because they reflect conventional cultural themes (Aslan 2005: 21). Indeed, all successful cultural belief stories (even unsuccessful ones, for that matter) arise as reflections of extant stories. The better they mimic extant stories the more successful they will be.

      If the above is true, belief story innovators rarely create brand new stories; rather, they assemble existing components into new configurations (Bainbridge 1997: 259). Again, group cultures arise within and, in turn, influence larger cultural systems. Cultural belief stories more or less resemble other belief stories. Theoretically, then, one can trace the histories of cultures by examining the similarities and differences between stories.

      The careful analysis of even one conversation can contribute to a deeper understanding of how belief stories are embodied and mediated (Ideström 2016: 66-67). The enactments of stories are interpretive, they are translations of stories heard and told by the actor based on those heard and told by others. The connections between belief stories are unending and link all human beings together.

      In writing about the Adventist movement, as an example, William Bainbridge suggests that for spirit compensators to work, both (or more) of the parties witnessing the spirit must accept the belief in the spirit (Bainbridge 1997: 104-05). For people to accept that spirits are active in their world they have to buy into the story that they exist. These stories, of course, come from others in one’s community successfully convincing one that they believe that spirits are active. If we believe it to be real, it is real in its consequences; if we believe it to be real we act as if it is real. Reality is created through the interactional enactment of belief stories.

      To understand belief stories one must understand the cultural historical context in which they originate. Barrett writes that Rastafarian culture is indigenous to Jamaica (Barrett 1997:  viii). Rastafarianism must be understood as a continuation of Ethiopianism within Jamaican culture, which has existed since at least the eighteenth century (Barrett 1997: 68).

      Bainbridge shows how “The culture of The Family is American secular culture reborn” (Bainbridge 1997: 239-40). They are part and parcel of the countercultural movement that occurred throughout the United States in the late-60s. Therefore, the principles presented in The Family belief stories resonate and complement those told in the wider youth movement of that generation.

Religious Belief Must be Absolute

      The idea of belief implies a lack of certainty (Wuthnow 2012: 175). If one knows something for sure, as a fact, one does not say that one “believes” in it, one says “it is.” The very existence of belief stories, then, suggests an underlying uncertainty about identity and belief. People either do not know who they are or they are unconvinced about the identities of others. Either way, people are constantly engaged in the interactional maintenance of belief stories.

      The service program for June 26, 2016, at The Lutheran Church (LC) aligned well with Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will. The focus of the sermon was “All In.” Through Bible and Gospel passages it urged congregants to be full Christians. Do not get into this in a half-ass way. Jesus did not. His apostles did not, and if they did, He told them to get in line or get out. So, too, Luther (1957) criticizes Erasmus for being half-ass. He tells Erasmus that if he is not a full Christian, then they do not need to have the debate they are having. If he is a Christian, however, he needs to be all in. He needs to believe it all – Jesus as God’s son, paying the price for our sins on the cross, coming back to life as our justification – or get out.

      Pastor Gordon of LC used an argument to this affect during our Morning Lounge conversation on June 17, and I have heard others make this argument as well. He said that his entire faith rests on the actions of Jesus. Either Jesus was crazy, or He was a swindler, or He was the real deal. If He was either of the first two then Christianity is a sham. If he is the third then Christianity is the real deal. Pastor Gordon chooses the third.

      In a Bible Study Pastor Gordon made a similar statement. He said there are two religions in the world. The first is the Jesus story, including the idea that God has freely given us His grace for no reason other than He loves us and that there is nothing we can do to earn it, it is a gift. Then there are all the other religions. The latter are religions created by man. The former, true religion, is created by God.

      People invest themselves in cultural practices. Their senses of self are based on ideas of reality they see as correct. If reality is correct, then their self is correct because they have a place in such a correct reality. But if reality is not correct then their sense of self is incorrect.

      Pastor Gordon of LC speaks of being all in or not at all. One day at Morning Refreshments we talked of people who call themselves Catholics but do not go to church or participate in any church activities. He says these folks are a farce. Why would you call yourself a Catholic if you do not behave like one. It does not make sense.

      Pastor Gordon’s statement about non-practicing self-labeled Catholics is a statement about his self. He is suggesting that he is all in. His sense of himself as a Christian Lutheran is consistent with his perception of reality of Christianity. He is a Christian because he believes in Christianity wholeheartedly. His perceptions of his Christian behaviors fit with his perceptions of what a Christian is and does.

      Conversely, people who call themselves Catholics but do not participate in Catholic activities are a “farce,” they are fake. Their perceptions of themselves as Catholics do not fit Pastor Gordon’s perceptions of reality of what a real Catholic (Christian) is and does. He is defining what he is by defining what they are not. His perception of a correct reality/correct self is consistent, theirs are not.

      Nouman Ali Khan teaches a story from the Quran about the Prophet Muhammad and how Allah chose to make one of the surahs known to him. He went to a cave and encountered an angel. The angel asked him to read. The Prophet said he could not. The angel gave Muhammad a bear hug and asked again, to which the Prophet said, again, “no.” This happened three times. When the angel told the story to Muhammad he remembered everything, as he did with all the surahs.

Muhammad then went back to his wife and asked her if he was crazy. “Am I really speaking to angels and Allah, or am I crazy? I do not know what to believe.” His wife told him he is not crazy. In fact, Allah informed Muhammad that the stories are true and that he is not crazy at the beginning of their correspondences.

In this story, the Prophet is questioning his own beliefs. He wants to believe the commands of Allah, but normal people do not have such beliefs. Usually, if someone makes claims like those of Muhammad, they are called crazy by others. Muhammad had to convince himself (with his wife’s help) that his beliefs were true and then he had to convince others.

Conclusion

      Belief stories are behaviors. Therefore, reality is a behavior. People act so as to convince themselves and others of some version of reality and, of course, those with whom we interact are doing the same. In this chapter I detailed these basic tenets of belief stories using examples from the realm of religion to make my point. The rest of the book will focus on categorical types of religious belief stories.

 

Chapter 6

Distinctions: Us versus Them, One True Religion, Believers and Non-Believers 

      The religious communities I observed struggle with how to distinguish themselves from other communities (Beck 2010: 59). On the one hand each community occurs in a specific block of time and chunk of space and thus, de facto, are unique from others. Each community has its own belief stories, more or less, that depend on whether the community is independent or whether they are members of larger denominations. The former create their own stories and subsequent identities, the latter have belief stories and identities handed down from higher-ups in their bureaucracies.

      The distinction between we and them, in-group and outsiders, is established in and through conflict (Coser 1956: 35). Public, private, and everyday discussions concerning how we are right and they are wrong are the backbone of belief stories. “We are not like Mormons,” a Christian story might read, “because we know the Bible is the final Word of God. We are not like Catholics because we know there is no purgatory.”

      Belief stories are full of us versus them components. In this chapter I detail, mainly through empirical example, how folks make distinctions between their own religious realities and those of others. I will first give examples from my observations from a variety of places, including but not limited to, religious television and radio shows. I will describe the “one true religion” story that most religious folk adhere to, discuss the omnipresent story about believers and non-believers, and then provide a description of “distinction stories.” Finally, I provide a series of vignettes that highlight religious leaders’ views on religious realities and distinctions.

One True Religion

      The Christian Satellite Network has a show late on weekday afternoons where callers ask Christian-themed questions to a couple of experts who help solve whatever problem the caller is having. One day I turned on the station in the middle of the experts’ answer. The gist of the question was “I am born again, but used to be Catholic. How do I discuss my Christianity with my Catholic friends? They say they are Christians just like me.” The experts’ answers to this question went something like this: “Catholics are a lot like Christians. We believe in many of the same things. But they have some readings that are not biblical. They do things that are not biblical. Real Christians believe that all the answers are in the Bible. We do not need any other sources.” The experts went on to a more widespread discussion of non-biblical “Christianity.” “It is non-Biblical,” they said, “that a Catholic priest can turn wine into the blood of Christ. It is nowhere in the Bible. It is non-Biblical that Mormons baptize the dead. It is not in the Bible. They are making stuff up!”

Members of all three of the above mentioned groups (Christians, Mormons, Catholics) stake claims on the stories they make up. They have vested interests in promoting their belief stories as “fact” and painting other belief stories as fiction, when, in fact, they are all fiction. The experts on CSN radio have their credibility at stake. Either they are speaking the truth that the Bible is God’s word and all truth is within its pages, or they are making stuff up, which would make them con-men or crazy.

The CSN experts believe what they are saying. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints believe theirs is the “one true religion” and that all others are false. Catholics believe their stories to be the ultimate truth. The telling of belief stories is how people maintain each other’s beliefs and get others to buy into their beliefs at the expense of other stories. They are how distinctions are made.

      The “one true religion” focus of Christianity and Judaism goes back a long time. The Pharisees were a group of Jews in the few centuries before Christ who lived their lives by Jewish Law. Paul, from the New Testament, was originally a Pharisee who lived in the 1st Century BCE. Jesus (according to Matthew and others in the New testament) believed the Pharisees to be wrong. In his view the Pharisees were right to follow the Law, but they did not live according to the self-same Law. They encouraged people to follow them as teachers when, in fact, there is only one teacher and that is God. They encouraged people to see them as fathers and leaders when, in fact, there is only one true Father and Leader and that is God.

      Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints believe that God and Jesus spoke with Joseph Smith and told him that everyone else was wrong and left Joseph golden plates to transcribe the true story of Jesus. Latter-Day Saints, then, believe themselves and their religion to be the one true religion.

      People act based on their beliefs: they believe it to be true so they act as if it is true. Young members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints serve missions around the world because they believe they are spreading the truth. They believe that the Book of Mormon is truer than any other version of the truth. Romans persecuted Christians in the first few centuries CE because they believed them to be atheists. They thought Christians believed in a false God. Jesus went around telling Pagans they were wrong, they needed to believe in this one God because He is the true God.

      Much of the content of the belief stories I observed, especially from Christians, were of a competitive nature. “This is why we are the best.” “This is why we are the one true faith.” “This is why they are false and we are true.” This talk is the result of competition for members. Churches, like other products in capitalist societies, use rhetoric to pull members toward themselves and push them away from others; one true religion being a most common form of such competitive rhetoric.

Believers Versus Non-

      Religious people divide others into the world of believers, for whom humanity is granted, and unbelievers, for whom it is denied (Beck 2010: 61). A perpetual state of conflict exists between these two groups. Religious belief stories are rife with such comparisons. Ulrich Beck suggests Christianity is an intolerant religion, always has been (Beck 2010: 99). They rebuked Greco-Roman polytheism, broke off from Judaism, and rejected Islam. They condemn heretics who, though believing in Jesus, disseminate information that contradicts settled Christian doctrine. There are elements of this intolerance in Christian belief stories and identities. Again with the boundaries: Christian or not. Believe in Jesus Christ or not. There is only one way to get to heaven, all other ways lead to hell.

      Believers have shared experiences like baptism (Beck 2010: 111), which is an important part of the belief story that leads to a recognized Christian identity. A number of Protestant pastors told me about the importance of baptism as a public performance of one’s belief in Christ. Pastor Gordon added that baptism is an act not to be taken lightly. He requires his parishioners to complete a baptism class and show him an understanding of what it means to be baptized before he will perform it for them. Many pastors require something similar to what Pastor Gordon does, at the very least requiring members to publicly profess their belief.

      Stories about heaven tend to contrast it with the undesirable aspects of life on earth (Wuthnow 2012: 184-85). This is true for both Christian and Muslim stories: life here is rough, but by behaving appropriately one can make it to heaven, which is beauty beyond imagination. Christian and Muslim belief stories focus on heaven as a better place than earth as a way of committing people to a way of life that will get them there. Only believers get into heaven (Wuthnow 2012: 200). Buying into, expressing, and enacting belief stories are how one gets to a place better than this, but only if one believes. How do we know if one believes? How does one know oneself if one believes? By acting as if one does. No one can know what another actually believes, but they can see how others act.

Distinction Stories

      A significant aspect of belief story realities is the identification of distinctions between one’s own correct reality and others’ incorrect realities. A few stories from Pastor Gordon can help with this. In one Sunday service Pastor Gordon made a special point to emphasize how God has revealed His entire plan, cleared up the entire mystery, in the Bible. The whole story is there. Nothing else needs to be told. He then said that “here in Utah” some people do not get that (the “here in Utah” being a thinly veiled reference to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). That LDS theology suggests the story is not finished, that they have “another testament of Jesus Christ” is not Christian, was Pastor Gordon’s message.

      Another story comes from Morning Refreshments with Pastor Gordon. I asked him if he knows much about Rastafarianism, he said he does not. I told him what I know, including the bit about how they believe that God comes to Earth in different forms – Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Halie Salasie. Pastor Gordon stopped me and said, “Then they are not Christian.” I agreed and said that Barrett (1997) agreed, too. Correct Christianity, according to Pastor Gordon, is tightly defined by the accounts of the Bible; nothing more, nothing less.

      A final Pastor Gordon distinction story starts with a paper written by a student of mine. The paper was an ethnographic sociological description of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints based on her own fieldwork. In one section she writes about how members of the church pay attention to who is and is not taking communion in a particular meeting. LDS members who perceive of themselves as being unworthy, having engaged in sinful activities, will refrain from taking communion. The student wrote that, in high school at least, those who did not take communion the previous Sunday are often shunned at school. LDS members who see themselves as being worthy do not want to associate with those who are not.

      I told this story to Pastor Gordon and he suggested this is indicative of a religion of people, not of God. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are too concerned with each others’ Earthly activities and not concerned enough about God. He makes the same argument when we talk about Born Again Stories (I discuss these in an upcoming chapter). He says that to put too much emphasis on these stories, on one’s conversion experience, is to put too much emphasis on oneself and not enough on God and His Word.

      The above stories are examples of the construction of distinction. Religious folk emphasize how their theology, their correct reality, is different from others’ theologies, others’ (in)correct realities.

 

      A television show called The ExMormon Files on Dish Network channel 20 aired an episode with a host, a “Bishop," and a guest, an ex-Mormon. The Bishop, also an ex-Mormon, and the guest now have Christian ministries of their own. The Bishop was asking the ex- how he came to leave the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The guest said how at some point he decided to truly investigate the Church, as members are asked to do. First, he says, they ask you to investigate it to see if it is really the one true church. But then they ask members not to investigate outside of Church doctrine. The guest saw this as a contradiction; investigate and question, but only within the bounds of Church doctrine.

      The guest had some things to say that help to understand his distinction between Mormons and Christians. First he told of how Mormons believe in stages of progression. Everybody, Mormons believe, go through these stages. We start as spirits (created by Heavenly Father and Mother), move into a mortal body and life, move into a post-mortal body and life and, eventually (hopefully), move into an exalted God life. Important is that even Jesus and God the Father went through this progression. Those Mormons who follow celestial law the closest get to become Gods themselves.

      Based on the guest’s understanding of LDS doctrine, God and Jesus started out as just regular guys like you and me. Jesus is our big brother, God is our father. Christians, on the other hand, believe that Jesus is God and that God is the creator of everything in eternity. God, for Christians, is an entity separate from humanity. God, for Mormons, is Father. Jesus is brother.

      The guest told a story about how, as a Mormon, Jesus was a great guy and he hoped to meet him someday and shake his hand. As a Christian he expects, if he ever does meet Jesus, he will fall flat on his face because, since Jesus is God, he will not be able to handle the immensity of it all. “I knew a lot about Jesus,” the guest said, “as a Mormon, but I did not know Jesus.” He continued that, for Christians, the relationship is between the individual and God. For Mormons it is a relationship with the Church. This leads to the distinction between a church of salvation (Christianity) and a church of works (Mormons). Mormons progress through the stages based on their adherence to doctrine. Christians gain salvation through faith. “Once saved, always saved,” said the guest.

      “Why do good works, then,” Mormons ask, “if you’re saved one way or another?” “Because,” answers the guest, “as a Christian I am a vessel of God. I am doing what God wants me to. And God is good. To be a Christian is to be good (though, as humans, we do sin).” Mormons, on the other hand, do good works to please others in the Church, and God, in order to move through the progressions.

      Both the Bishop and the guest have started ministries. The guest’s is a Christian ministry aimed at questioning ex-Mormons; some high percentage (80%) of ex-Mormons, guest claims, leave religion altogether when leaving the Church. He wants to introduce them to Christ. He sees an untapped market for Jesus and he is going for it.

 

      Pastor Gordon and I had a discussion about the distinctions between the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS), the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Church (WELS, of which LC is affiliated), and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). The LCMS and WELS used to be joined, but they split in the 1960s because the WELS felt the LCMS was becoming too liberal in their interpretations of the Bible and, especially, of Jesus Christ. The ELCA is a combination of two other Lutheran denominations (the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America). This church, in Pastor Gordon’s mind, is too liberal in their understanding of the Bible and Christ. The ELCA is close to denying that Jesus was the son of God or that he rose from the dead or that God even exists. Without these things, argues Pastor Gordon, why even have a religion? It makes no sense to call yourselves Christians if you do not believe these things.

      Another time Pastor Gordon made a distinction between what he believes and what he believes Calvinists believe. He has a list in the back of his Bible, written in orange, of these distinctions. He turned to the list and began to read. One point he made was that Calvinists believe in predetermination, that God determines who will go to heaven and who will go to hell before we are born. He sees this as un-Biblical and un-Christian. “It is nowhere in the Bible,” is something Pastor Gordon says about this. If it is un-Biblical and un-Christian then you are not believing or practicing the truth.

      “Well,” says I, “I am guessing a Calvinist would point me to something in Scripture to support their belief in predestination.”

      “They would point to Esau and Jacob,” was Pastor Gordon’s answer, “where it states that God loved Jacob and hated Esau. That is it. They take that one small bit and build their theology upon it. They do not look at it in the context of the entire Bible.”

      Pastor Gordon is sure that his way of interpreting the Bible is not interpretation at all, it is the way the Bible is meant to be understood, by God. But others feel the same way. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints surely believe that the Book of Mormon is truly another testament of Jesus Christ. Christian Scientists surely believe that Mary Baker Eddy’s writings are the truth. This latter group puts so much faith in Eddy’s writing that they engage in no extemporaneous lectures or sermons during their services; just Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures and the gospels. That is it.

      A criticism of religion, especially by those who, in Wuthnow’s (2012) language, are part of “rational” culture in the United States, is the Bible is nothing more than a piece of literature and, as such, can be interpreted in countless ways. Because of this one can never pin down a Biblical scholar because the scholar needs no evidence of their perceived truth other than their interpretation of the Bible. Pastor Gordon needs to go no further than his trusty, well-worn Bible, to back up his arguments. He can argue that others are misinterpreting the Bible and offer nothing more than his own interpretations of the readings to back himself up.

 

      Pastor Gordon, Mike, and I sat/stood at the bar and chatted one day during Morning Refreshments at LC. Mike is Pastor Gordon’s acquaintance. They say they met at the Dickens Festival in St. George. Mike, as evidenced in a number of ways during our ensuing conversation, is a religious man, a Christian. He attends Desert Ridge Baptist Church (DRBC). Mike likes Pastor Gordon but says he cannot come to The Lutheran Church (LC) because he is committed to another.

      Using Jim (a Wednesday night Bible Study attendee at LC, but full-time attendee at DRBC) and Mike as examples, some people commit themselves to a particular church and stick with it, even if they find another they like more. Furthermore, some people seem to continuously check out other churches to see what is going on. Both Jim and Mike somehow found Pastor Gordon and LC and like it, but they stay with DRBC, both suggesting that leaving that church is not easy.

      Mike said that when he moved to St. George from Upstate New York he “interviewed” pastors to decide on a church. He would literally set up an appointment to meet with them, “pretend I knew nothing, and see what they told me. Some of them should not be pastors because they do not know what they are talking about.” He settled first on The Bible Church (TBC).

I did not catch why Mike chose TBC. What I did catch was he left it because “Pastor Ed is a shallow preacher.” Mike went on to outline what he means by “shallow.” “I could make an outline right now for Pastor Ed’s sermon next Sunday and I would be almost spot on. He starts with a personal story in which he is the hero. He then gives a sermon that really skips over the text. And he always ends with an alter call.”

