Abstract
Some years ago, Meredith B. McGuire, then president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR), tried to call the attention of sociology and psychology of religion to the human body (McGuire 1990). In an eloquent presidential address, she claimed that the social sciences of religion “could be transformed” if the notion that humans are embodied would be taken seriously. In particular, she pointed out the body’s importance (a) in self-experience and self’s experience of others; (b) in the production and reflection of social meanings; (c) as the subject and object of power relations. McGuire’s essay testifies to the growing awareness in contemporary general sociology and psychology of the impact of culture on human functioning, including religiosity. Deplorably, McGuire has not found much of a reception in the psychology of religion. At about the same time, in an invited essay in the opening volume of the newly established The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion (IJPR), Richard Hutch (1991) similarly called attention to the issue of embodiment. He showed that the body has been neglected both as an object of study and as “a researcher’s best tool” (p. 196). Attention to embodiment, Hutch (1991) claims, could foster a comprehensive theoretical reconstruction of the psychology of religion that works beyond ethnocentric limitations. But if one goes through the following volumes both of the JSSR and the IJPR, one finds no echoes of McGuire’s or Hutch’s plea. For the development of theory and research in the discipline, this is to be deplored. Theory, however, is not an end in itself. In any scholarship, also in the scientific study of religion, new theories, concepts and methods will only count as progress when they demonstrate an improved access to and understanding of the phenomena to be analyzed, when they enable research of phenomena that were considered unapproachable, or when they make visible hitherto unknown (aspects of) phenomena. Therefore, theorizing about “embodiment” will have to prove its value in its empirical application: what can it add to the exploration and understanding of religion(s)?
Bevindelijken refers to a group of “experience-oriented” religious people in the Netherlands that is being described in the text. I know of no English word that captures the meaning and current connotations of this term and therefore prefer to use the original word, as is customary in studies in anthropology and history of religions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Although one can hardly do so in a translation, in the next sentences I will try to convey a little of the style of the bevindelijken, using their rather rhetorical terminology. I will deliberately avoid gender neutral language, which they would abhor as opposing the “divinely ordained creation order of male headship.” In many respects, the bevindelijken are strictly conservative; even their language, called the “language of Canaan,” is old-fashioned, rooted in a – to their understanding: irreplaceable – Bible translation from the seventeenth century and in authors from the Further Reformation. Many of the distinguishing characteristics of the group fall outside the scope of this article; in the text I focus on their spirituality, which, for lack of space, I can only describe in part. Some more information in English on the group and its spirituality can be found in Belzen (2003).
- 2.
That is a person in whose life God has “wrought a change.”
- 3.
Even an application I made for a grant for student research was initially (1992) criticized by reviewers of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research: I should have realized that this group is too closed to be investigated, especially about conversion.… Meanwhile, the student successfully defended her doctoral dissertation: Hijweege (2004).
- 4.
A related current similar to discursive psychology is even more outspoken in this regard. Regarding discourse as the characteristic feature of human life, Harré and Stearns (1995) state that there is no central processor (Shweder 1991), or any such mechanism as assumed by the “old” cognitive psychology. Psychology should not search for that. It should rather disclose the structure of the discursive productions in which psychological phenomena are immanent and seek to discover how the various cognitive skills needed to accomplish the tasks that psychology studies are acquired, developed, integrated and employed. Resisting any (neuropsychological) reductionism, they apodictically write: “There is nothing in the human universe except active brains and symbolic manipulations” (Harré and Stearns 1995, p. 2).
- 5.
