By
Hadleigh Frost
Key Points:
Studies
of religion
Control
amidst the randomness of life
Are
we okay? Is the `All right?’ campaign is on to something?
Lessons
from an earthquake community
When a magnitude 4.0 earthquake
struck Christchurch on Boxing day in 2010, many Cantabrians were singing
carols. It was Sunday morning and people had gathered in churches for Christmas
services, but at 11:10 am the ground trembled and the singing stopped. Interruptions like this became
commonplace in Christchurch after a major earthquake in September 2010, and the
city ground to a halt following a devastating aftershock five months later.
During this stressful time, Christchurch became significantly more religious.
What draws us to religion during times of hardship? And does religion help? These are not just questions for
esoteric sociology professors. Religion is a major part of how we experience
loss and investigating these questions can suggest ways to better assist
communities following disasters like the Christchurch earthquake.
New Zealand lies at the boundary
between two massive pieces of the Earth’s crust. The pushing and folding of
these two geological plates has sculpted our country over millions of years,
forming everything from the southern alps to Mount Tongariro.
All of this movement puts the land
we live on under a great deal of stress. During the settlement of Christchurch
from 1850 to 1930, the area was affected by four major earthquakes. These
quakes were themselves readjustments to a much a larger earthquake that
occurred in the 1700s.
The recent sequence of Canterbury
earthquakes was yet another readjustment, and it had tragic consequences. One
hundred and ten people lost their lives on the 22nd of February 2011 in a
magnitude 6.3 earthquake. Approximately two thirds of city buildings were
irreversibly damaged, including many of Christchurch’s historic churches and
cathedrals.
Roughly half of New Zealanders
identify with a religion, and this number has been declining for decades.
Christchurch recently bucked this trend. Data from the New Zealand Attitudes
and Values Survey show that Christchurch residents became significantly more religious
following the devastating February earthquake.
Between 2009 and 2011, 8.6% of
Cantabrians converted to a religion while only 5.2% became non-religious.
Outside of Canterbury, New Zealanders were much less likely to convert to a
religion: Only 5.3% became religious while 6.9% apostatized.
This increase in religion may seem
odd. Most Christians, for instance, believe in a God who is loving and kind, a
belief that could conflict with the destruction and loss experienced by those
living in Canterbury. How could such a horrible event encourage belief in God?
In 2005, seventy seven
undergraduate students from the University of Illinois were surveyed to
ascertain how strongly they believed in God and his ability to answer prayers.
Before being surveyed the students were told a story.
One group of students was told a
story about a mother picking up her child from preschool. A second group was
told a different version of the story in which the child dies. The second group
reported a much stronger belief in a supernatural God than the first group.
Merely being reminded of death
dramatically increased the students’ belief in both God and the power of
prayer. It seems plausible that this effect helped to increase religious belief
in Christchurch after the earthquakes.
But religion is much more than just
a response to death. Religious thinking might be part of our human response to
randomness. In our chaotic and uncertain world we find ways to feel more in
control. We buy special stones to improve our luck, take food supplements to
ward off the flu and, sometimes, dance around naked to make it rain.
Psychologists suspect that we might be wired up to act this way from a young
age.
In the early eighties a pair of
psychologists from the University of Kansas took a mechanical clown called
‘Bobo’ down to their local preschool. Bobo was a very special sort of clown;
His nose could light up red and he could dispense marbles out of his mouth.
The psychologists took children into
a small room and told them that if they were able to collect enough marbles
from Bobo they would get a toy. To accomplish this task the children were given
a lever. When pulled, Bobo would sometimes spit out a marble, but not always.
In response to Bobo’s randomness,
the children tried to find other ways to make Bobo give them marbles. They
tried making faces at Bobo and touching Bobo’s nose; each child developing
their own method. And the more impatient they were to get a marble, the harder
they tried to influence Bobo using their method.
These little rituals didn’t actually
do anything, but the children learned to do these things anyway. Even in that
little room with a mechanical clown, it was better to develop rituals than live
with uncertainty.
Our attempts to cope with randomness
extend far beyond marble dispensing clowns. In 2006, tensions between Israel
and Hezbollah climaxed in a month long conflict fought in northern Israel and
Lebanon. Tzfat, in northern Israel, was one of the cities plagued by rocket
attacks.
An American anthropologist living in
Israel studied the response of Tzfat residents to the war. Data from over a
hundred interviews show that reciting psalms strongly affected the anxiety of
the residents.
Not all residents stayed in Tzfat,
many evacuated to the south. Reciting psalms had no effect for residents who
had evacuated. However, for residents living in the war zone, under high stress
conditions, reciting psalms was correlated with much lower levels of anxiety.