 Mike went on to say how churches should be for those who are already Christian, they should not be places for recruiting members. By ending every service with an alter call Pastor Ed seems to be emphasizing recruiting new members over preaching to the converted. It is shallow, claims Mike, so he left for DRBC, though I did not catch why this church pulled him in, I only know how TBC pushed him away.

We talked about The Baptist Church (BC) in Washington. Mike said he interviewed Pastor Morty at BC and could tell “right away what he was about.” What he is about, says Mike, is a traditional form of Baptist theology that ends up being “separatist.” They are not interested in interacting with the community. This aligns with my interview with Pastor Morty. He said he is not interested in expanding his church, not at the risk of watering down the Word.

We also talked about The Community Church (CC), what both Pastor Gordon and Mike know as the Oasis. Specifically, we talked about their full band and worship service. Mike said that CC is modern and “too loud.” “If you cannot play it acoustic, then you should not play it electric,” is what Mike said. I said that DRBC has a full band and he corrected me. They have keyboards, a guitar, three singers, sometimes a bass. No drums. “And I complain to the pastor that it is too loud!” said Mike.

The previous paragraphs are examples of belief stories that make distinctions between one denomination and another. The people are telling me what they believe to be true understandings of the Bible, pastors, and churches that present themselves as Christian. They highlight how they came to choose one of these churches over another; they act based on their believed distinction stories.

Pastors’ Stories

      A great source of data concerning the perceived truth of one religion or denomination over another comes from the mouths of pastors and other religious leaders. These are folks who have dedicated their lives to teaching particular truths by telling particular belief stories. What follows are excerpts from my interviews with various religious leaders, highlighting their realities and how they came to embrace them.

Father Tom

      In the next three passages, Father Tom of The Episcopal Church explains what he feels are the basic truths of the Episcopal reality. First he tells of the kinds of people who are drawn to this church. Next, he discusses Emerging Christianity as an ideal type of Christian reality. Finally, he places the Episcopalian religious reality within the larger realities of other Christian churches.

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FT:   Had a great experience in a place called Stonington, Connecticut, on the shore. It was the first time I felt really that we kind of matched in terms of interests. Bright New Englanders. Did not take religion too seriously. They love the arts and community and they weren’t holier than thou and closed evangelical. Really kind of a meeting of the minds and soul.

      ---

Ft:   So, Emerging Christianity, which is kind of in-between Christianities, is actually tapping into those things. Forming communities beyond institutional church, no real creeds, they want sacramental worship, symbolic, experiential, mystery, scripture, and real daily prayer, and involvement in the world. That is called. . .It is actually very Christian. . .Emerging Christianity has rediscovered that. So Brian McLaren, Diane Butler-Bass. I was not so sure about them ten years ago. I thought, “Evangelical.” It is fabulous. Rediscovering the first three centuries of the faith when Christians were not known as Christians, they were called “people of the way.” The way of Jesus. He called disciples, sent them out themselves, the seventy, to go and teach, heal, cast out demons, bring peace. Whenever you do that you have experienced Kingdom. Intentional spiritual practices of study, prayer, teaching, healing, ministry, not proselytizing, ministry – the poor, the homeless – that will lead to a spiritual experience, a transformation. I have experienced that myself.

      ---

FT:   Catholics are known for more institution, authority, dogma, doctrine. Protestants are known for their emphasis on scripture, preaching, proclaiming the Word. Anglicans, we are known, our three areas of authority in the Episcopal Church are scripture, and that is in the Prayer Book, tradition, reason, there is a fourth area of authority we call experience. Scripture, that is where we get our authority. The Catholics are known for dogma, doctrine, mass, institutional, church. Protestants known for scripture, teaching and proclaiming the news, not a lot of social justice. Methodists, social justice. Episcopalians, our authority is scripture which comes from the Protestant wing; tradition, Catholic; reason, 17th/18th Century England/France, the enlightenment, we love ideas; experience is a nod to the individual experience of God which is the evangelical side. Evangelicals felt you had to have that personal, powerful, emotional, experience, which Catholics and Anglicans do not necessarily trust because that is all very individualistic.

Pastor Paul

      Pastor Paul of The Four Square Church first explains the foundational reality of his church, then distinguishes Four Square from other, “dog and pony show” Pentecostal Churches, and finally gives examples of behaviors at a non-truthful Pentecostal Church and a truthful one. Pastor Paul’s stories highlight the religious reality he embraces and wishes to teach.

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PP:   So, great world-wide outreach, great disaster relief, feeding the hungry, based on a simple principle that God’s Word is the inspired word of God that we teach. Keeping all things in balance without extremes of fanaticism. God said what He meant, meant what He said. Our job is simply to find out what those words meant in context. Keep the Word of God in balance, not lifting any verse over any other. Four Square stands for the fourfold ministry of Jesus Christ: He is our Savior, our Healer, the Baptizer with the Holy Spirit, and the soon coming King.

      ---

PP:   We are under the large umbrella of Pentecostal. We’d be on the mild end of that spectrum. Pentecostal has a bit of a bad rap because of some of the extremist movements within the Pentecostal umbrella. But, yes, we are within the true definition-sense, part of that Pentecostal umbrella. We are on the mild side of it.

PP:   Look. Rolling on the floor, making animal sounds, is nowhere in the Bible. It is just not Biblical, it is not scriptural. If there is a Pentecostal Church that is having chaos, I call that a dog and pony show, not a move of the Holy Spirit.

      ---

PP:   We had a lady who used to bring a little banner and wave it and dance. That is absolutely Biblical. Worship, both in song and word, can be a very spiritually moving experience. We can be very moved in the experience. I have prayed over people who, where the Holy Spirit has knocked them down. Unlike some, I have never pushed anyone down for affect. I actually had someone pray over me who tried to give me a little help going down and that told me something intuitive about his ministry. He had crossed a line. I have laid hands and prayed over somebody and had them just hit the ground. I was overcome by the Holy Spirit at that Bible Study when I first got saved and I have certainly been with people in service that have been clearly moved by the Holy Spirit.

Pastor George

      In the first excerpt that follows, Pastor George explains how the Assemblies of God believes many of the things that other mainstream Christian religions do, then suggests there are some distinctions due to their Pentecostal beliefs. He then makes a common Christian assertion, in the second excerpt, about true faith being between an individual and God, not something that resides within a manmade religion.

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PG:   In the Assemblies of God we have a Statement of Belief, sixteen basic doctrines, which are very typical for the Baptists, Methodists, so forth. The Pentecostal aspect is a little different from the Baptist and Methodist.

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PG:   There are a lot of religions out there, things that man has created, having the appearance of Godliness. But our focus is not on a religion, an organization, or anything. It is on that intimate relationship with God. Yes, we call ourselves a fellowship more than a denomination or more than an organization.

Pastor Morty

      Pastor Morty of The Baptist Church (BC) distinguishes his independent Baptist Church from other Christian churches in the area. In the first quote he states that when he was building his church he only wanted money donated from other Baptist churches because they are the true church. In the second quote he emphasizes the traditional nature of BC then, in the next quote, he tells of how his church, different from others, teaches the Bible literally. Finally, in the last passage, Pastor Morty makes that point that church is for already saved Christians, it is not a place to attract new ones.

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PM:   It is all Baptist Churches, we weren’t interested in money from other denominations that had different beliefs.

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PM:   We take a lot of pride in not changing. You’ll notice we sing what are referred to as the old hymns of the faith. We are not into contemporary Christian music, worship bands, the worship groups they have up front, that sort of thing. Obviously we do not do that, you’ve seen that. We are still old fashion. We’ve never been very big, because the current trend is contemporary rock music. We are just not into that.

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PM:   Here we emphasize the Bible and teach the Bible because the Bible does speak of itself as being the means by which a person can become more like Christ. That is, the earthly goal is to be like Him as we go about our business in whatever job or occupation you may have. That is why we put so much emphasis on the Bible, because here we believe it is not just God’s word, it is a standard of living and also our only means of knowing how to please Him. That is the difference. There is a lot of religions that do not have anything to do with Christ, or they are misguided in their views of Christ cuz they do not really believe the Bible. And may I say also one of the differences here and a lot of other denominations, is that we believe the Bible is to be understood literally, interpreted literally. Most of the other denominations do not do that. I have been taught my whole life to interpret it in a literal view. That is how we read it.

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PM:   We do not have anything here to attract people other than the Word of God itself. People are not going to come here just to sing hymns. The people that come here love the Word of God. We are not interested in attracting people through entertainment or the circus or whatever you want to call it that a lot of churches seem to be doing to get people to come. The Bible teaches us that the Gospel itself is foolish to those who do not know Christ. It says that definitely to the Corinthians. It basically says that the unsaved mind cannot understand the things of God. The whole purpose of church, then, is primarily for believers. A lot of these churches probably would not agree with that. That is why they do what they can to get people to come. We are not interested in advertising in the sense of selling ourselves. If we can get people to commit to Christ out and about where we live and work then they will come in and they will be able to find the spiritual sustenance to grow and be fruitful and the whole bit. We are not trying to attract unsaved people. If they come in on their own, even like yourself, that is great. God bless you. But it is not like we are reaching out and trying to program our whole church to attract them because that is not even Biblical.

      Pastor Ed

            Pastor Ed, of The Bible Church (TBC), has a different take on modernization and attracting members. In the following quotes he first explains there are some Baptist Churches in town that TBC sees eye-to-eye with, but others with whom they do not. Next he describes how adding modern worship technology like viewing screens and a full worship band created more involvement and a better experience for members of the church.

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PE:   There are some Baptist Churches here in town that, if you were to compare our Doctrinal Statements, they are identical. We look at them as brothers and sisters in Christ and we have a good relationship with them. There are some churches that there are significant doctrinal differences in beliefs that we do not work together with. We do not fight them, but we know that we do not see eye-to-eye as far as what we believe. They are not someone that we necessarily endorse or try to do things with.

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PE:   There are just good hymn books out there that Baptist Churches use, different Christian Churches use them. Sometimes you change because you see something better. Our song service, to me, was getting very liturgical, very staid. I visited a church and they were using the screen, which got people’s heads up out of the books, looking up toward the front. They did not have a full band, but they had people up there singing different parts and they did have some guitars and drums and things. We started trying a few different things and our singing improved one-thousand percent and people were much more involved. Sometimes you just see, “This works better for us.” I do not have a problem with anybody still using piano and organ and a song leader if that is what they feel is best for them. We try to include one or two hymns because we do not want people to lose touch with the hymns because they have a powerful message to them but a lot of the new songs have a powerful message to them.

Pastor Scott

      The Community Church’s (CC) Pastor Scott makes a distinction between charismatic churches that have a lot of emotion and ecstatic behavior in their services, and his, a non-charismatic church, which is geared toward the mind. The former are phony, CC is not. In the second quote he outlines CC’s belief, their truth. It is clear, concise, and follows the Gospel. Finally, Pastor Scott explains why CC dropped “Baptist” from their name; people simply would not come if they thought it was a “hellfire and brimstone” Baptist church.

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PS:   The charismatic churches are not the predominant side of the church. A lot of the truths we hold to, they would hold to everything with the exception of, they would believe that certain people can still act as prophets and perform miracles and heal people. Not that God does not do healing, but when you see faith healers. . . a lot of them are charlatans, they are just getting rich. It is all phony, bogus. Those faith healers on TV have been proven false. I never went to any types of churches like that.

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PS:   We believe in the Gospel. We are born into this world separated from God and there is nothing humanly possible that we can do to fix it. It is a doctrine we call “Total depravity,” every single human is totally depraved. In every sphere, in every area of our existence – mind, body, soul, and spirit – we are less than perfect and we fall short of God’s glory.

 

      So we would say Adam was our Federal Head of the human race and he failed. But Christ came as the second Adam, he came and did what Adam failed to do. He perfectly obeyed God. Not just the one commandment of “do not eat the fruit from this tree,” but all of the commandments. He satisfied the Father’s requirements for justice on the cross when he died. So when a person puts their trust in Jesus Christ as the “one who lived the life they can now live and then died the death they deserved to die to pay for their sins,” that is faith. And by putting your trust in God and making a commitment to follow Jesus Christ, God eternally forgives you of all your sins, He basically takes what Jesus paid, you know, He paid the penalty, and God takes that payment and applies it to your account. That is what we believe.

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PS:   We started out as DS Baptist Church, cuz I started with what I knew. The Baptists are really good theologically, we believe probably all the same things. But I really felt like God was not offended by music that is contemporary, whereas they only did hymns. Their music was fifty to one-hundred years old. So we wanted to go a different direction. Once we got the church up and running we broke from the mission board and we went completely independent. We dropped the name “Baptist” because people actually would not come to this church because of the name Baptist.

Reverend Joan

      Finally, Reverend Joan of The Religious Science Institute (RSI), discusses the reactions others, mostly members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, have when coming to understand the RSI reality. In her eyes they experience the joy of a more open and accepting god and truth than what they are used to.

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RJ:   We are an open, loving, inclusive community that supports thinking creatively and living a deeply spiritual life. We invite them in and I have found that sometimes they cannot bear to be told they are wonderful and special. That is what we tell them, “You’re unique.” I have had even men walk away crying, “I cannot do this.”

M:    As opposed to having a god that puts judgment. . .

RJ:   Yes. That I need to be punished. That was my own search when I found that the god that I was praying to was within me. What a change that made in my life. I was praying to something that I couldn’t find.

Conclusion

      A key component in the telling of belief stories is the ability to make distinctions between one reality and another; religious stories are no exception. Most religious story tellers make the claim that theirs is the one true religion and make distinctions between believers of their told realities and non-.  The stories from religious leaders presented in this chapter serve to solidify this idea: story tellers claim reality truths through their stories while disavowing the realities of the stories of others.

 

Chapter 7

Being Religious, Acting Religious: The Connection between Belief and Behavior

Why do people act? This is a core sociological question. The answer is, people act based on what they believe. They act based on which belief stories they accept and which they reject. In this chapter I detail the connection between beliefs and actions and the roles belief stories have in maintaining this connection.

Religious Need and Fulfillment

      Georg Simmel (1997) defines “religiosity” as a state of being within an individual, like being athletic or artistic. Some people are more religious than others and they cannot help it. To ask a religious person to stop being religious would be like asking a runner to stop running or an artist to stop painting. The first step toward being religious is that religiousness must be individually and culturally recognized. No one knows it is possible to be religious unless there is a cultural label, a word, pointing it out. People convince each other that “being religious” exists and that some people are more “religious” than others. Once the label is created people point out to self and others that some people are religious and others are not; so-and-so is religious but so-and-so is not.

      Once a religious label is constructed and accepted some people will feel that they, themselves, are religious. They will internalize the idea they are religious; religious becomes a quality of their being. People identify others as religious or not by the way they act. Religious people must act as if they are religious or no one will think they are, and vice versa. Non-religious people must avoid acting as if they are religious otherwise others might think they are.

      Simmel (1997) further makes an “analytic separation into need and fulfillment” (p. 11) when discussing spirituality. Those who internalize the idea that they are religious develop a need to be religious because even they do not know they are unless they act as if they are. People only learn they are religious (or anything else, for that matter) by acting according to cultural labels. Those who are labeled (especially by self, but by others, as well) as religious develop a need to act religious so they and others can accurately apply the religious label to them.

      Furthermore, cultures provide ways for the religiously labeled to fulfill the action requirements of being so. There are, in Mertonian (1957) terms, appropriate means for attaining one’s needs within a culture. One obvious way religious fulfillment occurs is through participation in recognized religious services. Going to church every Sunday (or some semblance of) shows to others that one is of some sort of religious nature. Knowing hymns at church by heart shows to others and self that one is of some type of religious nature. Having a well-worn Bible serves the same purpose.

      As an example of religious need and fulfillment, American women newly converted to Islam can produce an ease of wearing headscarves by, well, repeatedly wearing them (Rao 2015: 421-22). These women create a moral habitus by embodying the faith. By enacting the belief story of being Muslim by wearing a headscarf, these women come to accept themselves as embodying the stories and, thusly, by providing women with the means to wear a scarf, others allow them to fulfill their religious need. The wearing of the headscarf is a belief story enacted by Muslim women and accepted (or not) by those with whom they interact.

Belief Stories are Actions

      Belief stories are actions. They are told and enacted by countless individuals in myriad ways in interactions with one another. Stories are espoused in relation to other people with more or less similarly enacted stories. In other words, the telling of belief stories are actions in and of themselves that confer identities upon presenters. What follows are some examples of active belief stories.

      On page 157 of J.P. Sartre’s The Age of Reason (1947) appears the following line: “Go down on your knees and you will believe. I dare say you are right. I want to believe first.” This is Mathieu talking with Brunet. Brunet is trying to get Mathieu to join the communist party, but Mathieu is not sure he wants to. He knows their ideas are good and he agrees with most of their politics, but he is not sure he can commit himself wholeheartedly to their ideology. Brunet tells him that his indecision is typical. He just needs to join, come to a few meetings, engage in some communist activities, and belief will come. Join first. Act. Then you will believe.

      Sartre’s story touches on the social psychological as well as the communal aspects of belief. Social psychologically, people convince themselves that they hold certain beliefs because they act like people who hold those beliefs. They see others doing so at belief services (religious services). This is akin to Durkheim’s discussion of the importance of ritual in creating cohesion. We do not really know what others believe, but we can see that we are acting like people who we think believe certain things. Since you and I are acting similarly we must believe the same things. We confirm our beliefs by confirming that others act like us. Hence lays the importance, communally, for religious congregations to have regular meetings. They allow people to get together, act in similar ways, and engage in similar rituals. By engaging in similar rituals people affirm and confirm to each other that their beliefs are shared and, thus, real.

      But Mathieu insists on believing before joining rather than joining and then believing. This is the constant battle for evangelical Christians. They spend most of their evangelical activities trying to convince people to believe. “If you will just believe,” they say, “then God will take care of you. But he will not take care of you until you believe.” “Well,” says Mathieu, “I do not see God taking care of anyone, so how can I believe.”

      Elder Kurt talks about the idea of a “church.” In his eyes the people are the church, they are the body of Christ themselves. Churches are not buildings, places, or names. They are people. He sees most people as being fooled by their religions. They think if they go to a building once a week they are religious. No. Being religious is being chosen by Christ and then acting on Christ’s acceptance of you. Being religious is continuous sacrificial action. Not sacrificial in the sense of giving up a goat or your child, but a sacrifice of your time.

      Pastor Morty of The Baptist Church explains the idea of acting like a Christian thusly:

            I think that it’s an attitude that is not maybe a conscious one a lot of times, but it is imbedded. “I am safe, I am going to heaven.” There is a lot of criticism of people that believe we are saved by faith, not by works, because it means you can pretty much say, “Hey, I am saved. I can do whatever I want,” which is directly against the Word of God. Nobody that is saved would believe that at all. But we do have a lot of freedom to work out our salvation in the sense of practicing it. We have a lot of freedom. We do not have a Prophet or a Pope or a President or anybody else telling us “This is what you have to believe and how you live” and all that. We go strictly, like I said, by the Bible.

      Judaism, as another example, is more than a religion, it is a whole way of life concerned with all aspects of living (Gross 1992: 92). Its stories offer laws, rules, and customs that, if believed, bring peace and fulfillment to human beings. To be a Jew is to act out these stories, whatever that might mean to the individual and the community in which they interact.

      Similarly, the study of the Law, as laid down by God, is of primary concern for Muslims (Williams 1962: 92). God made rules and enforced them upon people. To be a Muslim, then, is to follow God’s Rules. The five pillars of Islam – prayer, fasting, almsgiving, pilgrimage, and profession of faith – are the core to the acting out of Muslim identity belief stories (Williams 1962: 95). These are things Muslims do. If you do them, then you are Muslim. If you do not, you are not.