Criticisms of the neglect of the body in psychology, indeed in Western thought in general, have been offered by philosophical anthropologists and phenomenologists like Nietzsche, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty (for instructive reviews, see e.g., Csordas 1990; Merwe and Voestermans 1995; Stam 1998; Voestermans and Verheggen 2007). In fact, good reasons may be put forward to argue that human beings can understand and think as they do because our more abstract understandings are grounded in preconceptual embodied structures (Lakoff and Johnson 1980; Johnson 1987). A contribution from evolutionary biology to these reflections is provided by Sheets-Johnstone: she points out that major abstract concepts (including notions of death, numbers, agency, etc.) derive from an original corporeal logos. Suggesting that the roots of human thinking lie in the hominid body, she asserts: “meanings are generated by an animal’s bodily comportment, movement and orientation […] semanticity is a built-in of bodily life” (Sheets-Johnstone, in Sampson 1996, p. 618). Cf. also Sacks (1990) who describes how bodily activities evoke a self (p. 46). It would take me too far afield to develop these ideas here. For one of the rare – strongly Lacanian psychoanalytically oriented – attempts at conceptualizing the interwovenness of the human body and culture in psychology-of-religion research, cf. Vergote (1978/1988); also cf. O’Connor (1998).
- 6.
- 7.
Bourdieu’s (typically French) writing is not easy to read, not even in translation. Let us take just one more look at a description of what he means: “[…] the principle generating and unifying all practices, the system of inseparably cognitive and evaluative structures which organizes one’s vision of the world in accordance with the objective structures of a determinate state of the social world: this principle is nothing other than the socially informed body, with its tastes and distastes, its compulsions and repulsions, with, in a word, all its senses, that is to say, not only the traditional five senses – which escape the structuring action of social determinism – but also the sense of necessity and the sense of duty, the sense of direction and the sense of reality, the sense of balance and the sense of beauty, common sense and the sense of the sacred, tactical sense and the sense of responsibility, business sense and the sense of propriety, the sense of humor and the sense of absurdity, moral sense and the sense of practicality, and so on” (1977, p. 124, emphasis in original).
- 8.
For the psychology of religion, coming to an understanding with these new theoretical developments will be the more fruitful since their representatives are much less averse to religion than earlier generations of psychologists tended to be. Authors such as Boesch (1983, 1991, 2000, 2005), Gergen (1993, 1994), Much and Mahapatra (1995), Obeyesekere (1985), Sampson (1996) and Scheibe (1998), while not counted – even by themselves – as practitioners of the psychology of religion, do in fact again include in their work a consideration of a variety of religious phenomena.
References
Aalders, C. (1980). Spiritualiteit: Over geestelijk leven vroeger en nu. [Spirituality: Yesterday and today] ’s Gravenhage: Boekencentrum.
Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. New York: Oxford University Press.
Averill, J. R. (1982). Anger and aggression: an essay on emotion. New York: Springer.
Baerveldt, C. & Voestermans, P. (1996). The body as a selfing device: The case of anorexia nervosa. Theory and Psychology, 6, 693–714.
Batson, C. D., Schoenrade, P. & Ventis, W. L. (1993). Religion and the individual: A social-psychological perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.
Belzen, J. A. (1989b). Godsdienst, psychopathologie en moord: Historische en cultuurpsychologische notities. [Religion, psychopathology, and murder: Historical and cultural-psychological observations] Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdschrift, 16, 115–128.
Belzen, J. A. (1990). Psychopathologie und Religion. [Psychology and religion] Archiv für Religionspsychologie [Archive for the Psychology of Religion], 19, 167–188.
Belzen, J. A. (1991b). Religie in de rapportage pro justitia : Enkele cultuur- en godsdienstpsychologisch relevante casus. [Religion in reportage on issues of justice: A number of cases with relevance to cultural psychology and psychology of religion] In F. Koenraadt (Ed.), Ziek of schuldig? [Ill or guilty?] (pp. 175–190). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Belzen, J.A. (1991c). Verzuiling en mentaliteit: Pleidooi voor een interdisciplinaire benadering. [Pillarization and mentality: A plea for an interdisciplinary approach] Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdschrift, [Amsterdam Journal of Sociology] 17 (4), 46–67.
Belzen, J. A. (1996a). Spiritualiteit als zinvol leven: Profiel van een cultuurpsychologische benadering. [Spirituality as meaningful living: A profile of a cultural psychological approach] Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschrift, [Dutch Journal of Theology] 50, 1–21.