The psalms are published in
traditional Hebrew, which can be difficult for modern Hebrew speakers to
understand; but, for the residents, understanding the precise meaning of the
psalms was unimportant. They said that they recited psalms because they wanted
“to do something” about the war.
For the children in the
psychologists’ room, making faces at Bobo didn’t do much. But, for the Tzfat
residents living through a tumultuous war, reciting psalms made a big
difference to their lives. Reciting psalms significantly lowered their anxiety
by allowing them to “do something” about their situation: It helped them cope.
In Christchurch, many residents
turned to religion after the earthquakes. So, if reciting psalms helped the
Tzfat residents cope, did religion help Christchurch residents with the stress
of the earthquakes?
As part of the New Zealand Attitudes
and Values Survey, researchers investigated how people felt about their
personal health. Using data from both 2009 and 2011 the researchers found no
significant differences between the religious and non-religious respondents.
From this study alone we cannot
determine how much religion helped Christchurch residents. However, other
studies show that religion can help people process traumatic events in ways that
go far beyond rituals like reciting psalms.
Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
is a particularly traumatic experience for parents. In many cases the child’s
death is not witnessed and the cause of death is impossible to determine. In
the eighties a group of American psychologists spent two years following the
lives of over a hundred parents who had lost an infant to SIDS.
The psychologists found that parents
who were more involved with a religious community adjusted to their loss much
better than other parents. Were the more religious parents just better at
coping? Not necessarily. The study found that social support was likely the
most important factor contributing to the well-being of the parents.
Parents who felt supported by their
social group were much better at coping in the weeks following the loss of
their child. These parents also spent more time thinking through their loss ---
a behaviour that was found to increase long-term well-being.
Why did Christchurch become more
religious after the quakes? The increase may be related to many things
including peoples’ fear of death, and their response to the stress and
uncertainty of post-earthquake Christchurch. However, research in this area is
relatively young and so these conclusions must be considered with caution. (See
note [11].)
Whatever the reason, research shows
that Canterbury’s religious converts may be on to something: Religious practice
often does help people cope with traumatic events. Religions can provide people
with tools to reduce their anxiety, and some religious communities provide a
great deal of social support.
What can this teach an increasingly
non-religious New Zealand? In the aftermath of the earthquakes, Christchurch
residents faced uncertainty over the future of their homes, jobs and
neighbourhoods. When asked, many residents said they felt stressed or anxious
with almost half the respondents saying that they needed additional social
support.
This was one of the motivations
behind Christchurch’s `All Right?’ campaign --- a publically funded project
that populated the city with posters designed to encourage stronger
communities. The posters suggest simple actions that help to strengthen social
connection, like catching up with friends. It is also thought that these
actions can reduce feelings of anxiety and hopelessness. (See note [10].)
Through our civic planning, mental
health services and projects like the `All Right?’ campaign, New Zealand cities
can foster more resilient communities for religious and non-religious people
alike. We might not be able to stop the earthquakes, but together we can get
through them.
“[...] They will exclaim, 'Was there ever a city like this great city?’” --- Revelation 18:18
1.
Earthquake data were retrieved using the `Quake Search’
application available from http://geonet.org.nz/
2.
Sibley, C. G., & Bulbulia, J. (2012). Faith after an
Earthquake: A Longitudinal Study of Religion and Perceived Health before and
after the 2011 Christchurch New Zealand Earthquake. PLoS ONE, 7(12), e49648.
3.
Doser, D. I., Webb, T. H., & Maunder, D. E. (1999).
Source parameters of large historical (1918–1962) earthquakes, South Island,
New Zealand. Geophysical Journal international, 139(3), 769–794.
4.
More Christchurch churches damaged by quakes. (15-06-2011).
TVNZ. Retrieved from http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/more-christchurch-churches-damaged-quakes-4228994
5.
Norenzayan, A., & Hansen, I. G. (2006). Belief in
Supernatural Agents in the Face of Death. Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin, 32(2), 174–187.
6.
Wagner, G. A., & Morris, E. K. (1980). Acquisition of Superstitious
Behavior with Children. Proceedings of
the 88th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association.
7.
Sosis, R., &
Handwerker, W. P. (2011). Psalms and Coping with Uncertainty: Religious Israeli
Women’s Responses to the 2006 Lebanon War. American Anthropologist, 113(1),
40–55.
8.
McIntosh, D. N., Silver, R. C., & Wortman, C. B. (1993).
Religion’s role in adjustment to a negative life event: coping with the loss of
a child. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(4), 812–821.
9.
Becoming All Right? (2013, April). Healthy Christchurch.
Retrieved from http://www.healthychristchurch.org.nz/media/100697/allrightresearchsummary.pdf
11. For a
review of the psychological research see Pargament, K. I. (2013). APA Handbook
of Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality. Washington, D.C: American
Psychological Association.