      Muslim law orders men to do good and reject what is reprehensible (Williams 1962: 125). It is a belief story that suggests/demands a way of living that presents an identity. The law is meant to give religious value to every aspect of life (Williams 1962: 132). The law, as a belief story, provides identity consistency for believers across situations. By living the Law, one shows to one’s self and to others that one is, indeed, a Muslim.

Empirical Example: Calvary Chapel

      What follows is copied and pasted from Calvary Chapel St. George’s “What We Believe” webpage (http://www.calvarysg.com/about/what-we-believe/).[14] I present it as an empirical example of how one congregation’s written belief story can be seen as a call to action for its members. I interpret it paragraph-by-paragraph.

Calvary Chapel has been formed as a fellowship of believers in the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Our supreme desire is to know Christ and be conformed to His image by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are not a denominational church, nor are we opposed to denominations as such, only to their over-emphasis of the doctrinal differences that have led to the division of the Body of Christ.

      There is the word “fellowship.” Elder Kurt of The Christian Church uses this term to refer to his congregation. It is a term used intentionally by numerous religious groups that call themselves Christian or non-denominational Christians. This is a fellowship based on a shared (interpersonal) belief in the “Lordship of Jesus Christ.” There is a shared understanding among members of Calvary Chapel that each and every member believes in this Lordship of Jesus Christ. Symbolic interactionally this means that when Calvary members are in each others’ presences they present themselves as believers in the Lordship of Jesus Christ. When they role take, looking at themselves as they think other members look at them, they hope to see someone (themselves) who looks as if they believe in the Lordship of Jesus Christ. If they do not see this, and if they want to be seen like this, they will adjust their behaviors so as to see themselves, through the eyes of others, as someone who believes in the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Members will also be prepared to help other members present themselves in the best possible light as a believer in the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

      “Our supreme desire is to know Christ and be conformed to His image by the power of the Holy Spirit.” If this is their desire then we would expect them to act as if it is. First, through mind action, they will remind themselves and direct themselves to know Christ, whatever that may mean. Elder Kurt talks about this and I have heard similar lines elsewhere, they want to “conform” to His image, they want to be like Christ. In role taking and mind action individual Calvary members present themselves as Christ-like and then imagine how close others and themselves think they are to being Christ-like and then adjust their behaviors to become more Christ-like. They also judge others as to their approximation of Christ-like presentations.

The belief is that members will get to know and conform to Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. These folks feel that God is steering them toward and giving them the power to be like Christ. In everyday behaviors, then, Calvary Chapel congregants keep an eye out for the Holy Spirit to direct them towards being Christ-like. They talk with one another and minister to each other about the Holy Spirit. They discuss what it is like to perceive the Holy Spirit. They give examples, testimony, as to their own interactions and observations of the Holy Spirit. In this way they construct and maintain shared definitions of the situation concerning knowledge of the Holy Spirit.

“We are not a denominational church, nor are we opposed to denominations as such, only to their over-emphasis of the doctrinal differences that have led to the division of the Body of Christ.” As Elder Kurt suggests, churches are people, not buildings, not names like Catholic or Protestant. The following of Christ is the following of the Bible, not of doctrinal laws above and beyond it. Members of Calvary Chapel feel that any doctrinal rules beyond the Bible are false and misleading. In their actions and in the organization of the church they avoid anything above and beyond the Bible. They feel these extra-doctrinal religions have divided the body of Christ; the body being followers. These folks stress to one another that the Bible is the sole authoritative voice of God. The emphasis on being non-denominational is an emphasis on the belief that at its core, grace and salvation are between an individual and God. Organized religion should not muddy this up by creating a bunch of rules for showing one’s faith to others.

We believe that the Bible (commonly called the Old and New Testaments) is the inerrant and authoritative standard for life, faith and practice. (Psalm 119:160, 2 Timothy 3:15-17; 2 Peter 1:20-21, John 17:17)

      Calvary Christians believe that the Bible is the Word. It is an instruction manual for the big and small pictures of life. It is authoritative, the final say in all matters. It tells one how to act in situations. It declares what it means to have faith. Therefore, Calvary Christians actively interpret and refer to the Bible in deciding how to act. Calvary Christians regularly and systematically read the Bible, individually and collectively. The Christian Satellite Network (CSN), the station on which Calvary Chapel St. George advertises, has regular programs on how to read the Bible and regular broadcasts of teachers interpreting the Bible for listeners. Believers listen to these teachers for guidance on strategies for reading and interpreting the Bible as a reference source on how to be a faithful Christian and, thus, how to live one’s everyday life. Calvary Christians use their interpretations of the Bible in defining everyday situations and their places within them. They use their interpretations of the Bible in role-taking with others in situations. They use their interpretations of the Bible in mind action within themselves.

We believe that there is one living and true GOD, eternally existing in three persons: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, equal in power and glory. We believe that the Trinity created all, upholds all, and governs all things (Genesis 1:1; Deuteronomy 6:4; Isaiah 44:8 and 48:16; Matthew 28:19-20; John 10:30; Hebrews 1:3).

      Calvary Christians are steadfastly monotheistic. God is alive. God, though one person, has three personages: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These three are all the same God and are equally influential in guiding one’s behavior. Calvary Christians, then, depending on the situation, will invoke one of the three personages of God in explaining their behaviors or, conversely, in understanding the behaviors of others.

We believe in the person of God the Father—an infinite, eternal, personal Spirit—perfect in holiness, wisdom, power, and love. We believe He concerns Himself mercifully in the affairs of men, hears and answers prayer, and saves from sin and death all those who come to Him through faith in Jesus Christ (Deuteronomy 33:27; Psalms 90:2; Psalms 102:27; John 3:16 and 4:24; 1 Timothy 1:17; Titus 1:3).

      Here they refer to God the Father as a “person” and a “Spirit.” God is everything, really. He is infinite, without end. He is eternal, He has always been and will always be. He is personal, He “hears and answers prayers.”

The idea of a personal God helps in understanding the actions of Calvary Christians. They believe and actively engage in prayer. On CSN the speaker asked us if there were parts of the Bible we do not understand. Well, of course there are. He then directed us to pray, right now, wherever we are (in our car, at work, wherever). We can pray silently if we do not want others to hear. We do not have to pray dangerously, if it will cause us to crash. But we should pray about the passage in the Bible that we do not understand. God will answer that prayer. It may be in a few seconds, it may be in a few days or weeks. It might not be a direct answer. We may, for instance, be sitting in a restaurant and overhear a conversation at another table and we will realize that is God’s answer to our earlier prayer. Calvary Christians actively pray to God and believe that He answers us. They actively seek out and identify objects within their situations that are God objects. Their identification of God objects within situations influences their actions.

Calvary Christians role-take with God, an empirically fictional character. This is the beauty of human language. It allows us to imagine others who are not present in immediate situations. Language allows us to imagine others from the past (What would Lincoln think of this?), from the future (What would a twenty-second century woman think of my cell phone?), fictional characters (What would Huckleberry Finn think?). Calvary Christians role-take with God in all His forms. This is also evident in the oft-repeated idea that God knows what we are up to. God is always with us. God sometimes punishes us for our bad behaviors. God accepts us and freely gives us His Grace. To understand the actions of Calvary Christians one must understand they actively and consciously and encouragingly role-take with their perceptions of God, an empirically fictional character.

We believe in the person of Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit. We believe in His virgin birth, sinless life, miracles, teachings, substitutionary atoning death, bodily resurrection, ascension into heaven, perpetual intercession for His people, and personal, visible return to earth (Isaiah 7:14; Micah 5:2; Matthew 1:23; Mark 16:19; Luke 1:34-35; John 1:1-2, 8:58 and 11:25; 1 Corinthians 15:3-4; 1 Timothy 3:16; Hebrews 1:8; 1 John 1:2; Revelation 1:8).

      Jesus is the deal for Calvary Christians as told in the above belief. Everything about Jesus is not human. Jesus was conceived not by two humans, but by one human (Mary) and the Holy Spirit (God). This has never happened, before or after. Jesus was sinless; humans are nothing but sin. Jesus' death on the cross atoned for human sins; his punishment was a substitute for our punishments. He came back from the dead; this does not happen to humans.

      Christian Satellite Network speakers emphasize that we need to avoid Earthly, human things, like sex and drugs and fantasies. We should not love Earthly life. Earthly life is by definition sinful life. We must let Jesus be within us, literally. Calvary Christians belief God/Jesus/Holy Spirit is within us, especially once we are born again. We renounce Earthly life for a life of God. We are vessels, we are not in control. God is in control. God steers us. A true Christian has little to no concern about Earthly pleasures or displeasures. They allow God to guide them at all times. Calvary Christians behave so as to be as they believe someone who is guided by God will behave.

We believe in the person of the Holy Spirit—that He proceeds forth from the Father and Son to convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment; that He does regenerate, sanctify, and empower for ministry all who believe the biblical gospel (Acts 1:8; 2 Corinthians 3:18; John 16:8-11; Romans 8:26 and 15:13,16; Hebrews 9:14).

      The Holy Spirit here is a person, they state so loud and clear. He “proceeds forth from the Father and Son.” His job is to convict the world, convict man. However, He also regenerates, sanctifies, and empowers “all” who believe in the biblical gospel. The Holy Spirit blesses with salvation those who believe in the Bible as God’s word. Even while convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit, one can be born again and be regenerated by the same Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God keeping an eye on us.

We believe the Holy Spirit indwells every believer in Jesus Christ and functions as their abiding helper, teacher, and guide (John 16:13, 14:16-17 and 16:8-11; Romans 8:26). We believe the Baptism with the Holy Spirit is a distinct and separate experience to that of regeneration, occurring either subsequent to, or simultaneous with the experience of the new birth. We believe the baptism with the Holy Spirit is evidenced in the Christian’s life as a dynamic enablement to be a bold and more effective witness for the gospel. We believe that the supreme evidence of the Spirit-filled life is the fruit of the Spirit, and love (Galatians 5:22-23; 1 Corinthians 13). We believe in and advocate the present-day ministry of the Holy Spirit in the church regarding the exercise of all biblical gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to the instructions outlined in 1 Corinthians 12-14.

      We can each be filled with the Holy Spirit. Baptism with the Holy Spirit, say the Calvary Christians according to the above paragraph, is different from being born again. These two things may happen at separate times (baptism happening after being born again), or they may happen simultaneously. Calvary Christians act based on their perceptions that baptism with the Holy Spirit and being born again (regeneration) are separate events.

We believe in the universal church—the living and organic spiritual body of people—of which Christ is the Head and all who are born-again through faith in the biblical gospel are a part (Matt. 16:18, 1 Corinthians 12:12-13; Ephesians 4:15-16).

      The church is, as stated above, a body of people. It is universal. Everyone on Earth is a potential Christian, they need only repent and be born again, proclaiming “faith in the biblical gospel.” That is it. Calvary Christians believe everyone to be a potential Christian. God made everyone and will give grace to anyone.

      To this end Christians are evangelical. They would like nothing better, as they believe Jesus would like nothing better, than to bring everyone to Him; to have everyone on the planet repent and proclaim their faith in the biblical gospel and Jesus Christ. We see this sort of evangelism in many places. I cooked and ate a spaghetti squash from J & J Family Farms. The sticker on the squash proudly proclaimed “John 14:6” with the Jesus fish after it. John 14:6 says the only way to know God is through knowing Jesus. J & J Family Farms is evangelizing on their fruit, hoping they can help an unsaved soul. It is common to see people hold up John signs at sporting events. There was a bit of a national scandal when it was discovered that some rifles U.S. soldiers were using in Afghanistan and Iraq had biblical inscriptions in the barrels or sights (Rhee et al 2010). It was evangelism in the form of taking Jesus to the unsaved Muslims, or whoever was being shot at. Evangelism is an influential object in the definitions of situations of many Christians.

We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ instituted two ordinances for the church: (a) full immersion water baptism of believers in the gospel, and (b) the Lord’s Supper (or communion) (Matthew 28:19; Luke 22:19-20; Acts 2:38; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26).

      Ordinances are religious laws believers feel are passed down from God.[15] The above Calvary Christian paragraph suggests that Jesus instituted two ordinances: (a) full-immersion baptism and (b) communion. Calvary Christians believe that Christians, those who have been saved, are full-immersed baptized and take communion. They act so as to make this happen. They get baptized and take communion. If they do not do these things then they will not be seen by self and others as saved Christians.

We believe in a literal Heaven and a literal Hell. All those who place their faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ will spend eternity in Heaven with the Lord, while those who reject Jesus’ free gift of salvation proclaimed in the gospel will spend eternity separated from God and His people in hell (Psalm 9:17; Matthew 5:3, 5:22, 18:9 and 25:31-34; Mark 9:42-49; Luke 12:5; John 3:18; Hebrews 12:23; 1 Peter 1:4; Revelation 14:10-11 and 20:11-15).

      Calvary Christians believe heaven and hell really and actually exist. One gets to Heaven through faith in Jesus/God/Holy Spirit. One gets to Hell through the rejection of such faith. They believe life is the decision to have or reject faith. They live their lives, as Calvary Christians, doing things that show to themselves and others they place their faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. They will say God is the only one they need present their faiths to. But as a social scientist the only data I have suggest they present their faiths to (A) other people and (B) themselves. The god to whom Calvary Christians form relationships is not empirically falsifiable. To this end Calvary Christians have the perception of God as an object, they construct and maintain this perception through interactions with each other, and they perceive they can interact with Him. They make behavioral decisions based on their perceptions of His place within situations.

      The part about “rejecting Jesus’ free gift” represents a schism within Christianity: Who gets in to Heaven. By writing that those who reject Jesus’ gift they are leaving open the possibility that those who never know about the gift might still get in to Heaven. In The Fall of the Pagans (2011) we are told that a main sticking point among bishops at the Council of Nicea (325 AD) was just this. Some felt that no one without publicly proclaimed faith could get to Heaven, others felt the only way to end up in Hell was, as the Calvary Christians believe, to know about Jesus’ gift and openly reject it. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have a twist on this. They believe one does not advance in one’s eternal progression without proclaimed faith, rejected or not. However, they also believe in baptism of the dead because they believe that anyone willing to obey the requirements of the law of God can be baptized. The baptisms happen in LDS temples with a living Mormon being baptized, immersed, in proxy for the dead person. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints only give dead people the opportunity to be saved. The dead person still must accept Jesus or suffer eternal non-progression.

We believe in the Pre-Tribulation Rapture of the Church through which all believers will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and be taken out of the world prior to the Tribulation that will then come upon the earth (Isaiah 26:20; Matthew 24:29-31; Luke 21:36; Romans 1:18, 5:9; 1 Thessalonians 1:10, 4:13-16 and 5:9; 2 Peter 2:7-9; Revelation 3:10, 5:7-10 and 7:13-14).

      There are three theories of the Rapture: Pre-, Mid-, and Post-. In the Pre-Tribulation theory, true believers left on Earth are transformed into their spiritual selves and lifted into heaven, by God, prior to the final seven years of horror (the Tribulation). In Post-Tribulation, true believing Christians are left on Earth to witness the horrors of the Tribulation. True believers are protected from the horror, but they are witnesses. At the end, true believers are lifted up. The Mid-Tribulation theory is just that, true believers are lifted up midway through the seven years. Calvary Christians, as the above paragraph states, are Pre-Tribulation believers.

      Here, of course, is a place where Christians have trouble explaining themselves to many people. Leaders of some sects will make statements about when the Tribulation will begin, or that it already has begun, and about when the Rapture will occur. Sometimes these leaders claim a specific date for the Rapture and, when it does not happen, they need to explain themselves. When the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints leadership claimed Rapture for September 15, 2000, and it did not happen, they claimed there were infidels among the crowd that had gathered at Centennial Park in Colorado City, Arizona. Because of this, God did not lift them up. Therefore, some more housecleaning in the form of ridding themselves of infidels needs to happen.

We believe the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will be a personal, visible return to earth. Second Coming will coincide with the establishment of His millennial kingdom, the resurrection, final judgment, eternal blessing of the righteous, and eternal condemnation of the wicked (Matthew 16:27; Acts 1:11; Revelation 19:11-16, 20:11-15)

      Calvary Christians live their lives in expectation of the Second Coming of Jesus as a “personal, visible” event. They expect great things to happen when he comes. They must be ready, He may come at any time. Belief in the story leads to observable action which leads to confirmation of an identity as, in this case, a Calvary Christian.

Religious Leaders

      The formal presentation of congregational belief stories is in the hands of religious leaders (pastors, priests, imams). Because congregants see leaders as having expertise and peculiar relationships with god, they listen to their stories. Consequently, parishioners act based on their acceptance of their leaders’ belief stories.

      Priests (pastors) have a combination of three social characteristics (status/roles) (Weber 1978: 425). First, they appear to others to have the ability to influence God and/or be directly influenced by Him. Second, they have a role in the social organization of religious communities; they are managers and producers. Third, they have specialized professional knowledge. These three characteristics, though theoretically distinct, are intertwined in the empirical world. By virtue of having a direct relationship with God (characteristic #1) a priest is seen to have specialized professional knowledge (#3) and, thus, are given the right to lead the congregational organizational team (#2).

      Religious leaders construct and imbed sacred norms into the institutional structure of the faith; they have the ability to inject belief stories into canon. They have the authority to put forth belief stories and have members buy into them. They have more power than rank and file members to influence the belief stories, and thus the actions, of the faithful.

      Religious leaders offer help and understanding to parishioners in difficult times. Bainbridge gives the accounts of Charles W. Colson, special counsel to President Richard M. Nixon, and Jeb Stuart Magruder, deputy director of Nixon’s re-election campaign. Colson and Magruder were both caught up in the investigations into crimes committed by Nixon aides in the Watergate scandal; “both sought help from a high-status person involved in religion” to help them through their crises (Bainbridge 1997: 273). This is not uncommon. Religious folk often seek help from clergy, especially when they are going through troubling times. Clergy provide comforting belief stories and suggestions for action that help people make sense of and deal with life events.

Leaders Teach Stories

      There are many teachers/preachers out there helping us understand either the rational rules of our chosen religion or the stories and lessons of the Bible, or both. At the most rational level, Weber’s rational, congregations have leaders and positions from the bottom to the top of their fellowships. Certain folk have the responsibilities of teaching others. In The Christian Church (TCC), Elder Kurt leads sermons and Bible studies. He spends a lot of time preparing for these lessons in the same ways that teachers prepare for their classes. Elder Kurt’s job is to teach the TCC fellowship what it means to be whoever it is they want to be. Similarly, in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints there are Home Teachers who visit other members, at home, and go over Church doctrine. Missionaries teach gentiles how to become Church members.

      A pastor on the Christian Satellite Network was telling listeners how he reads the Bible. He presented himself as an expert on and teacher of the Bible, this is why he is on the radio in the first place, and a certain segment of Christians and radio sponsors believe him to be an expert, so they listen to him. As an expert in a faith that emphasizes regular Bible reading he is giving us strategies for such reading. We, being his fellowship of students, will take into account what he tells us for, as mentioned, he knows of what he speaks. Here is what he does: You know how most bibles have one attached ribbon that works as a book mark? Well, one can buy ribbon add-ons, which is what Speaker does. He has eight or nine add-ons. He separates the Bible up into sections, each section getting its own ribbon. The sections include: the Torah, Psalms, Proverbs, Prophets, Epistles, Revelation. Since sometime in late high school or early college he has read the Bible every day, first thing in the morning, for one hour. But he does not read it straight from beginning to end. He reads one full chapter from each of the sections he has marked. This way he gets information and understanding from all different parts of the Bible.

      Pastor Ed, as an example of teaching congregants how to act, gave the following account of how he encourages a group to pay forward the gift of a new meeting place:

      One of the things I said to our congregation when we got into the first building was, “We are not in debt, but we really are. Someday if we can do this for another church, we need to do this.” Mountain View Bible Church in La Verkin, a few years later, outgrew their building. We had about forty people coming from the La Verkin/Hurricane area. We felt like it was time to repay that debt. We found land and the church bought it. This church built Mountain View Church. I spoke at their dedication service. I said, “You are not in debt but you are in debt. Someday, if you can do this for another church, you need to do this.”