Belzen, J. A. (1996b). Beyond a classic? Hjalmar Sundén’s Role Theory and contemporary narrative psychology. International Journal for the Psychology of religion, 6, 181–199.
Belzen, J. A. (2003). God’s mysterious companionship: Cultural psychological reflections on mystical conversion among Dutch “Bevindelijken.” In J. A. Belzen & A. Geels (Eds.), Mysticism: A variety of psychological approaches (pp. 263–292). Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi.
Berge, H. van den (1997). Uit pestepidemie blijkt onmacht van de mens. [The epidemic of plague reveals the impotence of man] Reformatorisch Dagblad [Reformed Newspaper] June 3, 1997.
Bernstein, R. J. (1983). Beyond objectivism and relativism. Oxford: Blackwell.
Beumer, J. J. (1993). Intimiteit en solidariteit: Over het evenwicht tussen dogmatiek, mystiek en ethiek. [Intimacy and solidarity: On the balance between dogmatics, mysticism, and ethics] Baarn: Ten Have.
Boesch, E. E. (1983). Das Magische und das Schöne: Zur Symbolik von Objekten und Handlungen. [Magic and beauty: On symbolism of objects and acts] Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog.
Boesch, E. E. (1991). Symbolic action theory and cultural psychology. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer.
Boesch, E. E. (2000). Das lauernde Chaos: Mythen und Fiktionen im Alltag. [Chaos lies on the lurk: Myths and fictions in daily life] Bern: Huber.
Boesch, E. E. (2005). Von Kunst bis Terror: Über den Zwiespalt in der Kultur. [From art to terror: On the discord in culture] Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, P. & Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An introduction to reflexive sociology. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
Brienen, T. (1978). Bevinding: Aard en functie van de geloofsbeleving. [Bevinding: The nature and function of the experience of faith] Kampen: Kok.
Brienen, T. (Ed.) (1986). De Nadere Reformatie. [The Further Reformation] Den Haag: Boekencentrum.
Brienen, T. (Ed.) (1989). De Nadere Reformatie en het Gereformeerd Piëtisme. [The Further Reformation and Reformed Pietism] Den Haag: Boekencentrum.
Brienen, T. (2003). Mystiek van de Nadere Reformatie. [Mysticism of the Further Reformation] In J. Baers, G. Brinkman, A. Jelsma & O. Steggink (Eds.), Encyclopedie van de mystiek: Fundamenten, tradities, perspectieven [Encyclopedia of mysticism: Foundations, traditions, perspectives] (pp. 753–759). Kampen/Tielt: Kok/Lannoo.
Csordas, Th. J. (1990). Embodiment as a paradigm for anthropology. Ethos, 18, 5–47.
Cushmann, Ph. (1990). Why the self is empty: Toward a historically situated psychology. American Psychologist, 45, 599–611.
Dekker, G. & Peters, J. (1989). Gereformeerden in meervoud: Een onderzoek naar levensbeschouwing en waarden van de verschillende gereformeerde stromingen. [Being Reformed in the plural: An inquiry into the philosophy of life and values of the different currents] Kampen: Kok.
Florijn, H. (1991). De Ledeboerianen: Een onderzoek naar de plaats, invloed en denkbeelden van hun voorgangers tot 1907. [The Ledeboerians: A study of the place, influence, and ideas of their ministers up until 1907] Houten: Den Hertog.
Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic Books.
Gergen, K. J. (1973). Social psychology as history. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 26 (2), 309–320.
Gergen, K. J. (1985). The social constructionist movement in modern psychology. The American Psychologist, 40, 266–275.
Gergen, K. J. (1993). Belief as relational resource. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 3 (4), 231–235.
Gergen, K. J. (1994). Realities and relationships: Soundings in social construction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Goffman, E. (1951). Symbols of class status. British Journal of Sociology, 2, 294–304.
