Creating Optimism

As a psychologist I am interested in spirituality and faith. I am interested in the blind faith that sends terrorists or kamikaze pilots to destroy ships, or buildings or people even at the cost of their own lives. I am interested in the faith of Christian martyrs who faced lions in the Colosseum or the fires of the inquisition rather than renounce their own beliefs.

Someone asked me the other day whether I thought that the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington would lead to a lasting rebirth of religious faith in Western nations. Certainly there was a rush to places of worship in the immediate aftermath of September 11. However, one of the problems in answering the question of this upsurge's longevity is the confusion in what we mean by what we call 'faith' or 'spirituality.' In reality there is an amalgam of three quite distinct things. These are:

• Belief in religious dogmas
• Spiritual practices including meditation, prayer etc.
• The search for community and the need to belong

In neurological terms the first two use different areas of the brain. We are wired for belief, there is a part of the central cortex known as the 'god spot' which predisposes us to accept things on faith, to believe. Meditation, prayer and perhaps the sense of oneness with All There Is (or Universal Consciousness) and religious ecstasy are controlled by a part of the cerebrum just above the visual cortex at the rear of our heads.

Since we are social creatures we tend to do everything in community with others, and the need to belong to a community, group or tribe is very strong.

The more we deny any one of these three aspects of our spiritual experience the more we are liable to suffer from mental or physical illness. This is a point that was made in a recent WHO report and in several health news items we have featured in our Health News Archive (see "Religious Observance Leads to Longer Life" and "'The Prayer Spot' Found").

Disasters, whether immediate and dramatic such as the recent ones, or longer term such as the Oklahoma dust bowl, tend to draw people to communion with others in a religious setting on the one hand and to a desperate clinging to faith on the other. There was an upsurge in outward signs of belief during the days of the black death in mediaeval Europe, and bin Laden's recruits come from the religious fanaticism engendered by the grinding poverty and hopelessness of people in many Muslim countries.

A Gallup poll conducted in the US in the wake of the terrorist attack showed that 47 percent of respondents said they had attended church or synagogue in the last seven days, a level rarely seen since the 1950s. A spokesman for the New York Buddhist Temple, Kenjitsu Nakagaki, spoke of the enormous increase in the numbers coming through their doors. At the same time he lamented "People have come here to seek peace. But with so many people, it was sometimes a little less than calm."

Benton Johnson, a religion professor at the University of Oregon, argues that religious services have provided ritual and sanctuary at a time when both were desperately needed. But, he says, that doesn't necessarily mean that thousands of people have suddenly decided to become regularly observant. He was quoted in ABC News saying "My guess is that most people who've gone into churches and synagogues haven't had their beliefs changed. They're going for ceremony, to show grievance and for community."

A great friend of mine, the Rev Pat Palmer of the Center for Conscious Living in Clearwater, Florida, makes something of the same point: "At CCL, we found that many of us wanted to be together immediately following the attacks, and we let ourselves share our grief through special services at the Center. We have been encouraging each other to find and release those shadows within the self which support anger or judgement or sadness. By letting go of those barriers to love, within the self, we don't continue to project them out to the world."

There's no doubt that Americans, as opposed to Europeans or Australians, consider themselves a religious people. Ninety-five percent told and ABC poll last year that they believe in God. A Gallup Organization survey for CNN and USA Today in December 1999 found that 94 percent believed in God, or in some form of "universal spirit or higher power."

But, Johnson says, in recent years the American perspective on religion has changed in a way that favors private worship over group services.

"I think there's an increasing notion in this country that religion is 'my own private thing,'" he said. "The unwritten rule is I'll make no judgment about your religion provided you don't judge mine. And, overall, that's led to lower attendance."

As Johnson points out, one key aspect that private observance can't provide is community. In fact, in some rural parts of the United States, local places of worship are often the only places for people to get together. Also in the US, and to some extent in other parts of the world, the 12-step programs, with their belief in the importance of a 'higher power' (which may be the 12-step group itself at first), may provide an opportunity for both connection to others and to a sense of spirituality. And it's in churches that 12-step programs are usually held, sometimes these groups are directly associated with churches.

In the US the church often takes the place of the local pub in England, the RSL or Leagues club in Australia or the bar-bistro in France. It is the center of community activities, but the price is at least the outward acceptance of that church's tenants of faith.

We need a belief in a higher power or god to feel safe — to feel that we are being looked after. Those that do not have that belief are prone to depression. It is a need which the 'local' cannot provide. Sometimes that need finds release in dysfunctional forms such as a blind faith in politicians like Hitler. If there is no God, that part of the brain that needs belief reasons, then Adolf will look after us.

Blind faith is one of the unspoken dangers that might arise from the ashes of the World Trade Center. Blind faith in our politicians, blind faith in fundamental Christianity or the Islamic Jihad in the search for certainty in a world gone mad.

Human beings need certainty, we are creatures of stasis who naturally avoid change and who cope with sudden change badly. Some of us who have been exposed to trauma in childhood will react to recent events by becoming victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (see article on PTSD). Others of us, perhaps those who have come from households with a strict domineering father, may seek the certainty of these fundamentalist faiths.

For the majority there may be a seeking of the solace of being with a group of people who share with us a common spiritual outlook, a common view of the world. A turn to religion for ritual and community during a crisis may be expected and temporary, but some religious leaders and scholars say the sheer magnitude of this tragedy is bound to trigger a deeper spiritual response.

"What happened after September 11 is what I call a seismic event," says Martin Marty, a professor emeritus of University of Chicago and religion scholar. "There's no way Americans can arrange their lives in the same way. And as long religious leaders can convince people they are offering a fabric of meaning you can't get anywhere else, then some will stay."

Within two hours of the attacks, the American Tract Society had begun designing a new pamphlet advertising their faith in light of the tragedy. Robert Briggs of the American Bible Society said his privately funded group had published a booklet of tragedy-relevant scriptures within two days of the attacks and has since distributed more than 600,000 copies of the booklet.

What I fear more than anything else in the wake of September 11 is that we will be faced with two competing fundamentalisms, both seeing the world in terms of good versus evil in George Bush's phrase. I fear a world in which compromise and dialogue are not possible and in which the dark shadows within us which Palmer spoke of will find their outlet in unquestioning belief-driven hate.

In "The Book of Hope" the guide Ati says this: "Doubt all your preconceptions. Doubt the confining education, doubt the dysfunctional nuclear family, doubt the demanding religions, doubt the wisdom of your leaders, doubt the words written in pompous editorials. Doubt is the path to All There Is." Whether you believe in Ati as a spirit guide or not, his words are very relevant to now.

To answer the original question, then, I do not know whether this tragedy will give rise to a return to religious observance. What I do know, as a psychologist, is that this sort of event can foster the very kind of fanaticism which we claim to be at war with. Or it can lead to a better and deeper coming-together of people in search of connection with each other and to the divine.