      Sumerau and Cragun show how leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints organize the social lives of their followers (Sumerau and Cragun 2015: 51). Leaders in the Church demand more commitment from members than leaders in other churches; it is “the LDS Church is a cult” argument that often non-members often bring up in discussions about the church. But let me step back from the moral stand and assume the authors have a point, that the LDS Church is a more cohesive organization than many, if not most, Christian churches. If true, the argument goes, it means that leaders in tight cohesive religions do have an ability to directly influence the social lives of their followers. The belief stories leaders tell are direct messages to followers: dress modestly, do not drink alcohol, no sex before marriage, do not watch ‘R’ rated movies. Church members take leaders’ belief stories to heart, repeat them to each other in everyday situations, and act based on these beliefs.

      Modern individuals are dependent on personal concerns as guides to action (Martí 2015: 8). People must “judge for themselves” if a given belief story is correct. Therefore, religious “leaders” assure their flocks that their individual beliefs are, indeed, correct. “See for yourself,” they say. Leaders, pastors, may even try to constrain how followers see themselves. “You’ve looked around,” they say, “and you know that we are the correct story.” Or, “Pray. You will see that Jesus will take you on the right path and verify your inner-beliefs.” It is through more or less solid rhetorical speech that religious leaders convince people to adopt one belief story or another.

      Pastor Morty tells how Baptist missionaries use rhetorical belief stories to convince others to support their endeavors.

      What we did at that time, we had a slide presentation, now they have PowerPoint and computers and the whole bit, but at that time we showed slides to their whole church, and preached, and sometimes they had missionary conferences for a few days where every night they’d have a service and invite missionaries that they support or some that are looking for support come in and do their thing. After you’ve been there a lot of times they will decide “maybe we want to take this family on for support.”

Missionaries, in Pastor Morty’s tale, use belief stories to convince other believers of a reality that makes them deserving of the congregation’s financial support.

Conclusion

      Leading a religious service is advertising and art rolled-up in one. It is what author Joe Carducci (1990) calls “attack” in a rock and roll band. A band has attack when it performs in such a way as to demand audience attention. Preachers do this too. An important part of religious service belief story performances is the attack quotient of the preacher: do they grab your attention? Do they dare you to ignore them? Do they force you to make a choice with your religious identity? It is through rhetorical practices that religious leaders convince listeners to believe one story over another and, thus, act as if one story is truth while another is not.

      Being religious, then, is an active endeavor. As shown in this chapter, people show themselves and others their religious inclinations through belief story actions, and cultures provide avenues for people to do so. Often times belief stories are told through written professions of faith, as in the case of Calvary Christians, and sometimes they are told by congregational leaders in their services. It is in the internalization of such stories that reality comes to be, and actions are performed.

 

Chapter 8

Literary Belief Stories: Religious Texts Provide Stories for Living

      A characteristic of people in rational societies is that they write things down. Legal systems, for instance, are based on written precedent. Games are played based on rulebooks. Food is prepared with recipes. Behaviors in bureaucratic organizations are controlled using written policies and procedures. The formal beliefs stories of religious folk are written as doctrine in sacred texts such as the Quran, Bible, and Torah. These belief stories guide both how people go about their religious activities and how they behave in everyday life. In this chapter, using primary and literary data, I highlight some ways people understand religious texts as belief stories and how they act based on these interpretations.

      Religious texts are products of their historical and cultural times (Aslan 2005: 71). Generations of believers mold scripture into stories for their own times. Religious people use scriptural stories to guide their own belief stories as instructions for everyday living. Three examples to start will provide a framework for the rest of the chapter. The first is a quote from Pastor Paul, the second is from my field notes about a broadcast on the Christian Satellite Network (CSN), the third is a story from Pastor Ed.

      In the first example, Pastor Paul explains the importance of understanding the Bible as the inspired and truthful Word of God. If it is not, it can be ignored. But if it is, as Pastor Paul believes, the Truth, then its precepts must be followed on a daily basis; one must live one’s life according to what is laid out in the book.

PP:   If God is God and those attributes are all right, then this Bible has to be flawless or worthless. It cannot be any in between. I started to do this research. “I have to find out if I can reconcile Christianity and thinking and an academic approach to things.” My conclusion was unless the first five chapters of the Book of Genesis are truth – that would be creation through the flood – then what good is a dead Jewish carpenter with a missing body gonna do me? The short version is, what is the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ gonna do for me if the Bible is already flawed at the front? That conclusion led me to accept the basic premise that the Bible is the inspired word of God, that every word in it is true and accurate.

      A pastor on the Christian Satellite Network discussed some guiding principles for successful marriages found in the Bible. The pastor is a teacher, the listeners are students who take what he says, read their Bibles, and construct and act out belief stories based on this guidance. The following excerpt is from my field notes.

      A pastor on CSN was talking about marriages and what we should do to maintain a happy marriage and what not to do to avoid a bad marriage. The pastor was pointing to spots in the Gospels where instructions are given to us about how to maintain happy, biblically correct, marriages. The insinuation is that the Bible offers all we need to live a successful life, one that follows Jesus. All the instructions are there, just read and listen.

      In the next example Pastor Ed tells the story of Christ’s last living moment as guidance for the importance of living a faithful life.

PE:   God sent his son, Jesus Christ, to this Earth for the purpose of being our sacrificial lamb. When John the Baptist saw him he said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” But unlike the Old Testament lambs which were a picture of Christ, Christ was a fulfillment of that. When he went to the cross of Calvary, willingly, knowing what he was doing, he paid for the sins of mankind. In full. When He said, “It is finished,” it wasn’t that his life was finished, he’d finished paying for sin and then it says he gave up his spirit. He died on the cross for my sins, for your sins, for the sins of all mankind. He was buried and rose again the third day. He is seated at the right hand of God today. Through the Bible, through His Word, He has made it known to us that we can be saved from the penalty of our sin. What is that penalty? The Bible says the wages of sin is death. It is not just talking about physical death, it is talking about eternal death. If you go to the book of Revelation it talks about the second death where people who did not put their faith and trust in Christ as their Savior, stand before the Great White Throne of Judgment, God demonstrates to them that they did not get saved, and he then gives them their sentence which is the Lake of Fire, eternal separation from God.

Following Pastor Ed’s advice, then, means living a life that follows Biblical instructions. One does not at one’s own expense.

      In the rest of the chapter I provide examples from my field notes and interviews, as well as from literature, of how people use sacred texts in constructions of their own belief stories and actions.

Bible as Literature

      One way to view the Bible is as literature, as Father Tom of the Episcopal Church does below. In his teachings, Father Tom suggests the Bible contains stories of gathering, cohesion, and the beauties of communal living. The beliefs and creeds of the Bible, as he says, are secondary.

FT:   We are reading the Bible as literature, which is how I think it actually should be read. Not for beliefs and creeds. I think that’s secondary. Or even moral codes. It is the stories of people gathering themselves as communities with the idea of being one God and a revelation they experienced, how that’s interpreted over the years and how it is evolved. So for me it really is a story of a people of faith, and as literature. I think it gets reduced when you talk about beliefs and creeds, and a lot of people interpret it that way.

Biblical Prophecy

      Many see current events through the lens of the Bible. Evangelical Christians, especially, see the Bible as prophesying about past, present, and future events. Pastor Morty discusses Biblical prophecy in the following conversation.

PM:   Like I said, we are all in the same boat. There’s been a lot of talk lately about, I don’t know if you’ve heard much about the blood moon prophecies and things like that in recent culture. There’s been books written about the blood moon that’s coming up in September and every time that comes up, about every certain number of years, there’s some big event that happens, usually concerning Israel. There are books written that maybe this is the beginning of the Revelation/Apocalypse and all that. Different things with the Mayan calendar, Omega Code, various things like that that have come out over the years have all been flash in the pans. They come and go and then they’re forgotten. I imagine this current phenomenon will be, too.

            On the other hand, if it did happen, it wouldn’t surprise me, cuz we have seen a lot of Biblical prophecy coming true in my lifetime that were spoken of by Jesus a long time ago. A lot of it is coming to pass in my lifetime. It is a pretty exciting time to live in that sense. The only question is, how long will it keep going? That’s what nobody knows.

            Even in the 1st Century writers of some of the New Testament Epistles spoke of themselves being in the, quote/unquote, last days. I think the last days started when Jesus went back to heaven. I think there is scriptural evidence for that in the New Testament. As we have gone on we have seen things like Israel becoming a nation in 1948, it was huge. That’s a Biblical prophecy come to pass. The fact that they’re still here, they’ve had successful wars in the last fifty/sixty years. God’s hand seems to be upon them. All that is Biblical, Old Testament prophecy coming to pass. It makes a lot of people believe that maybe the current events are significant in that way. I have always been skeptical of what people say and some of what they believe and why they believe it but, like I said, nothing would surprise me if Rapture occurred tomorrow, a lot of us wouldn’t be here anymore, we’d be in heaven.

Those who believe stories such as Pastor Morty’s, Baptists in this case, live in expectation of Jesus’ return to earth. They organize their lives with such expectations: being good Christians and stockpiling supplies, for instance. Pastor Morty’s is a story shared and lived by many.

“The Record of Zeniff”

      A story from the book of Mosiah in the Book of Mormon, “The Record of Zeniff,” is a classic example of a belief story told and acted upon within Christianity generally. It is the story of the movement of a group of Nephites from the land of Zarahemla (around 200 B.C.) to the land of Lehi-Nephi. The story is contained on gold plates in a language of God that only certain seers can read and translate; the plates were translated by Joseph Smith.

      Zeniff leads “his people” from Zarahemla to Lehi-Nephi. The problem is that Lehi-Nephi is controlled by Lamanites. The Lamanites, descendents of the oldest son of Nephi, did not like the Nephites for some things that happened generations earlier. As a result, they would not accept the gospel. The Lamanites told Zeniff that he and his people could have Lehi-Nephi. However, it was a trick, a patient trick. Twenty-two years later the Lamanites rolled in and tried to enslave Zeniff’s people. They failed. A few years later, they tried again and failed. But when Zeniff passed control of the people to Noah, it happened. Noah liked partying and women. He let his guard down and the Lamanites took over.

      This is a parable. Be careful. Evil, Satan, is relentless in his pursuit of our souls. He is patient. He will try all sorts of methods. We must keep our guards up. Loose and sinful behavior is an example of letting our guard down; the devil will take advantage of this. Always be alert and on your best behavior. A lesson can be learned from the story of Zeniff.

      The “Record of Zeniff” continues. A prophet named Abinadi was sent by God to Lehi-Nephi to try and set things straight among the people, for they were following Noah down a path of sin. Abinadi speaks to King Noah and his priests, telling them the story that they and their people need to repent and start living a godly life. He also prophesied that God would come back and walk the Earth in human form going by “Christ.” King Noah did not like this tale. He wanted to kick Abinadi out of Lehi-Nephi but his priests convinced him to have Abinadi killed.

      A priest named Alma believed Abinadi’s story. King Noah sent his guys after Alma. Alma left for the wilderness and wrote down everything that Abinadi said. He gained a following. He camped out by a body of water called Mormon. He ran a fellowship there. People from Lehi-Nephi sneaked out of town to attend. Alma baptized 200+ people in the waters of Mormon. King Noah found out what was going on and sent his thugs to get Alma. Alma and his fellowship fled into the wilderness.

      This story is common throughout the Bible and the Book of Mormon, it is common throughout Christianity even to this day. As a religion becomes rational and institutional, people come along and accuse it of selling out. The rationalized religion is said to be more concerned with its own well-being than with God’s salvation. As the new guys, the ones accusing the rationalized church of selling out, gain followers and reputation, the rationalized church attempts to shut them down.

      The sell out story is so common as to be expected and presented as truth by both rationalized and upstart churches. Elder Kurt speaks of how the mainstream churches are not real and must be avoided by true Christians. Mainstream churches warn their members of new false Christianities that are, more often than not, instruments of the devil.

      A pastor on CSN told a story about how God will sometimes use our enemies against us in order to turn us onto the righteous path. See, Christians sin. Lo, even those who have repented and received God’s grace sin. How does one know when one has sinned? God will resist you. One way He does so is to help out one’s enemies.

      In the book of Mosiah and, more specifically, the “Record of Zennif,” when the Lamanites finally decide to retake Lehi-Nephi during King Noah's reign, it was God sending a message to the Nephites of Lehi-Nephi. Noah was ruling over a people who were partying, sexing, and generally not following the law nor having true faith in God.  The result was that Noah and his priests ran and hid in the wilderness, Noah gets killed by one of his own while in the wilderness, and the remaining Nephites agree to live in bondage to the Lamanites in Lehi-Nephi. Eventually, as the Book of Mosiah goes, the in-bondage Nephites are set free and return to Zarahemla with Zennif (much like Moses leading Jews out of Egypt). God helped the Lamanites conquer the Nephites in order to wake up the latter to their spiritual inequities.

      The message of “The Record of Zeniff” is clear. Try not to sin and expect pushback from God when you do. Christians tell this story in many ways and live it in just as many.

Church Eats Meals Together

      Religious congregations often organize their activities according to what they see as Biblical teachings, one of which is sharing meals. Here Pastor Paul of the Four Square Church discusses how their Sunday lunch service is directly related to the Book of Acts in the Christian Bible.

PP:   Grapevine in Las Vegas has a food pantry. I mentioned Angelus Temple. It is in our DNA. Angelus Temple fed more people than the State of California during the Depression. It is certainly in Four Square’s DNA. It fits within the model of interdenominational worldwide evangelism. It fits in the denomination of meeting the needs of the people. It fits within the Book of Acts model for the Church. The Church in the Book of Acts shared their meals together. If you read the Book of Acts, those first Christians, they met together on the first day of the week, which was Sunday. They had their meals together, they were a family unit. So food is an integral part of Biblical Christianity as it was practiced in the 1st Century, which is what we try to pattern our church after. Remember, Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. It is how he designed this thing. Food is also a great bridge of outreach to be able to have conversation, develop relationships, and connect people with needs that will change their life both spiritual and physical.

Accordingly, the Four Square Church offers a free feast every Sunday immediately following their service. The food for the feast is prepared on site, tables are set, and folks gather and eat together. Congregants of the church mingle with others in the community who are in need of a meal. It is in their (Biblical) DNA, as Pastor Paul states, to both serve the community and have meals together.

Concordances

      Religious folk have to be careful when reading scripture as it is often written in unknown or old fashion languages. In such situations readers resort to concordances, listings of words and phrases found in scripture translated for modern readers. In the following excerpt, Pastor Paul tells how he uses concordances in his religious studies.

PP:   The good news is we live in a computer age. So, yes, I have Greek concordances, Hebrew concordances, I’ve got an entire library of them. I will tell you that I rarely dust those books off any more because it is a lot easier to click on the computer especially since I am bi-vocational and don’t have 40-60 hours a week study time. I’ve got maybe 20 hours a week study time. I save a lot of that time by going to Greek concordances on the computer. With a simple click I can get to the original language, I can get to the context, then I can go and do a search, if I need historical background for what was going on historically. I try to bring some of that out in our teaching on Sunday.

Understanding what is said in the Bible, then, is not straight forward. Concordances and translations are consulted, study is needed, and classes taken to come to decisions about stories told therein.

Dispensationalism

      According to Barbara Rossing (2004), dispensationalists argue God has divided history into distinct periods. They believe “Israel’s prophetic stopwatch has been stopped now for the past two thousand years.” Any minute now God will remove true Christian believers from the earth in Rapture, keeping the church completely separate from Israel. Once the framework of dispensationalist Rapture was accepted as a belief story, other prophetic Scripture was made to fit.

      Dispensationalists, writes Rossing, see the scriptural Book of Revelation as a war story. They crave Armageddon, the main event, even though the actual word Armageddon appears only once in the entire book. Rossing feels we should be outraged that Americans who express the dispensationalist belief story export war around the world in hopes of bringing about end times.

      The belief in Armageddon as told in Revelation, in Rossing’s story, guides international policy in the United States. There is little room for compromise when arguing with dispensationalists; they have a story that is inflexible. The dispensationalist story used to make Revelation “easy and fun” is a fabrication based on a false view of prophecy. Dispensationalist theology is deterministic, history written in advance. As such, it leads to complacency. The dispensationalist theological view provides a false view of God, claiming His existence in cataclysmic events like wars, famines, and natural disasters.

      Rossing’s story is that, though written to increase a sense of urgency, Revelation is not a book written to inspire fear. The dispensationalist chronology, on the other hand, is a fabrication, creating a comprehensive, overarching narrative that inspires fear and appeals to people looking for clear-cut answers.

      There is hope for our world, writes Rossing, in the message of Revelation. John wrote the book as a counter-message to the Roman empire’s theology of Victory. It is the story of a lamb standing up to an oppressive system. John labels God’s people as victors or conquerors from the outset of the book, challenging Rome’s imperial theology. Revelation redefines “conquer” as victory by God’s people using testimony and faith rather than violence. God’s people are peaceful, God is peaceful.

      Revelation’s overall story is one of repentance, writes Rossing. Contrary to the dispensationalist argument, there is no rapture in Revelation where people are snatched up from earth up to heaven. If anything, God is Raptured down to earth.

      The above example highlights the ambiguities that arise as different Christian factions create stories out of the Bible’s words. Rossing’s Lutheran perspective interprets Revelation as a story of peace and accuses other perspectives as seeing it as a story of fear and violent conquest. These interpretations of scripture lead to different life behaviors. For instance, many Evangelical Christian groups preach preparedness on this earth for end times: storing food and water, being prepared to survive on one’s own for awhile, going along with their belief in an apocalyptic future.

Offerings and Tithing

      Financial offerings and tithing are the backbone of most religious congregations; people’s donations are how they stay afloat. Pastor Ed of the Bible Church explains his call for offerings with reference to the Bible.

PE:   The New Testament does not teach tithing. It teaches that each man gives as he feels led of God to give what he feels he should. There’s a couple principles that God gives in his word. One is, instead of waiting to the end of the week after you’ve spent everything on your pay check, you pray about it up front and you set that money aside, then you give it on the first day of the week, which is Sunday.

Differing belief stories lead to differing ways of collecting tithes from congregational members. Many churches pass around a basket from member to member in which they can put checks or cash. Others have a bowl or basket as members walk in to the service. Some keep track of how much each member contributes, others do not. Some pastors have a regular tithing sermon encouraging members to donate, others never bring it up. All religious leaders, however, are able to point to a Biblical passage or two, as Pastor Ed does above, that justifies their tithe collecting strategy.

Pentecost

      In the next quote Father Tom of the Episcopal Church makes a connection between the Pentecost, as described in the Bible, and the everyday lives of everyday people. The Bible, he suggests, is a great source for understanding the human condition.

FT:   So the Pentecost. . .The story is, they were praying, the sound of a rushing wind, tongues of fire, speaking in tongues, however you understand that, but they experienced the same sense of presence. Which may happen in life. Church, out of church. Sailing. Running. Love. Combat. Life and death. Solitude. Transcendent, heightened ecstatic experiences for me are naturally human experiences that often times are too badly reduced to church when they’re naturally human appearing. Sailing. We have all experienced what Maslow called peak experiences.

Father Tom is suggesting that the feelings that overcame the apostles during Pentecost were not miraculous, they were mundanely sublime human experiences. People spend much of their lives chasing such experiences.

Abraham and the Correct Christian Life

      The Quran reminds Muslims that what they are reading or hearing is not new, it is the confirmation of previous scriptures (Aslan  2005: 100). The Muslim belief story, like the Christian one before it, is a continuation, a confirmation, of stories already told – Christian and Judaic.

      Arab origin belief stories suggest the Ka’ba was founded by Adam, the first man (Aslan 2005: 4). Jewish, Christian, and Muslim identity stories begin at the same place. Similarly, Jews and Arabs both consider themselves descendants of Abraham. Again, they share belief origin stories.