Gomperts, W. J. (1992). De opkomst van de sociale fobie: Een sociologische en psychologische studie naar de maatschappelijke verandering van psychische verschijnselen. [The rise of social phobia: a sociological and psychological study into the societal change of psychic phenomena] Amsterdam: Bert Bakker.
Graafland, C. (1991). Bevinding. In W. Aantjes (Ed.), Gereformeerden en het gesprek met de cultuur. [The Reformed and the dialogue with culture] Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum.
Harinck, C. (1980). De bekering. [Conversion] Utrecht: Den Hertog.
Harré, R. (Ed.) (1986). The social construction of emotions. Oxford: Blackwell.
Harré, R. (1992). The second cognitive revolution. American Behavioral Scientist, 36, 3–7.
Harré, R. & Stearns, P. (1995). Discursive psychology in practice. London: Sage.
Heppe, H. (1879/1979). Geschichte des Pietismus und der Mystik in der Reformirten Kirche, namentlich der Niederlande. [History of pietism and mysticism in the Reformed Church, notably in The Netherlands] Kampen: Goudriaan.
Hijweege, N. H. (2004). Bekering in bevindelijk gereformeerde kring: Een psychologische studie. [Conversion among bevindelijken: A psychological study] Kampen: Kok.
Hof, W. J. op ’t (1987). Engelse piëtistische geschriften in het Nederlands, 1598–1622. [English Pietist writings in Dutch] Rotterdam: Lindenberg.
Hood, R. W. (1998). When the spirit maims and kills: Social psychological considerations of the history of serpent handling sects and the narrative of handlers. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 8, 71–96.
Hutch, R. A. (1991). Mortal body, studying lives: Restoring Eros to the psychology of religion. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 1, 193–210.
Janse, C. S. L. (1985). Bewaar het pand: De spanning tussen assimilatie en persistentie bij de emancipatie van de bevindelijk gereformeerden. [Guard what has been entrusted to you: The tension between assimilation and persistence in the case of the emancipation of the ‘bevindelijke’ Reformed] Houten: Den Hertog.
Johnson, M. (1987). The body in the mind: The bodily basis of meaning, imagination and reason. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
Jong, O. J. de, Spijker, W. van ’t & Florijn, H. (1992). Het eigene van de Nadere Reformatie. [The characteristic features of the Further Reformation] Houten: Den Hertog.
Ketterij, C. van de (1972). De weg in woorden: Een systematische beschrijving van piëtistisch woordgebruik na 1900. [The way in words: A systematic account of pietistic word usage after 1900] Assen: Van Gorcum.
Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lieburg, F. A. van (1991). Levens van vromen: Gereformeerd piëtisme in de achttiende eeuw. [The lives of the devout: Calvinist pietism in the eighteenth century] Kampen: De Groot Goudriaan.
Loewenthal, K. M. (1995). Mental health and religion. London: Chapman & Hall.
McGuire, M. B. (1990). Religion and the body: Rematerializing the human body in the social sciences of religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 29, 283–296.
McKim, D. K. (1992). The mainline Protestant understanding of conversion. In H. N. Malony & S. Southard (Eds.), Handbook of religious conversion (pp. 123–136). Birmingham, Al.: Religious Education Press.
Merwe, W. L. & Voestermans, P. P. (1995). Wittgenstein’s legacy and the challenge to psychology. Theory & Psychology, 5 (1), 27–48.
Much, N. C. & Mahapatra, M. (1995). Constructing divinity. In R. Harré & P. Stearns (Eds.), Discursive psychology in practice (pp. 55–86). London: Sage.
O’Connor, K. V. (1998). Religion and mental health: A review of Antoine Vergote’s approach in “Guilt and desire.” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 8, 125–148.
Obeyesekere, G. (1985). Depression, Buddhism, and the work of culture in Sri Lanka. In A. Kleinman & B. Good (Eds.), Culture and depression: Studies in the anthropology and cross-cultural psychiatry of affect and disorder (pp. 134–152). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Quispel, G. (Ed.) (1976). Mystiek en bevinding. [Mysticism and “Bevinding”] Kampen: Kok.
Radley, A. (1996). Displays and fragments: Embodiment and the configuration of social worlds. Theory and Psychology, 6, 559–576.
Rambo, L. R. (1992). The psychology of conversion. In H. N. Malony & S. Southard (Eds.), Handbook of religious conversion (pp. 159–177). Birmingham: Religious Education Press.
Rambo, L. R. (1993). Understanding religious conversion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Sacks, O. (1990). Neurology and the soul. The New York Review of books, November 22.
Sampson, E. E. (1996). Establishing embodiment in psychology. Theory and Psychology, 6, 601–620.
Sarbin, T. R. (Ed.) (1986a). Narrative psychology: The storied nature of human conduct. New York: Praeger.
Sarbin, T. R. & Kitsuse, J. I. (Eds.) (1994). Constructing the social. London: Sage.
Scheibe, K. E. (1998). Self studies: The psychology of self and identity. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Schram, P. L. (1983). Conventikels. [Conventicles] In J. M. Vlijm (Ed.), Buitensporig geloven: Studies over randkerkelijkheid [Believing exorbitantly: Studies of church life on the margins] (pp. 50–69). Kampen: Kok.
Shotter, J. (1992). “Getting in touch”: The meta-methodology of a postmodern science of mental life. In S. Kvale (Ed.), Psychology and postmodernism (pp. 58–73). London: Sage.
Shotter, J. (1993a). Conversational realities: Constructing life through language. London: Sage.
Shotter, J. (1993b). Cultural politics of everyday life: Social construction, rhetoric and knowing of the third kind. Buffalo: University of Toronto Press.
Shweder, R. A. (1991). Thinking through cultures: Expeditions in cultural psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Stam, H. J. (Ed.) (1998). The body and psychology. London: Sage.
Tennekes, J. (1969). De “oud gereformeerden.” [The “Old-Reformed”] Mensch en maatschappij, [Man and Society] 44, 365–385.
VanderMeiden, A. (1981). Welzalig is het volk: Een bijgewerkt en aangevuld portret van de zwarte-kousen kerken. [Blessed are the people: An edited and enlarged portrait of the Black Stocking churches] Baarn: Ten Have.
Vellenga, S. J. (1994). Bevindelijk gereformeerden en hun geestelijke gezondheidszorg. [Reformed “bevindelijken” and their mental health care] Maandblad Geestelijke volksgezondheid, [Monthly for Mental Health Care] 49, 962–975.
Vergote, A. (1978/1988). Guilt and desire: Religious attitudes and their pathological derivatives. (transl. M.H. Wood) New Haven, CT/London: Yale University Press.
Voestermans, P. P. L. A. (1992). Cultuurpsychologie: van cultuur in de psychologie naar psychologie in “cultuur.” [Cultural psychology: From culture in psychology to psychology in “culture”] Nederlands Tijdschrift voor de Psychologie, [Dutch Journal of Psychology] 47, 151–162.
Voestermans, P. & Verheggen, T. (2007). Cultuur en lichaam: Een cultuurpsychologisch perspectief op patronen in gedrag. [Culture and body: A cultural-psychological perspective on behavioural patterns] Malden, MA/Oxford: Blackwell/Heerlen: Open Universiteit Nederland.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, L. (1980). Remarks on the philosophy of psychology. Vols. I and II. Oxford: Blackwell.
Zwemer, J. (1992). In conflict met de cultuur: De bevindelijk gereformeerden en de Nederlandse samenleving in het midden van de twintigste eeuw. [In conflict with culture: Reformed “bevindelijken” and mid-20th century Dutch society] Kampen: De Groot Goudriaan.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Belzen, J.A. (2010). Religion as Embodiment. In: Towards Cultural Psychology of Religion. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3491-5_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3491-5_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-3490-8
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-3491-5
eBook Packages: Behavioral ScienceBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)