      The starting point for Islamic belief and identity is that God has spoken to man through the Quran (Williams 1962: 15). As with Christianity and the Bible, many Muslims believe the Quran is the literal Word of God. Therefore, the story is His, not theirs. Their story is His.

      The Quran reminds people that they are surrounded by God’s handiwork; it expresses astonishment that they can be so blind as not to remember the Creator (Williams 1962: 24). Islamic belief stories warn readers not to forget the Creator, to always remember that God is the maker of all, that your identity is God’s making.

      Abraham is seen as the prototypical Muslim (Williams 1962: 26). He came to the recognition of monotheism through reason. Though Christians and Jews claim him, he is neither. He is simply a man who submitted himself to God: a Muslim. Abraham, in Muslim belief stories, is an ideal type, someone who Muslims should emulate.

      Muhammad, as Prophet, is also an identity model for Muslims (Williams 1962: 84-85). Everything he did after the beginning of the Revelation was preserved by God. Therefore, everything he did was right and to be emulated. A good Muslim will behave as the Prophet. This is not dissimilar to “What Would Jesus Do,” but more intensely focused. What does it mean to be a Muslim? How should a Muslim act? Mimic Muhammad and Abraham. Characters from sacred texts provide insights into how to live in this world.

      The stories of the Quran are based on myth, but this does not mean they are false (Aslan 2005: xxiv). What it means is they are belief stories that convey meaning for people to adopt personal identities and, thus, have guidance in their actions. The Quran consists of religious and social verses. Similarly, then, it consists of religious and social belief stories.

      In The Lutheran Church Bible Study we went over the story of Abraham. Pastor Gordon emphasized Abraham’s fidelity to God. Abraham was a correct Christian. He was all in. He followed God’s commands without question. When God commanded Abraham to take Isaac to Moriah and sacrifice him, Abraham was up early the next morning to start the three-day journey. He got all the way to the point where he had bound Isaac and had a knife in his hand before an angel of God told him to stop.

      The story of Abraham is, for Pastor Gordon, the story of a correct Christian. Correct Christians have built a reality around stories like Abraham’s. Certainly Pastor Gordon does. He often speaks of God being autonomous and in charge. We humans have no power to shape our celestial lives and, indeed, much of what happens here on Earth is way beyond our control.

      How does a correct Christian act in a correct reality as just mentioned? They believe that the Bible contains all we need to know. Pastor Gordon literally points his finger at the Bible and says things like, “If it isn’t in there, then it is up to us,” or “If it is in there then it is a command or a promise.” Today, for instance, we got on the subject of alcohol. “The Bible never says a Christian cannot drink,” said Pastor Gordon. “I don’t know where people get this stuff.”

The idea is that a correct Christian lives in a reality circumscribed by the Bible and acts in ways they feel are consistent with this reality. Pastor Gordon, for instance, likes to have a beer or two once in awhile and sees no biblical reason not to. He sees homosexuality as a sin because he finds it in the Bible. This is his reality and he acts within it.

Speaking in Tongues

      Members of the Pentecostal branch of evangelical Christianity believe that God gifts people with a language that only He can understand. This is called “speaking in tongues.” In the passage that follows, Pastor Paul explains the difference between honest to goodness tongues and the (unbiblical) behaviors I told him I witnessed at another Pentecostal Church.

PP:   There are biblically acceptable uses of tongues in a public setting. Here’s what the Bible says about tongues. The statement of faith is the same for Assemblies of God[16]. I do believe, and I am not talking about the specific Assemblies of God Church you went to, because I have never been to one of their services. I can tell you what I believe about tongues, and what I believe about genuine Pentecostal Christianity as God has shown it to me and as it is practiced in most Four Square Churches. I will tell you that I have been to a Four Square Church where I walked in the door and the Holy Spirit impressed upon me immediately that what I was about to see was not Him. What I saw was a pastor laying on the ground making noises, people falling out on the floor, making animal sounds, chaos in the service. As clear as anything else I have heard from God, He said, “I need you to see this. This is not Me.” I decided I needed to understand the proper place for the Pentecostal movement and what tongues really is.

            The public display of tongues is for the edification of the body and to reach the unbeliever. If someone breaks out into tongues in a proper, healthy Pentecostal Church, it would be one individual who suddenly breaks out in a public display of tongues. At that point, we are mandated that everything stops. We just stop the service. If we are in the middle of a worship set and somebody breaks out in tongues, we are stopping right then and there, and we are waiting for what the Bible says is going to happen next, and that’s the interpretation. At that point someone is going to receive the message of what was just said. In a public display of tongues, the Biblical reference for this is in 1 Corinthians because Paul went into a church where there was chaos and people talking in tongues and he said, “This isn’t God.” If someone speaks in tongues it is gonna be one or two people and it will always be accompanied by an interpretation. It is probably not the person who spoke in tongues that would be the one interpreting it, although that wouldn’t be impossible. Usually there’s somebody in the room who is just shaking in their seat because they know they just got the interpretation and they’re afraid to say it, or they’re mature enough in their Christianity that they’re willing to say it and we’ll receive that interpretation. Then we’ll move on with service and praise God. If no interpretation comes and I sense that somebody was just acting out I will cover that and speak to it and then counsel that person privately later that maybe they were not hearing from God because we did not receive interpretation.

            Look. Rolling on the floor, making animal sounds, is nowhere in the Bible. It is just not Biblical, it is not scriptural. If there is a Pentecostal Church that is having chaos, I call that a dog and pony show, not a move of the Holy Spirit.

The Bible is Flawless

      A common theme in Christian churches is the battle between religious norms and values, and those of the surrounding secular (non-Christian) culture. Stories like the one told by Pastor Ed here abound, about how the Church must stick to God’s rules and avoid falling in with the culture of the world.

PE:   Probably on Wednesday night you picked up that our world views are always based on what we believe. Creation vs. evolution. That has so many ramifications to where our thinking is and where we stand and what we believe, which often means we stand against where the culture is going and what is politically correct. We believe the Bible is unchanging and therefore our beliefs are going to be unchanging regardless of where the culture goes. That’s not always an easy place to be. But we believe that’s what God put us here for. For us the biggest, most important thing of all is that people know what Christ did for them and that they know that that offer of salvation is extended to them no matter where they’ve been and what they’ve done.

Conclusion

      Belief stories come in many forms. In this chapter I highlighted stories of the written word. Most organizations, whether they be political, educational, cultural, or religious have such rational stories. They serve as touchstones and rulebooks to guide individual behaviors both within and outside of their immediate context. Specifically, I show here some ways that religious people interpret their belief story texts and how these interpretations influence their religious and secular life actions.

 

Chapter 9

Belief Stories about God

      Most definitions of religion include the belief of something supernatural. Accordingly, religious belief stories are filled with discussions about god, a supernatural being. Christian, Muslim, and Jewish religious belief stories, for instance, focus on an anthropomorphized, omniscient, omnipresent being. God stories are part and parcel of religious people’s thoughts and behaviors. In the following example, Pastor Scott tells of his early relationship with God, a relationship that has influenced his entire life.

At age six I got saved. It did not really mean a whole lot to me. Obviously I wasn’t a terrible sinner at that age, but it became meaningful to me when I was fourteen, my father passed away from a heart attack very sudden, very unexpected, and I began to sense that God had something for me that’s just not a common thing. I figured that it was God reaching out to me in a very different kind of way. I did not know what it meant at that time.

This chapter covers types of God stories common among the religious folks I observed as well as data gathered from religious literature.

Direct Relationships with God

      For Sufis, a culture within Islam, God’s very essence and substance is love (Williams 1962: 215), the agent of creation. Before there was anything, there was love: God loving God’s self in a primordial state of unity. Such beliefs lead Sufis to seek direct personal experiences with the Divine. They hold ambiguous views of Islamic Law, especially as it gets in the way of their relationship with God. This is like Protestants seeking direct relations with God, as opposed to Catholics who allow the Church to stand between people and God. Sufis represent an alternative Muslim belief story.

      Sufi Dervishes chant or dance until they fall into a trance (Williams 1962: 169-70). The acting out of belief stories like this is evidence of one’s identity. In some cases, like the Dervishes, subcultural identities go beyond the acting out of identities of conventional folk. Their behaviors are sincere as they have internalized the belief stories and identities they act out.

God as CEO

      In The God Problem, Robert Wuthnow (2012) describes how seemingly rational people negotiate their beliefs in the existence of God, an inherently irrational idea, through talk. One type of talk uses the God as a CEO analogy. God exists, the story goes, like the leader of a corporation. He has an overall plan but leaves it to His underlings (believers) to work it out. Strategies like God as a CEO work to affirm faith in God while suggesting He does not intervene in the daily affairs of humans. It avoids looking crazy by denying God has a plan that we need to follow. Belief stories are full of such hedges to allow believers to assimilate an irrational belief into mainstream rational societal discourse.

God as Consciousness

      Reverend Joan of the Religious Science Institute sees God as consciousness, an energy that exists within people. God is unity rather than an entity separate from humans, as Christians, Muslims, and Jews believe. This way of seeing God as everything changes believers’ behaviors. God is now something to experience rather than pray to and depend upon.

RJ:   God is in, as, and through everyone and everything. God can be Love, Peace, Joy, Divine Intelligence, Source. It’s your experience. How do you experience God? That energy, that impulse that happened 14 billion years ago is in, as, and through everyone and everything.

      We pray affirmatively. We pray that everything is already established, 14 billion years ago, the Big Bang. We are creative beings. That impulse is within us, that’s who we are. Everything. Consciousness. Discovering consciousness in everything.

God as Dialectic

      Many Christians believe God to be the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He always is and will never change. People’s perceptions of God, however, can be led astray by culture though God never changes. Others, however, like Father Tom of the Episcopal Church, see people’s ideas changing as culture changes and, thus, God changes, too.

FT:   Literally, some people felt God had died, literally. Others felt symbolically, metaphorically, theologically, that one image of God. . .Kind of like Thomas Kuhn’s ideas of scientific revolution. A paradigm. There’s a thesis, an idea, an opposite idea, an antithesis, they wrestle into a new third way, a synthesis results. So language about God gets worn and dies and goes through chaos and emptiness into a new language, new imagery of God emerges, which I think actually characterizes the human experience. It explains all the denominations and religions.

      Some believe in the ontological death of God, others felt it was more symbolic. Certain kinds of religious imagery and language had died and would now have to give way to another kind. When Harvey Cox was writing, talking about the secular society in the sixties, he felt religion had died. The death of God came out of that. It was exciting for me cuz of the risk they’re taking in terms of religion, beliefs and creeds, and maybe our experience of God which always, of course, comes through our bodies – that was my sermon on Sunday – it comes through our minds. You know, Kant, we shape our experience through idealism, our ideas. Those things really die and then something else emerges from creation.

Father Tom’s idea about a changing god is similar to the sociological concept of the social construction of reality. Father Tom is suggesting that god is created through interaction and as interactions change, so does god. God did not create people, people created god.

God as Father

      The metaphor of God as Father is rampant within monotheisms. Indeed, it is not just metaphor for many. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints believe in God as a literal father. The belief in God as Father, then, is imbedded within belief stories and is influential in the actions of monotheistic religious people.

      The following example from my field notes, beginning with a fictional account from The Last Temptation of Christ (Kazantzakis 1960), follows through by suggesting that God as Father sits higher than earthly family ties in Christian’s minds.

      Jesus commands that He should be loved more than mother, father, son, or daughter. The old commandments to love family the most do not count anymore. I heard this many times in local sermons. It is played out in Abraham being asked to kill Jacob. Love God more than anything else, Pastors often state, even more than family. The strongest marriages and families are the ones that put God first, family second.

      In another example, a Christian Satellite Network minister told a God as our father story suggesting, “God does not love you for the work you do, He loves you because He is your Father.” The story was, simply, believe. God is our father. Fathers love their children no matter what.

Be Like Jesus

      Elder Kurt preaches that he strives to “be like Jesus.” He already feels he has reached salvation by being born again, so now what? He mentions in his sermons that since God has chosen us, we are already loved and accepted. It sure does sound like, as long as one’s belief is intact, one is saved and God is guiding us. Elder Kurt wants to take his salvation to the next level. He sees Jesus as a charismatic leader, as a model-type. Kurt, though believing it could never happen, because Jesus as a type is unattainable, tries to live his life as Jesus would live his. He makes daily and situational decisions based on his perceptions of the decisions Jesus would make. Elder Kurt is not alone in his attempts to be like Jesus. His individual biography (personal troubles) is embedded within a larger cultural movement (public issues), as evidenced in the oft-repeated and printed “What Would Jesus Do?” or WWJD?

God Challenges Us

      Nikos Kazantzakis illustrates a salient Christian belief story about how every moment of Christ’s earthly life was conflict and victory (Kazantzakis 1960). He is God. We all have conflicts, but we do not always have victory. Christ was perfect because he always had victory, like a sports team with a perpetually undefeated season.

      A significant piece of this Christian story is that Jesus did not fall into temptation. In Christians’ attempts to be like Jesus, they try not to yield to temptation either. However, since Christians are human and Jesus is God, the former regularly fall into temptation, which is why we need the latter. He has cleansed us of all sin. This is the Christian belief story.

      In Kazantzakis’s story, Jesus answers Redbeard’s inquisition with “I am wrestling” (Kazantzakis 1960: 21). Christians wrestle with the distinction between secular and sacred, earthly and celestial. This is, as with so much of what is in Kazantzakis’s book, another piece to the Christian belief story. Life is a wrestling match. Jacob wrestled all night with God in one story. We wrestle. That is who we are.

      Jesus questions God. Why can’t He bring water to the desert and fruit to the vines? This is another fundamental Christian belief story: We do not understand why God allows suffering. If He is loving and all-powerful, why does He not make us all happy? We should not question Him. He knows what He is doing, we do not.

      In the following interview excerpt, Pastor Jon of an Assemblies of God church explains how he sees the difficulties he has faced in life as struggles with God. At one point he and his family of four were homeless, living in a hotel. Pastor Jon was working at McDonalds.

      As I look back now I see the bigger picture and I have a greater understanding, maybe not fully, but God was removing everything that I trusted in: experience, my skills, my network. Everything that I had relied upon and even trusted in, God just stripped them away. As I look back, He wanted to know if I was going to totally and wholly trust Him, even when I lost it all. That was the hardest thing in my life to go through because I saw my family struggling.

From Pastor Jon’s perspective, God had a plan that included challenging him with material deprivation. But Pastor Jon made it through, he says, and is now leading a church of his own.

God Guides

      Religious folks of many faiths believe God guides them in their everyday lives. Similar to Pastor Jon’s story of adversity above, the speakers below tell stories of how God led them on paths they did not anticipate. In the first story, Pastor Morty tells of how God led him to a missionary conference which in turn enriched his preaching.

      This last May we went to Illinois. We went to a mission conference that my wife and I actually joined up with. It’s called CUME Baptist Ministries and it’s a committee on missionary evangelism. They had this conference for 3 days, Sunday to Wednesday. Every night and during the day they had one of the missionary speakers do a sermon. They had a regular church service every night. Through that God just illuminated my life, made my faith so much more real than before. I’ve just not been the same ever since. My study habits have changed, I haven’t picked up a Civil War book in 3 months, the fifth grade is the last time I did that. I’ve just been more engrossed in the Bible, to be honest. I’m not trying to sound corny or weird, I’m just telling you it’s been a real experience. It’s been so much better for me. I’ve been told that my messages reflect that, before I went compared to after. I do not know for sure, but I’m just kind of praising the Lord right now, for lack of a better way to say it.

      What follows are four stories told by Pastor Ed that show three times in his life that God led him in a certain direction. In the first, God presented him with his first chance at being a religious leader.

      God continued to bring experiences into my life. I went to work at a camp when I was 14. I was supposed to work in the kitchen but when the counselors did not show up I ended up counseling.

      In the next story Pastor Ed tells of his first time preaching solo. He did not feel he could do it, but had told God that if this is what He wants, he will give it a shot.

      I remember getting up there and suddenly the fear was gone and I was far more interested in people understanding God’s word than I was what they thought of me. I felt an ability that I had never felt before. In the process of preaching that Sunday I knew that “This is what God wants me to do for the rest of my life.” From that point forward God threw open doors to me. I had opportunities to preach in churches.

      Next Pastor Ed tells of the fortuitous journey of Ron, who went from young parishioner to the head of a church planting mission in Utah.

      Dick was a church planter in Idaho, from Michigan. He shared in that church and Ron felt like this guy, “This is what God wants me to do.” He walked up to him and told him after the service. Dick has later said, “I saw this young kid come up, he was 11 years old, and told me, ‘I’m gonna be a church planter some day with you.’” And he said, “Oh, okay.”

      Ron went to Bible School. Ron kept in contact with Dick. He eventually came out and worked summers with him in Idaho. Then he felt burdened to go to Kaysville, Utah. So that’s where he went. That church is still in existence, still flourishing. He planted three churches in Utah. Now he’s the head of a church planting mission.

      Finally, Pastor Ed tells of his calling to plant a church in Southern Utah. It was God, he says, that led him in this direction.

      We kept contact with him. I went back and started pasturing again, but I’d be sitting there preparing messages but I’d be thinking about planting a church in St. George. Eventually I had the assurance that this is what God wanted for me. So we announced to our church, “We are going to be leaving in 6 months. While we are here we’d like to go out and share this with other churches every other week and then you can have pastoral candidates in the meantime.”

      Similarly, Pastor Scott tells how he came to Utah through God’s suggestion. He first provides the story of the rising axe head from 2 Kings in the Bible, a story told by a pastor at a church service he attended at a crucial point in his career, then tells of how God’s word kept coming to him about moving to Utah and preaching.

      So he said, his application was really simple. God gives you a vision, a prophet school, God kills the vision, the loss of the axe head, God resurrects the vision so that what you accomplish is in the power and strength of the Lord, according to His will, not according to the strength and will of man.

      I just sat there dumbfounded. I did not leave for 10-15 minutes. I just sat in that seat in an empty auditorium just thinking, “Was that about going to Utah and planting a church?” I prayed about it all week. Later that week, the next week, a guy came in, talking in the preacher boy class, and he said, “We need preachers in the Southwestern United States. Utah needs preachers.”

      At the end of that week, after all these preachers talking about planting churches in the States and one guy talking about churches in Utah, I really believed that that’s what I needed to do. I needed to go. I believe God wanted me to come here and start this church. So that’s what we did. I always thought about commitment to come out to Utah. I told God, “I will go to Utah. I believe that’s what you want me to do.”

      The common theme in these pastors’ stories is action. God led them to pursue clerical positions. Similarly, lay religious folk often listen for God to guide them in their actions. AS Kazantzakis illustrates,

Jesus thought, “Whatever God wants, that will happen.” God is in control, we are not. Thus, faith. Have faith in God to guide one in the right direction. Do not let that faith waiver. Through thick and thin, dark and light, good and bad, have faith that God will keep one safe (Kazantzakis P. 158).

God Heals

      Christians’ beliefs about freedom in Christ are beliefs in freedom from unwanted human feelings and emotions (Wuthnow 2012: 223). If one is convinced that Jesus relieves us from the ills of being human, then one is likely to express belief stories that reflect this. Many Christians believe God heals the pains of earthly life. Pastor Paul explains:

      God heals in three different ways. He’ll either heal by his miracle hand, which is always our first and primary prayer, that he would radically and completely restore you to wholeness by his miracle hand. The second way God heals is through the hand of a doctor. We have many people who have come through that ask about prescribed medications. We reply, “You take your medications as prescribed.” If you have a chemical imbalance that needs medical treatment and you’re on medication, you do not go off that medication expecting God to do it. God is healing you through that medication.

      God is still getting the glory. He is the one who healed you. He may heal you through his miracle hand, He may choose to heal you through the hand of a doctor, and there will always be a reason because, remember, God heals us first of all because He wants us to be whole, second of all as a testimony of His power. By healing us through the hand of a doctor, and us giving glory to God, we have the opportunity to witness who He is and spread the gospel of grace.

      The third way God heals is by taking you home, which is the ultimate healing, because, for the Christian there is no death. Our last breath here is followed by our first breath in the presence of the Lord. For some, that is the ultimate healing. God can choose whichever means because He is God and He gets to make all the choices by which means He chooses to heal. The one thing we know from a Biblical standpoint is that every Bible-believing Christian who seeks God for healing is healed in one of those fashions. Jesus has never denied someone a healing.

      Freedom from addiction is another story people embrace in their belief in Jesus (Wuthnow 2012: 231-32). They convince themselves and others, through the expression of belief stories, that embracing an identity that includes belief in Jesus is to do away with addictions. This is seen in the second step of many recovery programs that a higher power is in control of our lives and can restore our health.

God is All

      A basic Christian story tells that God is bigger than people, than earth, than the universe, than everything. Without this premise, God would not be the omnipotent, omnipresent force He is. Pastor Paul explains.

      There are certain basic definitions that I understand about God. If there is a God, He is timeless, He’s eternal, which means He exists outside of time, He has no beginning and He has no end. He spoke time and everything into existence. For God to be God there are certain attributes He must have. Therefore, because He’s timeless, eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, exists outside of time, knows the past, the present, and the future, because He can see the whole thing from outside of time, He created time along with everything else, He would have all knowledge, He would know everything, he would be all-powerful. All meaning all. Those attributes would also make him completely unchanging. Because if you knew everything there would never be a need to change because you already know the past, present, future.

      Similarly, a fundamental principle of Judaism is the belief in one supreme god that has always been and will always be, who offers agency to people, but who will judge them based on their actions on Earth (Gross 1992). Just looking at the world around us one must conclude that a supreme being conceived and created everything. This Jewish belief begat Christian and Muslim beliefs of a similar nature.

      The Quran reminds man he is surrounded by God’s handiwork; it expresses astonishment that he can be so blind as not to remember the Creator (Williams 1962). Islamic belief stories warn us not to forget the Creator, to always remember that God is the maker of all, that your identity is God’s making.

      Jon Milton summarizes it well in Paradise Lost. God made sky, air, earth, and heaven. God made everything, even man. Christians need to recognize this (Milton 2004). He is their maker and demands recognition if one wants to receive His Grace. Therefore, God expects pure adoration, unconditional love. He deserves it as our maker and king.

      C. S. Lewis tells us God is the only uncreated being (Lewis 1961: vii). There is no opposite. This is why we should worship Him. He created everything and nothing created Him; He just Is.

      Finally, the Zoroastrians, one of the first monotheistic cultures, tell of Ahura Mazdah as the God of truth and light, the creator of the universe, and the final judge and redeemer of history (Bradley P. 41). He revealed himself to Zoroaster and commissioned him to be his prophet and spokesperson. This is their belief origin story.

      As Weber suggests, ethical prophecy requires a god set sublimely above the world (Weber 1978). It requires a god that is ethically better than man, one that commands in a father-like manner and demands obedience. The Christian god fits here. He is more ethical than us. Jesus was ethically pure and perfect. He demands obedience. There is only one way to heaven and it is through Him.

God is Flawless

      Of course, if God is everything, if He created all and knows all and is all, He is flawless. He cannot make mistakes because he made everything. This is why Jews, Christians, and Muslims look to Him for guidance, because he leads with perfection. As Pastor Paul says, “If God is God and those attributes are all right, then this Bible has to be flawless or worthless. It cannot be any in between.” Pastor Ed concurs:

      A Bible Church believes the Bible is the Word of God. That’s what we teach. If you come to any of our services it’s going to be Bible related, everything that’s being taught. Most of the time, what I preach and what Chuck preaches, we take them through a book. We start at the beginning and preach all the way through it. We believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, it’s God’s message to man.

God’s Word is flawless, which is why He preaches it to His congregants and why His congregants listen to Him.

      Through the Quran, God makes known what He has chosen for man (Williams 1962). In this way, Muslim belief stories rely on the Quran (Allah) for their evidence. The claim is that humans did not make this up, it is not a social construction, their story comes directly from God. Christians make the same claim: they did not make it up, their story comes directly from God in the form of the Bible, the Word of God.

      The rabbi in Kazantzakis’s story tells Mary that it is God, not the devil, who torments Jesus (Kazantzakis 1960). “Why,” Mary wants to know. “Because he loves him,” replies the rabbi. “Do not question the law of God.” So, too, Christians preach not to question God and that sometimes he puts us in difficult situations (torments us) without explanation. We simply must trust, have faith, that He knows what He is doing; He is flawless.

God Provides

      Christians believe God will take care of them. Follow God and things will be fine. One’s successes are because of God, one’s failures are one’s own, though faith will again bring success. Pastor Ed tells how “God’s hand” brought success to his independent Bible Church.

      That’s how things started. We just saw God’s hand. We came into this town with nothing. He provided me jobs and a place to live. It’s been a neat ride. We do not take any credit. We are just thankful we were able to watch it. It’s worked for thirty years. My belief is this, if the church is being led of God to do what it does, and people are being led of God to give what God wants them to give, then it will always be enough.

God Talks to Us through Prayer

      Christians believe God talks to us, especially through prayer. We pray, He talks back. He gives us direction and purpose. Pastor Paul tells of how God led him to ministry with specific conversations about the matter.

      I had one of those deep spiritual experiences where I heard, it seemed audibly but it wasn’t audibly, from God, telling me that he had a plan for me and that was that the day would come that I would pastor a church. Woke me up at 4 o’clock in the morning, sent me to the Bible to read a couple of passages. Clearly I heard the impression of God telling me that He had called me, He had set me apart to one day pastor a church and I needed to prepare for that day.

      It was at this point in Paul’s life that he was let go from his senior management position at a car dealership. God, however, was in control of the situation. This was another step for Paul in his path to the ministry. Indeed, as Pastor Paul says, God saw to it that his “firing” was more than amicable.

      I was seeking God in prayer and He clearly told me, “I’m gonna take this away from you.” This had to be divine intervention. That’s a business where nobody gets advance notice that they’re going to be stepping down out of a senior management position, because I had power of the pen and the ability to, you know, buy cars. I had more than a month’s advanced notice and was given a large severance package as part of retiring from that position. Those things never happen in that industry. It’s unheard of. But my integrity was such that they trusted me to do as good a job on my last day as I did on my first and then wanted to make sure that this was not a hard feelings kind of thing. I was offered another position that I decided not to take. The reason I did not take it was because I got woke up at 4 o’clock in the morning understanding that God was telling me, “Remember when I told you” . . .

      Nine years later. “Remember when I told you the day would come that I would ask you to shepherd a flock, pastor a church. The future is now.”

      The final step in Paul’s path toward pasturing his own church was finding a site. As Pastor Paul tells it, his wife was searching the Internet for places in need and she came across St. George, Utah. God drew them to the area.

      I knew immediately, it’s St. George. I called my pastor and I said, “It’s St. George.” He said, “Oh, it is absolutely St. George.” He called the district supervisor for the Church and said, “Paul and Rachel are supposed to plant St. George, pioneer St. George.” He said, “That’s absolutely God.”

      In the following story Pastor George tells of how he was guided to approach his senior pastor because God was willing him to move on with his life. He then explains what conversations with God are like for him and how, for parts of his life when he has had rough times, he felt as if God had stopped talking to him altogether.

      This man, I felt such freedom to go to him and share with him my problems. So many other times as a Staff Pastor you felt you had to protect your family and yourself. But I had a great relationship with this man. We were there for three years and God began to do something to my heart, I had no idea what it was, but I went to my pastor and said, “I’m struggling because I feel like God is telling me to leave. And I’m just loving it here.” I was what they call a small group coordinator. I was in charge of the educational aspect of the church, and childrens pasturing. Very busy.

In prayer I’ve never heard God’s audible voice. But you’d feel, kind of like your conscience if you know you’re not going to do something right, something tells you it’s not right. That’s kind of how God speaks to us and through the Bible. I did not feel him talking to me at all. Month after month after month. I cried out to Him like, “Where are you? I’m in this place, not because of anything I’ve done, but because of all of these other situations and men that have forced my family through this difficulty.”

      Pastor Morty talks of how, as he aged, his confidence in his praying waned. He felt he was not getting through to God the way He wanted. So Pastor Morty went to the Bible, the source of all knowledge, and studied ways of praying. In doing so, Pastor Morty found a new way to pray which brought back his confidence that he was getting to God the way He liked.

      In recent years, as I’ve gotten a little bit older, my experience in my faith has been so much more rich because of the fact that I’ve, in several different ways, it’s even kind of hard for me to talk about it, I’ve grown so much closer to the Lord. It’s been amazing. Several years ago, for an example, seven or eight years ago, I began to sense that my prayers were going nowhere. Seven or eight years ago I was sensing that my prayers were just a bunch of words, not a whole lot. I wondered sometimes if they went any higher than the sound of my voice. So I began to study a little bit more about prayer and the Bible is just full of information all the way through about that subject. I began to actually ask God to give me the words to pray so that I wouldn’t, in my way of thinking, waste words. That I would feel like I was actually praying what God wanted me to pray, instead of a rote saying words and things like that which are totally meaningless, or repeating words or phrases all the time that we have a tendency to do sometimes. I did not want to be that way, I did not want to pray that way. God opened up my eyes, so to speak, to be able to learn some things about prayer that made it a whole lot more meaningful.

      Not long after that, just as a matter of studying the Bible mostly for my messages here, I cannot really explain it in so many words but it seems like the Bible itself became more real, more of a life changer. It’s not like it hadn’t affected my life before, but in a fresh way. Revival is a word we use sometimes. I’m saying it was more than that, it was more of a . . .What happened practically speaking is that different words, sometimes a verse but sometimes even words would be like neon signs on the pages that seemed to come out of the page and hit me between the eyes, became very real and meaningful in ways that I never experienced before.

      Pastor Ed tells a story about how, through prayer, he reached out to God, pledging he would do whatever He wants, including public speaking. God, in His wisdom, took young Tim up on the offer.

PE:   So I prayed and was pleading with God, I said, “God, I just want to know what you want me to do.” I was reading Proverbs 3, 5, and 6 that night and it says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding.” That’s the second part of that verse. And it says, “In all your ways acknowledge Him and He’ll direct your paths.” I stopped when I read that second part, the part that says, “Lean not to your own understanding.” I thought, “That’s what I’ve been doing.” To my understanding God would never call me to do anything that would involve public speaking. I never was good at it. It terrified me. But I remember climbing out of my bed, getting down on my knees, and I said, “God, if you want me to do something that involves speaking. If you want me to be a pastor, I’ll do anything you want me to do. I’ll trust You to give me the ability to do whatever that is.” Then I added this to my prayer. I said, “In fact, if You give me an opportunity to preach this summer I’ll take it.”

      I was 19 years old. Nobody had ever asked me to preach in their church. I thought that was the safest prayer I’d ever made. My dad actually worked at the Bible School. He came home three days later and he said. . .People called the school during the summer time and asked faculty members to fill pulpits when the pastor is on vacation. He said, “All of the teachers are committed in three weeks. I told them you would come and preach.” I remembered what I’d promised God. So I said, “Okay.”

      In another story Pastor Ed tells of how he and his wife came to plant a church in Southern Utah from Michigan. It was through group prayer, with his congregation and family, that he recognized it was he that God wanted to come here.

      Ron was one of the missionaries from our church in Michigan. He came to Michigan and said, “I’d like . . .” They had just moved to Cedar City and were planting Valley Bible Church which is still there. He said, “I’d like you to pray two other Bible Churches get started in Southern Utah in the next five years. One in St. George and one in Richfield. Would you as a church pray for that?” We took that on as a prayer project, and our family did as well. We had family devotions where we read the Bible and prayed together. We started praying that God would send someone to start these churches. I was preaching through the Book of Acts, and if you’re familiar with Acts, it’s the story of Paul, who was a church planter. He went from city to city sharing the Gospel, planting churches. So I’m praying for someone to go to St. George, I’m preaching, and it’s like the messages I’m preaching to the congregation are hitting me more. I started thinking, “Maybe God wants me to be an answer to one of those prayers.” Eventually I thought, “I got to tell my wife what I’m thinking.” I came home one day and we were eating Sunday dinner and I said, “Joy, I think God may call someone from our church to missions work.”

      Pastor Scott, who at the time of which he speaks in the following quote was looking to leave his sinful way of living for a more Christian one. He was looking for the “right” church to attend. In this particular church, the one he ends up joining, he is mesmerized by one of the women in the choir and offers the following, answered, prayer.

      Then later that night. . . I just couldn’t keep my eyes off this beautiful blonde girl. I was just captivated by her. But I felt like I cannot even talk to her. She’s like an angel. I do not even deserve to look at her. That night when I was leaving, I prayed again. I’m like, “God, please.” She’s walking the opposite direction and I’m like, “Have her say something. I cannot talk to her. Have her say something to me.” And, literally, like right after I prayed, from two or three hundred feet across the parking lot at this apartment complex where we had all gathered, I hear, “Yoo whoo. Tom. Thanks for coming.” I was like, “Wow!”

Indeed, Pastor Scott ends up marrying the women in his story. He prayed, God answered, and his life took a path.

      Reverend Joan of the Religious Science Institute, a New Thought ministry, suggests that everything already is, prayer simply affirms and invites it in; positive invitations (thoughts) invite a positive life to happen, negative thoughts invite the opposite. God, an energy rather than being in New Thought, guides one’s life but only through invitation.

      Because you’re thinking of it as a human being. But if you think of it as impulse, as a pulse, as energy. Nothing was created without an idea. That’s the ground of being. Everything has a ground of being. We pray that that already exists. When we pray affirmatively we know that, first of all, we believe, me as a minister or me as a practitioner that It already is. We just invite It. It’s a law. If I think negatively, that’s my life. If I think positively, that’s my life. Words have power. Whatever you say goes out into this life that we live and it’s created whether it’s negative or positive.

Obedience to God

      Fidelity to a higher power is a hallmark of religious belief stories. Obedience takes numerous forms as told in the following passages. First, John Milton sets the stage in telling us that obedience to God is of grave concern. Man loses Paradise when he is disobedient (Milton 2004: 9). One must obey God’s Word or risk going to Hell. This Christian belief story is a matter of life and death; either identify with it or lose. On the plus side, obedience to God brings happiness (Milton 2004: 163). Not only is obedience expected by Him, it is something we should want to do. The benefits of such obedience are beyond comprehension.

      Next, a lesson on the Christian Satellite Network discussed how we should show obedience to God here on Earth. We show it by being obedient to those who have authority over us here. We should obey our parents. We should obey our bosses. We should obey our teachers and religious leaders, because they have been ordained by God to have this authority over us. The only time we should not be obedient is when the authority figure is evil, a merchant of Satan. Unfortunately, the teacher did not tell us how to distinguish between God-called authority figures and those called by Satan.

      According to Weber, Jews do not focus on redemption (Weber. 1978: 620). Instead they focus on the promises and laws of their religion. Those who “surrender to the artistic or poetic glorification of this world” are vain and divert their attention away from the purposes of God. God has put Jews here for a reason, He has chosen them for a reason, He has created laws and promises that go along with following those laws for a reason. It is a Jew’s responsibility to live in this world while giving strict adherence to God’s laws and promises.

Conclusion

      A fundamental aspect of religious belief stories is faith in a larger than life being or beings. These beings, gods, more or less control conditions on Earth. In this chapter I provided examples of ways people understand god, and the ways such understandings influence their religious and secular behaviors. Behaviors, of course, are based on belief stories. In this case, people’s behaviors are based on belief stories about god.

 

                                  Chapter 10       

The Externality of Belief Stories: The Case of Born Again Stories

      When Elder Kurt, in his Ephesians sermon, talks about being born again, being chosen by Christ who paid for us with his blood, he is making sense of the world. Many in Elder Kurt’s congregation refer to themselves as “born again.” They were living a certain type of life, a sinful life. My guess is that many of the people in the flock were doing drugs, committing some crimes (outside of drug use), engaging in pre- and extra-marital fornication. There then came a point, a moment, in their lives where and when they believe God “saved” them.

      The above is not an uncommon story in religious cultures. I had a roommate, Brian, at Northern Arizona University who believed he had been saved in the same way. He had been a heavy partier and was, at some point, saved. The story of Johnny Cash contains a similar story: Cash was an addict, depressed, drunk, and crawled into Nickajack cave near Chattanooga, Tennessee, hoping to die (Summers N.D.). God spoke to him inside that cave, told him to get back out there and be more “Christ-like” (Elder Kurt’s words: “be like Christ”). My friend Autumn tells a similar story of partying, being depressed, and, at some one moment, Christ saved her.

      To be “born again” is to place oneself into a story. The symbolic interactionist idea is that we project our internal reality onto external reality. We spend a lot of time pressing each other to buy into particular external realities internally. Our individual internal realities only make sense if others have the same ones. If we share internal realities then we share external realties. If we share external realities then we can predict one another’s behaviors. If we can predict one another’s behaviors then we can act with more or less assurance that others will cooperate with us in attaining our goals, and we with theirs. If we act cooperatively then things get done. If things get done, things make sense.

      Born Again Christians see themselves as sharing similar life stories with other Born Again Christians. They tell each other their stories and confirm each other’s realities through them. Elder Kurt, in the above mentioned sermon, reiterates a few times that they (the people of the Christian Church) were headed down paths of sin and, ultimately, death. They were all saved. They were all there on that day because they had all been saved.

      Elder Kurt’s sermon is a projection of inner-reality onto outer-reality. For whatever reason, he has been given the status of story teller at the Christian Church. He chooses books and stories from the Bible and teaches them to the flock. Concurrently, members of the congregation support Kurt in his sermons by listening, making comments here and there, and offering up “amens.” Together they are constructing and maintaining a reality story, the story of their lives, the story of their realities.

“How did I get here?” they ask themselves. “This is how.” They believe that Jesus chose them for this task, and they chose Jesus. They used their human agency to first, sin like sailors, and then choose Jesus. They chose to actively love Him and to try and be like Him by renouncing Earthly sins and by acting like Born Again Christians.

      Conversion is an influential religious rhetorical device (Bainbridge 1997: 155). The idea that by joining this or that religion one will have a life altering experience is attractive. Religious belief stories are rife with such devices. In laying claim to a new identity within a new group, individuals go through a process of role dispossession, they are no longer connected to the outside world and they thus give up their past roles in favor of those offered by their new group membership (Jacobsen & Kristiansen 2015: 87). Born again belief stories contain encouragements for the role dispossessions of their members.

      The process of redefining individual identities serves to stabilize and confirm the group identities that already exist (Jacobsen & Kristiansen 2015). Group members attempt to instill existing group belief stories within new members as a way of maintaining existing group beliefs. This instillation of belief into neophytes serves to reinforce current members’ already internalized identities and belief stories.

      Born again stories are reality construction stories. When an Evangelical Protestant Christian tells a story about being at the end of their rope, doing lots of drugs and stealing stuff, getting on their knees and praying for God to intervene and then having a moment when God does intervene, and when this story correlates with the stories of a lot of other people they consider Christians, they have participated in the construction of a reality that they and others consider correct. Every time someone tells such a story, every time one is witnessed by others as having such a moment, the reality is maintained, and every time these stories are told and supported by others, one’s self identity as a Christian is maintained.

     

      A CSN pastor urged his listeners to “think differently” about our world and Jesus. This is what Christians do, they think differently than non-Christians. Once you realize that Christ is in control, that He is watching out for you, that your life experiences are the realization of His plans, the troubles and tribulations of this world become trivial. We do not have to worry or stress about this world’s problems when we think this way. Tough situations are trials for us, put there by God to make us better Christians.

      Substitute “belief” for “think” in the above paragraph and you have what I am getting at in this book. The pastor is urging us to change our beliefs about this world and God. Non-Christians, he says, believe in this material world and our material existences in it. They believe that this is all there is and that troubles are setbacks to happiness; we must overcome our troubles (which will never happen) in order to attain happiness. Non-Christians believe this. Christians, on the other hand, believe that God is bigger than this world, that eternal life makes this earthly coil miniscule in the scheme of forever. Once we believe this story we will act as if it is true.

      To be born again is to go through a belief transformation (a thinking transformation in the CSN pastor’s story) where we go from not believing in the Christ story to believing in it. This, according to the story, is something that happens for all Christians, even those who have always believed in God. They argue that Christians start life as unbelievers. Or they believe and then stop believing. Or they ascribe to some other belief story. Then they have their moment, their born again experience, their belief transforming experience. Then they believe in the Christ story.

      It goes without saying that born again stories are interactional and shared. Those who call themselves "Born Again Christians" tell similar stories about how they got to where they are. They tell these stories to one another, share the stories with one another, help each other craft each other's stories. It is what they do at services on Sundays. It is what they do when they distribute sack lunches to the homeless on Saturdays. It is what they do when they talk with their families at the dinner table or in the park or while driving in the car. It is no different, other than in content, than what we all do in sharing cultures and identities with others. I share my story of being an "academic" with my academic colleagues on a daily basis. When I am talking with Dr. O or Mr. Green or Dr. McCleod (or all of them at once), when I am teaching my students, when I am wearing what I wear, when I go to a conference and interact with people there, I am constructing and maintaining a reality.

 

Born Again Stories

      What follows are born again stories. Most are told by religious leaders I interviewed, some are based on my field observations, the one at the end is told by Brian “Head’ Welch, guitarist for the band Korn, who wrote about his experiences in an autobiography.

Pastor Paul

      Pastor Paul of the Four Square Church tells of how he was slowly led to Christ, behind his back, by his wife Rachel (who is co-pastor of the church he leads) and a group of Christian bikers. He was obstinate, did not want to have anything to do with religion. But he went to a Bible Study with Rachel and this group, he read a passage from the Bible and was overcome with the Spirit. God directly intervened in Paul’s life. Paul was born again at that specific moment in a specific house on a specific couch.

      I went to a Bible Study with a group of former outlaw bikers who had found Christ and changed their lives and now were ministering to other bikers. My wife was attending it. For about a year she hooked up with this Christian motorcycle group of former hardcore bikers who now were preaching Jesus. I was around them once in awhile but not very often. She would go to this Bible study at one of their houses and she’d come home and, “Well, what did you talk about?”

      And she’d say, “The Bible.” She wouldn’t tell me a thing. They had been praying behind my back for a year. They were praying diligently for me behind my back. I would’ve certainly objected had I known that because I was pretty obstinate.

      At that Bible study, I was listening, they handed me a Bible, I do not even know what the topic was that night, I could not tell you, but they handed me a Bible and asked me to read the Gospel of John, Chapter 1, Verse 29. It was my turn to read. That was the first words I ever read in English in the Bible. Remember, growing up Jewish in a conservative Jewish community, the Old Testament was read in Hebrew, and I did not understand Hebrew. I certainly wouldn’t have ever read the New Testament. And it was, “The next day John saw Jesus coming, said ‘Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’”

      As it has been described, literally I began shaking, physically shaking to the point where the sofa I was sitting on seemed to be shaking. Everybody in the room, except me, knew that I had been overcome by the power of the Holy Spirit. At that moment, all that stuff that I had been taught in Hebrew school, in Sunday school, but it was on Saturdays, Friday nights, growing up, just came back in a moment and the sacrificial lamb of the Passover and all of the Jewish traditions, at that moment I realized that Jesus was the promised Messiah of the Jewish people of the Old Testament. They prayed with me. I could not tell you what the prayer was. We went home and a couple of days later we went to a local church that was very biker friendly, Grapevine Fellowship, about 1,000 people. A very diverse group.

Pastor George

      Pastor George witnessed his older sister be born again and he followed suit. He engaged in some sinful behavior (drugs, crime) to the point where he was at the end of his rope. He asked for God’s love and got it; he was born again. Notice in the last line that Pastor George knows the exact date of his born again experience, a common point of articulation among those who have had such experiences.

      When I was 11 or 12 I had a unique experience in our children’s church. The leader said, “Anybody who would like to be baptized in the Holy Spirit?” We believe in baptism in water and being submerged and coming back out. The same term goes with being enveloped with the power of the Holy Spirit. I was like, “Not me, man! That sounds really weird.” My sister raised her hand and she went forward and they prayed for her. Suddenly she began to speak in these other languages. She was probably 13. All that week she was bouncing off the walls. She was so happy. There was a joy and excitement. She was totally a new person.

I was like, “I want that.”

The next Sunday they said, “Does anybody want to receive that,” and I raised my hand. So I went forward and they began to pray for me. I was 11 years of age. I tried to open my mouth. I heard my sister praying in this unknown language and I began to try to repeat what she was saying and nothing came out. There was no voice. It was just the mouthing of the words. Suddenly, it was like I blacked out. I opened my eyes and I am in the foyer of the church. No idea how much time had passed and I am just weeping and I am speaking in this other language. It was an amazing experience. My mom had to just point me home cuz I was under the influence of the power of God so great.

Right after that . . .I always wanted to be accepted from peers. Psychologists will say it goes way back to my dad leaving, being abandoned, the emotional turmoil that we experienced as a family, that I wanted to be a part of something. That need to belong. Very important. So I started doing things that were inappropriate to get friends. So I started getting into drugs and alcohol. Initially smoking marijuana which led me to other things. I went to a vocational school my junior year and that was a lot of availability of drugs.

      But then between my junior and senior years of high school I wasn’t around my friends a lot. I went to church on a Wednesday night. None of my friends showed up. We sat in the back. When the songs started we stepped outside and did not come back until church was over. As I sat there, I did not want to run around the neighborhood alone, it wasn’t that good of a neighborhood. I heard the message again from that pastor, my home pastor. I felt this longing in my heart. I was searching for something. I felt the presence of the Lord, of God, drawing me into. . .

      The next night at my home, I lived in the basement. It was great. I was able to hide drugs all over the basement and my parents would never find them. I contemplated life. That night I got on my knees and I prayed. I said, “God, you know I am nobody. I have nothing to offer. I am a horrible person. I have done horrible things. If you still love me would you come and live in me?” And I felt, I physically, I haven’t felt that ever since. I felt a physical feeling come up over me and all of the guilt and the shame and everything just was gone. The Bible talks about becoming a new person in that we are transformed in a moment like that. My goals, my desires, everything was totally changed. My goals, everything changed in my life. It was like a burden was lifted off of me. I was free. This conversion experience happened on July 25, 1979.

Pastor Morty

      Pastor Morty, a Baptist church leader, tells of how he was born again at six years old. His Sunday school teacher told his class about human sin and Christ, and Pastor Morty knew then and there that he needed to walk with God.

      My walk with God started around six years old. I can still vividly remember, approximately the first grade, in Sunday school the teacher was talking about heaven and hell. She had made it clear that, as the scriptures say, that the Bible says that all are sinners, we’ve all fallen short of God’s standard of holiness. The Bible speaks of being born again and being saved, various terms: justified, redeemed, born again. All these different terms that speak about a new life that we have in Christ by accepting his death on the cross and his subsequent resurrection as the means of our salvation. I remember that. I remember after one particular Sunday, she led in prayer and I silently prayed, I confessed my own personal sins to God and asked Him to forgive me through Jesus’ death and resurrection. So at age six I got saved.

Pastor Ed

      Independent Bible Church Pastor Ed’s story is similar to Pastor Morty’s. Pastor Ed was born again at the age of eight. Also similar to Pastor Morty’s story, Pastor Ed’s relationship with God was solidified in Sunday school. Notice also that Pastor Ed suggests a specific day of his salvation, though he does not produce an actual date.

      I was sitting in Sunday school one time as an 8 year old boy and the teacher was teaching about the fact that we are sinners and that because of that sin we are separated from God, we are condemned.     As an 8 year old one thing I understood was I am a sinner. I knew I’d lied, I knew I’d stolen things. I could go down the list. I felt the weight of my sin. Nobody told me, “Now Ed, you need to go do this.” I knew what I needed to do. So in the privacy of my own heart, nobody there knew what took place that day in me. But I said, “Lord I know you are the son of God. I know you came to this earth and you died on the cross. You paid for my sin. You offer me heaven as a gift. I accept you as my savior.” It wasn’t a big emotional experience, I just felt relief. That weight of sin I felt was lifted from me. That decision as an 8 year old boy changed the course of my life.

      There were a lot of new things that were happening in me. I’d never really cared about knowing God’s word before that. I began to desire to know His words. I’d look at it on my own, ask a lot of questions. I wanted my friends to know about this. I began sharing with them.

Notice how Pastor Ed’s Born Again experience influenced his actions; he wanted to tell his friends about Jesus.

Pastor Scott

      Independent Christian Church Pastor Scott’s story begins a little differently than the others. He was in the United States Navy, on a ship, during Operation Praying Mantis, a 9-hour battle between the U.S. and Iran. This experience, he says, frightened him toward God. The rest of Pastor Scott’s story is by now familiar. God led him to a particular church on a particular day in which he was born again.

      By the time the day is over we are engaged by aircraft, we shoot an aircraft down. In the week to follow we are continuously engaged and harassed by the Iranians. Just super fearful. A week’s worth of intense fear. I was expecting to die.

      That experience, that intense fear. “I know there’s a God. I know that I am guilty before Him. I almost died this week.” That event is so etched into my mind. So I was looking for answers.

      I got out of the Navy. Had a rough transition to civilian life. I had almost a loathsome, “there’s no purpose in this.” In the military everything had a purpose. All that training, even sweeping decks, everything had purpose. I started feeling like, “Maybe I ought to try to reconnect with church. Maybe I will find some purpose there.”

      So that is what ended up happening. I got to the end of myself and on November 4 of 1989 picked a church.      For me, that day, November 4 of 1989, when I was traveling to that church, I went to an evening service, I was just driving, you know, it is November, it is dark, darker, I was just talking to God. Praying, “You know, God, I am going to this church, but from here on out you have all of me.” I really felt like God was telling me to go to this church. Like I was being pulled in that direction. I knew that I needed to go there.

      I went to that church. Sat in the front row. I just felt at home. I do not remember what the Pastor preached, but I literally was like in the very front row, right in front of the pew. I was like, “If this guy has anything from God, then give it to me.”

      Pastor Scott’s born again experience led to a change in his behaviors. In the next passage he explains how he stopped lying and cussing, things he did habitually, in the name of God.

On that day I fell in love with the church and Christ. I committed my life and my life changed overnight. I went to work the next day not quite understanding everything that had taken place the night before, but I went to work and I walked in the door, and my boss asked me something and I lied. Did it a million times. People lie, right? And then I suddenly felt horrified that I lied. “C’mon, Scott, you shouldn’t be telling lies.” Something within me is talking to me in a non-verbal way, “You can’t lie. We are not doing this lying thing.” And I thought, “That is really weird.” Then, an hour later, I swore. I dropped the f-bomb and again I had this horrifying sensation come over me. I thought, “Okay, this is getting weird.” Because I always swore and I never cared.

 

Brian “Head” Welch

      Save Me from Myself (2007) is the autobiography of Head Welch, guitarist for the rock band Korn[17]. Welch’s story focuses on his addiction to crystal methamphetamine and, more importantly, his change to a Born Again Christian. It is generically informative that he is defining his past based upon his present. This is a basic social psychological idea and it is clear in Welch’s story. He writes about being a teenager, 14 or 15, and hanging out at a friend’s house. In contrast to the tension that existed in his own household, this friend’s house was peaceful and happy. The friend’s family spoke often, comfortably, and openly about Jesus. Welch suggests that their peacefulness as a family is because of their open faith in Jesus. He also recounts a moment when the friend’s mother and Welch were sitting at a table and, seemingly out of nowhere, she tells him that he will be a much happier person if he would accept Jesus into his life. She tells him to try praying tonight, to ask Jesus to come into his life. Welch went into the basement bathroom that night, got on his knees, and prayed. He felt something, though he could not put his finger on what it was, but it was something. The reader understands that this thing Welch felt was Jesus.

      Welch suggests his conversion to Christianity was a gradual process that took place over a year or so, though a number of years following his prayer just discussed. He began to hate touring and playing in Korn. He was an alcoholic, meth, porn, and pill addict, depressed and suicidal. He partnered with some people in real estate who were Christians. They did not talk much about it, but it would slip out occasionally. Welch writes of the various Christians that were coming into his life as if God placed them there. None of them were pushy. They were happy and content people, seemingly free of the stresses and anxieties of Earthly life. Their Christianity was attractive as a life model; Welch wanted to be like them. They did not proselytize, but they were inviting. It is as if they were there for Welch when he was ready. God is there when we are ready.

      We can be ready at any time in any way and God will be there. Welch gives examples of how this happens. For instance, he told a friend of how another friend got in touch with God for the first time while sitting on the toilet. This friend, then, called Welch the next day (or so) and said that he, too, met God while “taking a dump.” Another friend, after talking God with Welch, got in his car, turned on the radio, and Nine Inch Nail’s “Head Like a Hole” was playing. More specifically, the refrain, “Bow down before the one you serve/You’re gonna get what you deserve” was the first thing that came on the radio. This, according to Welch (and his friend) was God speaking to the friend.

      Welch says his conversion was slow. He was still using meth in the months leading up to his full conversion. He was already believing in God and talking with God, and God was talking back, but he was still using. He had messed up almost every area of his life.

      Welch eventually reached out to a Christian friend, telling him he did not know what to do. He wanted to kick all his bad habits. He wanted to know God. His friend, Eric, suggested that he pray, sincerely, to God and Jesus will do the rest. Eric gave Welch a Bible with no hard sell to accompany it. This surprised him. He thought Christians were always aggressive in their proselytizing. This was attractive to Welch.

      Along with being a standard piece of most born-again stories, interacting with those already in the know is consistent with sociological “becoming” stories (i.e. Becker’s (1953) “How to Become a Marijuana User”). Becoming something, anything, involves social interaction with folks who already are. They “teach” one how to use the thing (prayer), how to recognize the effects (of God), and how to enjoy His effects.

      There was no doubt in Welch’s mind that God was talking to him. This was a step in his path toward conversion, he now had “evidence” that God cared and wanted to have a personal relationship. Within a week, Welch quit Korn and walked away from everything from his former life; he was born-again, a Christian walking with Jesus. Being born again means what it says, becoming a new person in a new life much like someone coming out of drug rehab or going through military boot camp, they see themselves in a new light and wish for others to see them this way as well.

      There are a dozen or more color photos in the middle of the book. Head does not smile in any of the pre-Born Again photos and he is all smiles in the post-acceptance ones. His story is that he was miserable and depressed before and now that he is Christian he is content and happy. His pre-acceptance life is a former life, one he no longer lives. God has forgiven him for the iniquities of his previous life. Now that he is Born Again, now that he is Christian, God lives within him. He no longer needs to worry about iniquity because he is being guided by Jesus and He is right and good, always. No more depression or guilt or anxiety. Jesus is in control.

Conclusion

      A main argument I make in this book is that belief stories beget behavior. Individual’s act based on their identities within stories they believe. In this chapter I highlighted born again stories. These are stories that change the life courses of individuals. One is not truly Christian, the story goes, until being born again, visited by God or the Holy Spirit and converted. Once born again, one acts like a Christian. This often includes no drink or drugs, no more cussing, going to church on a regular basis. The fact that so many people remember the exact dates of their conversion suggests the importance of born again stories in the life activities of Christians.

 

Chapter 11

Dealing with Contradictory Stories: How Religious People Counter Challenges to Their Expressed Realities

As with all of us, religious people encounter a world of stories that contradict their own. Some people directly challenge the beliefs of the religious, asking how they can possibly believe in something (i.e. God) that is so obviously not real. Other times religious folks simply encounter situations in which their perceived realities do not mesh with what they see. People have two choices in such situations: abandon their beliefs or deny the contradictions. This chapter focuses on the latter. In it I provide examples of situations in which religious beliefs are challenged and how religious people reconcile these contradictions in ways that maintain their belief story realities.

True Believers are Persecuted

      Pastor Gordon’s sermon at LC today was about being perceived negatively for being a Christian. He gave us two lessons: one from Genesis and the other from Hebrews. The first, from Genesis, told of Joseph and the main servant Potiphar and how Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce Joseph. But Joseph would not go with her because that would be a sin against God. She then accused Joseph of rape and Potiphar sent him to prison. In prison Joseph was given authority and autonomy, just like he had been in Potiphar’s house, because God looked kindly upon Joseph and made sure he succeeded in all he did. Pastor Gordon’s second account, from Hebrews 11: 24-26, is the story of how Moses chose to be mistreated among the slaves of Egypt, the people of God, rather than accept the riches that came with being Pharaoh’s son. In the same day’s Gospel lesson, Pastor Gordon shared from Luke 9:18-24 where Jesus tells his disciples that he is God, or where they figure this out for themselves. Either way, Jesus tells them not to tell anyone because if they do they will face rejection from elders, priests and teachers.

      Pastor Gordon’s story is common in Christianity. Faithful Christians will be rejected by secular society. Making the choice to be Christian, to accept Christ as Savior, is to choose rejection. Pastor Gordon suggested that once Moses and Joseph made their choices they were subjected to what today we would call racism. Once they made it known that they followed Yahweh, they were outed as Jews and treated like “morons” and “dips” (Pastor Gordon’s words). So, too, the analogy goes, Christians in modern society are objects of discrimination. If one is a true believer one must not back down. A Christian must accept that they will be treated poorly.

      Encountering contradictory truths is a common theme in many “true belief” communities. Professors (including myself) often say that if we are not upsetting some of our students with our lectures then we are not doing it right. Our point is that the truth we teach often offends. Students come in to our classrooms with a certain way of thinking about the world, we offer them something that goes against how they have been brought up and it upsets them. Missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints speak the same way: They get cussed at and chased because they are preaching a truth that others do not want to hear.

      Thinking of the world this way, let us call these victimization stories, leads to a way of acting. Victimization stories solidify Christians’ ideas that what they belief is the truth; if others reject them because of their beliefs then they are doing the right thing. Victimization thinking creates cohesion. By expressing victimization stories with each other and with self, religious people confirm their membership in the community: “People like us are shunned because we think and do what is right.”

      My colleague Joe told me how "high criticism" is heresy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Philip A. Harland’s Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean podcasts (2007-08) are a good example of high criticism. Harland takes a historical/literary look at the Hebrew Bible. For instance, Harland examines the gospel of Mark by discussing the synoptic gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. They read similarly, like the authors were borrowing from each other and reading some of the same things. Then there is John, who does not fit well with the other three. The synoptic gospel writers have similar literary styles, John's is different. Then Harland takes aim at the order in which the synoptic gospels were written. One hypothesis, he says, is that Matthew's was written first, with Mark and Luke next, the latter two borrowing from Matthew's writing. Another hypothesis is that Mark wrote first, followed by Matthew and Luke, the latter two borrowing liberally from Mark. A third hypothesis -- the Q hypothesis -- is that Mark wrote first (in 60 or 70 CE), then Matthew and Luke. The twist in this third hypothesis is that not only are Matthew and Luke seen as borrowing from Mark, they are also thought to be borrowing from a gospel that has yet to be discovered. The evidence is, first, that Matthew and Luke have similar passages, passages that seem to have come from Mark, suggesting that they both used Mark as a reference.

      Harland is taking an academic approach to understanding the gospels. To those of us in academia this is a perfectly rational way of doing research and writing findings. According to Joe, LDS doctrine states that the gospels are divinely inspired, that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were vessels through which God spoke. To suggest otherwise is heresy, it is to speak against God himself.

      Cynicism of data helps to understand the stories of religious people, though it may frustrate those of a more academic bent. Latter-Day Saint belief stories state that the gospels are divinely inspired. To suggest otherwise is to speak directly against God and face sanctions within the church. There is a psychological activity going on here. Some religious people, some members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, in this case, must put up blinders so that they do not have to acknowledge historical/literary understandings of the bible and gospels.

      What types of psychological manipulation on the part of some religious people might be employed to avoid what seem to be obvious scientific/literary/historical truths? One might be to ignore any statements (verbal, written, symbolic) that smack of heresy. As soon as one hears/sees such a statement is beginning one would put up a wall in one's mind and no longer pay attention. Can this be taught? Is this the result of socialization and socially constructed affirmation of the behavior? Is this an exchange type behavior? It could be that some religious people (in this case members of the LDS Church), within any given situation, weigh the pros and cons of siding with the heretical information being presented or with their religious beliefs and, within any given situation, make decisions about at what point they need to choose religion over heretical information, or vice-versa.

      It is not just religious people who engage in these behaviors. Some people of a scientific bent must make decisions when faced with non-scientific sounding/looking information. They must decide how to judge the religious material being presented. Is it material that contradicts scientific evidence? If so, how does one understand it? The age of the Earth, for instance. There are some religious people who believe the Earth is 6,000 years old. When a scientific-minded person comes in contact with a person who holds this belief, and that person decides to discuss the Earth as 6,000 years old, the scientific person needs to decide how to process that information. Ignore it? Label the religious person as crazy?

      When a fundamentalist religious person and a scientific/academic type person come in contact with each other they must decide how to interact. This, of course, requires a definition of the situation on the part of each that may or may not compliment the definition harbored by the other.

      Congregations sometimes run afoul of other churches in their own denominations. In the following example, Pastor Scott tells of how his congregation, after making some “minor” changes to how they did things, decided to split from the Baptist congregations that were supporting them. Pastor Scott did not feel his church’s changes were worth having to leave, but the Baptist churches felt otherwise, convincing him that change was necessary; his church become “fully independent.”

      We broke in 2005. We dropped the name when we were still associated with the Baptists, we dropped the name, which irritated some people. We were making small changes, only small changes, but the mission board would be, like, “Hey, we think that is going to be offensive to some of the churches that have supported you.” Finally we just said, “You know, we cannot sit here and worry about offending everybody that assisted us. We are here to reach people.” So we orchestrated an exit. I said, “Let’s just call it what it is. We are the one’s changing, not you.” And we weren’t even doing anything crazy. I think it was November, 2004, we told them we were gonna end our deal with them at the last day of December. Which we did. We went fully independent.

Incorrigible Realities and Secondary Elaborations

      Mehan and Wood (1975: 9-10) suggest people construct and internalize “incorrigible realities” that shape their worlds. People believe stories to be real, act as if they are, and their minds will not be changed. This holds true for all people and the cultures in which they live: scientists, religious people, academics, artists, capitalists, socialists. Everyone.

      A Christian Satellite Network pastor gave a talk where he said “Christians know things that the world does not.” The thing they “know,” of course, is that God loved man so much that he sent his only begotten son, a perfect person, to die for people’s sins; he was crucified though he was without sin; he rose from death. These are things Christians not only believe, but they know. Non-believers do not know this to be true. Christians are upfront about it. You need to believe, that is it. If you believe the story about God and Christ, then it is true. If you believe the story about God and Christ, you will act as if it is true.

      Other people will not believe what you believe, the story goes. Indeed, they will often accuse you of being crazy thinking such things. This is a part of the Christian story: The more people accuse you of being crazy or spreading falsehoods, the more you can be sure that you believe the right thing!

      Stories such as told above are what E. E. Evans-Pritchard (Mehan and Wood 1975) refers to as “secondary elaborations of belief.” We all live and act within realities constructed from our collective and individual belief stories. Our belief story realities are rife with contradictions and easily pointed-out falsehoods. Our incorrigible realities are like balloons in which we live. Contradictions and falsehoods threaten to pop our balloons and, thus, our belief story realities. In order to keep our realities from popping, we create secondary elaborations, behavioral sealant to hold the rubber together. The “if they say you’re wrong, you must be right” Christian story is such a secondary elaboration. Indeed, when used well, it will seal any belief story reality hole.

Failed Prophecy

          A common contradiction for end times religious stories is when end times do not happen as prophesied. When this occurs, the prophesiers must rationalize away the mistake for the sake of harmony among the congregation. Dawson distinguishes four types of rationalizations for failed prophecy: (1) spiritualization; (2) test of faith; (3) human error; (4) blaming others (Sarno et al. 2015: 200). These four deal specifically with rationalizing (secondary elaborations) situations in which end-time prophecy does not come to pass. “Spiritualization” refers to situations in which the prophecy was correct, albeit in a spiritual or invisible way only true believers perceive. “Test of faith” is when God or some other supernatural agents are trying to weed out true believers from non-. “Human error” suggests that there has been a miscalculation of some kind by humans here on Earth (we are only human, after all). “Blaming others” suggests that outsiders interfered with the predicted event.

      The authors coded Harold Camping’s end-times radio show for the presence or absence of the four kinds of rationalizations discussed above (Sarno 2015). A complex set of rules “was needed to code some latent content in which the rationalizations and reaffirmations were more implicit.” Through his radio show Camping actively constructed belief stories about a failed end-times prophecy in an authoritative fashion. He also did so in a sometimes spontaneous on-air fashion in live interactions with callers.

      The survival of religious leaders after “failed” prophecies depends on a rapid reaffirmation of the merits of the group’s actions and mission in the face of failure. A prophecy failure presents cracks in the group’s belief story. Leaders, who are seen as the bearers of belief stories and, thus, are held directly responsible for failed prophecy, attempt to seal the belief story cracks with secondary elaborations; some are more successful at this than others.

The Construction of the Rapture

      In The Rapture Exposed (2004) Barbara Rossing attempts to debunk rapture Theology. She suggests that such a theology has only been around about 186 years and is the province of 20th Century evangelicalism in Britain and the United States. Rapture Theology, she argues, began in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1830 when fifteen-year-old Margaret MacDonald attended a healing service and had a vision of a two-stage return of Christ (p. 22). Her story was adapted and promoted by evangelical preacher John Nelson Darby.

      Darby invented “dispensations,” time intervals in which God has a time table for the unfolding of humans’ time on Earth. From this term came “dispensationalism,” a school of thinking about end times (p. 23). In this view God has divided all of human history into seven ages, or dispensations. He has sets of rules for people during each dispensation.

      Rossing shows how dispensationalism has grown in Britain and the United States. She suggests it is an attractive theology because it is presented in a rational, almost scientific way. It fits with the rise of science following the enlightenment. In the age when Darwin was suggesting a comprehensive system of the origin of species, Darby was providing a comprehensive system that made sense of the various contradictions in biblical passages. This is a Weberian way of seeing the rise of dispensationalism and its place within a larger cultural shift in ways of thinking. Theology was changing, moving in a more rational direction as science rose as a voice of authority in society at-large.

      Rossing goes on to argue that dispensationalists base their entire theological argument on three verses at the end of Daniel Chapter 9 (p. 25). It has to do with a countdown to when Christ returns. The clock is ticking, when it gets to zero is when Christ returns. Apparently, however, the countdown stopped when the Jews rejected Christ as their king (p. 26). For the last 2,000 years we have been living in the “church age.” In my observations I have heard pastors speak of how “We are now in the church age.” At some point, any minute now, God will remove all Christians from Earth, Christ will return, and the countdown will commence.

      Rossing writes that many evangelical and bible churches subscribe to dispensational theology while most mainstream Protestant churches and the Catholic Church do not.

      For some, dispensationalist theology is an incorrigible reality, for others it is nonsense. People’s behaviors are shaped by which of these camps, if any, they identify. Their minds will not be changed. Others’ disregard for the story one believes is proof enough that the story is correct.

Latter-Day Saints and Gender

      Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints believe that there are three separate existences for people. First we are formless spirits, created by Heavenly Father and Mother living in a spirit world. Heavenly Father (God) creates us as males and females with all of our masculine and feminine attributes intact. We are brought into Earthly existence through birth to a woman. Earthly existence is a test. We are judged, upon death, to have followed more or less closely to God’s commandments and, consequently, are sent to one of a number of eternal existences beyond “life.” Latter-Day Saints believe that gender is essential and innate. Males are masculine and females are feminine in the same way that males have penises and females have vaginas. Thus, part of our earthly test is to act masculine and feminine; to deviate is to risk points with God upon death.

      Spirits are brought onto the Earth through biological procreation. This means men and women must have sex; sperm need to penetrate eggs. At the highest levels, then, being male means seeking to have children with females, and vice versa. In “The Hallmarks of Righteous Women,” Sumerau and Cragun (2015) quote passages from Ensign, an LDS magazine, and speeches from the LDS General Conference which state that women should be proud of and utilize their God-given femininity not only to attract men, but in everyday situations. God gave women such things as cuteness, nurturing, and gentleness. Women should use these, not try to overcome them.

      This understanding of LDS ideas about gender helps explain the activities of some Latter-Day Saints in everyday life. Those that truly believe LDS doctrine, and obviously there is a continuum from full believers to non-believers, will act in ways they understand to be innate and essential. Full-believing LDS women will act feminine: nurturing, gentle, respectful. They will put up mental barriers to outside notions that there is gender inequality within the Church.

      This last idea suggests the difficulties of maintaining a consistent religious identity in complex modern societies. In a small Utah town like, say, Loa, where virtually everyone of the 529 residents are members of the Church, one can go about one’s life – to the grocers, to church, to school, to the bank – and interact with others who fully support your stories about, in this case, gender being God-given, essential, and innate. One’s gender belief story is consistent for others and for self.

      In a larger city, however, one cannot be so sure that one’s gender story will be supported from moment to moment. A member of the Church in St. George, for instance, will find their gender identity supported at church, sure, and maybe at the grocery store (60% of the population is LDS after all). But what about at college? The professors at Dixie State University are much more interested in the social construction of gender than in its innateness. One’s core gender identity beliefs might be challenged at college, not only in the classroom, but also at off-campus gatherings where there might not be a Latter-Day Saint majority, or by campus clubs like LGBTQIA+ who believe sex and gender are separate things and (both of them) malleable.

      What about in a truly diverse big city like Los Angeles? A Church member in Los Angeles rarely comes in contact with similar others on a situation-to-situation basis. They may have an LDS family and go to an LDS church, but when they go to school or to the bank, a restaurant, or to the beach, there will be few Church members. This means a full-believing Latter-Day Saint will constantly come in contact with people who have non-LDS beliefs about gender. If they want to maintain a consistent gender identity they will have to be religiously reflexive, they will literally have to be self-conscious from situation to situation. “How should a Mormon woman act in this situation,” one will think. “Many of the people in this situation do not have similar beliefs about gender that I do, so I will have to support myself in my gender action decisions. Others will not support me. Indeed, they may actively challenge me.” This will happen from situation to situation throughout the daily life of a full-believing Latter-Day Saint in a modern complex metropolis.

God Enables Our Enemies against Us

      The “God uses enemies against us” story is powerful among contemporary Christians. They talk to each other about the fact that (a) we have enemies and (b) God uses those enemies against us so that we might keep our faith. A core organizing principle for many religious groups is because we are, we have enemies. For example, since the beginning of recorded history Jews have been persecuted. This point is included in their belief stories, it provides a common historical thread for them that, when internalized, says, “We are Jews and we have all, presently and in our past, been oppressed.” I am not suggesting that Jews are fabricating their persecution. They are not. I am simply pointing out the importance of the remembrance of this persecution to their belief stories.

Debating Evolution is a Tired Story

      One Sunday, Steve, a pastor from a Lutheran Church in Pennsylvania, was in the congregation at The Lutheran Church. Steve was a pastor in Colorado when Pastor Gordon was a pastor in Salt Lake City; they crossed paths a few times. Steve and his family were vacationing in the area and stopped in for Pastor Gordon’s service. Steve and I chatted a bit during fellowship time after the service. Pastor Gordon, while making his after service rounds, stopped by and chatted with Steve and I a couple times. One time in particular, when I suggested that I might have Pastor Gordon over to DSU as a guest speaker, “Maybe I can get Pastor Gordon and a biology professor together to debate evolution,” I said, and Pastor Gordon and Steve made the exact same movement and sound, at the same time: they rolled their eyes, shook their heads, and groaned. They both conveyed the idea that this is a tired subject, that they get asked to do it all the time, and that they are tired of it. The fact that they made the exact same movements and sounds tells me something: This is a “line” that WELS Lutheran ministers use when this topic comes up. Not only do they use this line, it has come out of their interactional institutional construction of reality. They teach and reinforce this response to this specific topic with each other.

Conclusion

      In this, the final substantive chapter of the book, I presented a series of stories that religious people encounter that contradict their own belief stories and, thus, their perceived realities. The result of contradictory stories is that they challenge the actions and identities of the contradicted. “If what I believe is not true, then have I been living a lie?” We all deal with contradictory stories and we all have incorrigible realities that provide belief stories for us to dismiss them and support our own.

 

Chapter 12

Conclusion/Discussion

In this book I addressed the age-old sociological question, “How is reality constructed and maintained?” (Berger and Luckman 1966) The answer I provided is “belief stories.” People’s realities are the result of interactional processes designed to express beliefs about the world, situations, and their places within them. People’s actions are the result of their beliefs about reality. In this sense I answered a second sociological question not directly presented in the opening chapter, “Why do people act?” People act, my story goes, because they believe in particular realities. When we believe it to be real, we act as if it is.

I began my story in chapter two of the book with a discussion of reality as a moral order. To express a belief in a type of reality is to express morality. People seem to want life to mean something because if life means something, then their place in life means something. Most people do not like the idea that life is a meaningless accident, so they create stories to justify the world, the universe, and their places within them. To express and attach themselves to a reality is to express and attach themselves to the truth. “This reality is correct and righteous,” their stories go, “because it is the one that I and my people inhabit.” It is a basic sociological process (Glaser and Strauss 1967) that people tell stories that lay moral claim to their perceived realities.

Chapters three and four are descriptive, showing salient places where religious belief stories take place. Chapter Three provides a detailed comparative examination of the programs of three Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) church services that took place on the same dates in 2016. As I show, the substance of the programs are similar. The programs, regardless of particular church, cover the same scriptural readings, for instance. They all provide the same practical information as well and are organized in much the same fashion. Not only, then, do these programs provide readers with an understanding of the services of WELS churches, they also provide data suggesting that one type of belief story presentation is that which comes from above. The fact that these three programs are so similar shows that the substance of WELS services is dictated from the top ranks of the church hierarchy, suggesting a centralized control of the belief stories told at their churches.

In Chapter Four I presented descriptive snippets from some of the religious services I attended, since this is where the bulk of my data came from. Readers gain a look at the goings-on of several types of religious services in this chapter, as well as an understanding of the situational conditions in which religious belief stories occur.

The rest of the book dealt directly with belief stories as empirical realities. I began in Chapter Five by properly discussing the socially constructed nature of belief stories; they exist in interactions with others and self. Chapters Six through Eleven present types of belief stories I encountered in my research of people being religious. These story types include distinctions (Chapter Six), stories beget actions (Chapter Seven), stories as text and texts as stories (Chapter Eight), stories about god (Chapter Nine), born again stories (Chapter Ten), and stories dealing with contradictions (Chapter Eleven).

In this text I answered the question “how is reality constructed and maintained” by highlighting some realities religious people present to one another. The larger theoretical point, however, is that the enactment of belief stories is a basic social process that spans interactional populations and settings. Rock music fans, for instance, engage in what I call “definitional talk,” a form of belief story where they make distinctions between genres and qualities of music (Smith-Lahrman 2010b). Patrons at coffee houses engage in belief stories centered around shared norms of personal space and the rules for breaking those norms; their behaviors rest with their beliefs that coffee houses foster standing patterns of behavior unique to their chunk of space (Smith-Lahrman 2010). In everyday interactions, as another place where belief stories are found, people present and read each others’ gesture clusters in co-creating definitions of situations, realities (Smith-Lahrman 2010c).

The above examples of arenas in which belief stories occur are, of course, from my own research. Examples of belief stories can be found in the work of others, too. Danielle Lindemann (2012), for example, shows how dominatrices and their clients use belief stories to create realities of power and submission in controlled BDSM events. In another work, Lindemann (2019) shows how non-cohabiting married couples (commuter marriages) create realities in which they live apart due to necessity even though the subjects of her study were well-educated and financially well-off. Gary Alan Fine includes in the more than 16 ethnographies he has written, descriptions of belief stories about multiple realities by players of Dungeons and Dragons (1983), tales of the negotiated realities of chefs in the backstage cooking areas of restaurants (1997), and the ways art world support personnel like dealers and collectors create stories of authenticity to frame the work of their outside artist clients (2004).

The examples of belief story studies just given are from only two authors, but of course there are many more. Thousands exist in the outputs not just of sociologists, but of anthropologists and journalists as well. Indeed, anything labeled as ethnography in the academic literature is probably a tale of belief stories created and enacted.

The fact that I suggest such a broad application of the concept of belief stories leads to one of the weaknesses of my book. If belief stories explain everything that people do on a daily interactional basis, then they also explain nothing. If everything people do is an attempt to create and maintain reality, then how do we explain the differences between the many types of activities in which people engage? The answer rests with rigorous empirical research. Sociologists can, as I briefly do in the last few paragraphs, reexamine past ethnographies to classify their tales as one type of belief story or another, or they can embark on research of their own with the same goal. In the end, I wrote a book in which I attempt a broad theoretical explanation of a fundamental human behavior, the social construction of reality. I suggest that the enactment of belief stories is how this is done.

Further belief story research might also be done on the interactional negotiations that take place between people as they attempt to convince each other of contradictory realities. While we often share belief stories and, thus, agree on realities, it is noteworthy that this is not always so. Included in this research would be a discussion of the power dynamics that are part of belief story interactions. Some people and groups have the resources to impose their stories and realities on others while some do not.

Other research could study the channels and processes through which belief stories travel. I suggested at least two such channels in this book: religious texts and religious services. But how do other, more secular, belief stories move from one group to another, one land to another, one generation to another? Detailed and diverse empirical research can answer this question.

Finally, it bears repeating that this work was not a study on the sociology of religion. It is a study in which I used religious practices as strategic sites for understanding a basic social process. In observing religious services I discovered that the stories told there are of things such as God and the supernatural which are beyond empirical study. Religious folks’ enactments of belief stories are dramatic examples of behaviors we all engage in all the time.

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[1] Beginning July 1, 2022, Dixie State University will be named Utah Tech University.

[2] “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas and Thomas 1929).

[3] This is changing. Research and publishing are now openly discussed as avenues toward tenure.

[4] The number of adherents per 1,000 in the population.

[5] I did not attend any non-English speaking language services.

[6] I changed the names of people I formally interviewed as well as the names of the congregations from which they came. Otherwise, the names of congregations are accurate.

[7] The circumstances for some of the congregations have changed in the years since I observed them.

[8] This article was sent to me unsolicited. It arrived hardcopy as a single document, not as part of an issue of The Journal for the American Academy of Religion. The quote I give here was part of a cover letter that accompanied and introduced the article.

[9] This is an eyeball estimate.

[10] Admittedly, I know very little American Sign Language, but I have seen enough of it to recognize its common usage.

[11] Within 18 months of my writing this, SMCC had moved out of this location and into their new, self-sustaining building.

[12] From January 2 – February 11, 2016, armed protesters occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon (Oregonian/Oregonlive 2019).

[13] See Smith-Lahrman (1997) for a discussion of the “U” shape audience configuration at rock music shows.

[14] I retrieved the beliefs in 2015. Calvary Chapel St. George has since changed the content of the “What We Believe” section of their web page.

[15] In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints ordinances have a different meaning than this. In LDS culture ordinances refer to sacred rights and ceremonies. They are things that some members, those who are ordained, perform upon others. Some of these, Saving Ordinances, must occur for individual members to be exalted, their eternal progression to be one with Jesus and live with their families with God.

[16] Pastor Paul is of the Four Square Church, he is talking about an Assemblies of God Church. Both denominations fall under the umbrella of the Pentecostal Christian movement.

[17] Welch left the band in 2005, published the book in 2007, and rejoined Korn in 2013.