“You have to have faith,” the umpteenth proselyte tells me for the umpteenth time. (I enjoy talking about religion, so I will spend some time with these people.)
For decades I was a skeptic, but these days… I believe! If I want to believe, I have to have faith, and lots of it. If I don’t have faith, these beliefs are just plain wacky!
The beliefs in question are those I call Pillar of Faith beliefs. Pillars of Faith are religious beliefs (and other kinds) that have no basis in harsh reality or sound logic. So why believe? Those who believe in them do so to demonstrate they are part of “the group”, religious or otherwise. This is a central part of Chosen People thinking.
The focus of this section is on how these particular choices become Pillars of Faith and why having Pillars of Faith is a valuable human thinking trait.
Here are three examples of odd choices:
What all three of these odd choices have in common is they are practices that were first embraced for practical reasons, but with time the practicality disappeared. As this happened leaders and followers had to decide whether to give up the practice or sustain it by embracing it as a Pillar of Faith. Once it becomes a Pillar of Faith, practitioners de facto recognize there no longer exists a functional reason for the practice; rather it has become a matter of faith and a badge of believing in the religion or cause.
The Jewish people have philosophical explanations for their religious practices. This comes from the Wikipedia description of their dietary laws - Kashrut, which are divided into three groups. “[L]aws that have a rational explanation and would probably be enacted by most orderly societies (mishpatim), laws that are understood after being explained, but would not be legislated without the Torah’s command (edot), and laws that do not have a rational explanation (chukim). Some Jewish scholars say that kashrut should be categorized as laws for which there is no particular explanation, since the human mind is not always capable of understanding divine intentions. In this line of thinking, the dietary laws were given as a demonstration of God's authority and man must obey without asking why. However, Maimonides believed that Jews were permitted to seek out reasons for the laws of the Torah.”
Not surprisingly, there is a lot of emotion behind making the choice to transform something from a practical practice into a Pillar of Faith, and the choice can often split the group. The third example, the FLDS choice to embrace polygamy, is an example of religious schism. More on that later.
Let's look at the practical roots that started each of these choices.
Thanks to my Anthropology teacher I was introduced to Marvin Harris and his essay “The Abominable Pig”, which talks about pragmatic ecological explanations for why the Israelites gave up on pig raising. The essence of the argument is that while pig raising worked in some circumstances in the Judean part of the Middle East, it was usually an expensive alternative to raising cattle, sheep and goats; the Jewish leaders wanted to encourage the latter. As late as the 12th century Egyptian Jewish rabbi Moses Maimonides, court physician to the Islamic emperor Saladin, was still dead-set against pork eating.
Once again from Wikipedia, this time quoting from Brigham Young's Journal of Discourses about the origins of the Word of Wisdom. Young noted that as the Elders discussed “the great things of the kingdom” there had been not only pipe smoking but also tobacco chewing and spitting on the floor. Young wrote, “Often when the Prophet (Joseph Smith) entered the room to give the school instructions he would find himself in a cloud of tobacco smoke. This, and the complaints of his wife at having to clean so filthy a floor, made the Prophet think upon the matter, and he inquired of the Lord relating to the conduct of the Elders in using tobacco, and the revelation known as the Word of Wisdom was the result of his inquiry.” In other words, this Pillar was initiated as a practical solution to a real world problem.
The practice started in 1835 when the Doctrine and Covenants was published. By 1842 there were already questions about what it really meant. In 1842 Hyrum Smith (Joseph’s brother), and Assistant President of the Church, considered the Word of Wisdom and gave his interpretation: “hot drinks are not for the body, or belly”. Smith said, “There are many who wonder what this can mean; whether it refers to tea, or coffee, or not. I say it does refer to tea, and coffee." Hyrum was the opinion maker of that day. As mentioned earlier, fast forward to recent years, and the question of what to consume now revolves around soft drinks with caffeine in them. They aren't hot but...
Unlike pork, tobacco, or hot drink consumption, polygamy seems to have come into Mormonism by historic accident. Some of the earliest converts to Joseph Smith's new religion were Cochranites - followers of a short-lived religious order founded by Jacob Cochran. His followers practiced a lifestyle comparable to 1960's hippie commune aspirations and is perhaps where the LDS ideas for United Order (a community shares all the wealth system) and plural marriage came from. I say “perhaps” because no one knows for sure now, and the leaders and followers may not have known for sure even in their own time.
The 1830's and 40's was an exciting time for many things in the US. One of those things was experimenting with new religious ideas - think California in the 1950's and 60's only more so. Mormonism was just one of hundreds of new religious forms being experimented with, and Cochranism was another, and both were quite chaotic in their beginnings. Even though there is a lot of documentation from this period, the roots that became parts of these various religions remain quite uncertain.
As the Mormons finally settled down in Utah in the 1850's (they had moved dozens of times around the Midwest during the 1830's and 40's and made lots of enemies in the process), they were more open about polygamy and it became a Pillar of Faith. In the 1880's this turned into a crisis as the Mormons were torn between keeping the Pillar or giving it up so they could become a part of mainstream US culture. The symbol of this moving mainstream was getting statehood for Utah, something that had been denied many times in the previous decades. The mainstream Mormon Church renounced polygamy, but those who wanted to sustain it split away and became a cluster of fundamentalist groups who were Mormon but no longer mainstream Mormon. The FLDS was one of those breakaway groups.
From a Wikipedia article about Warren Jeffs, we see how FLDS polygamy has evolved into a Pillar of Faith for that community. “In January 2004, Jeffs expelled a group of 20 men from Colorado City, including the mayor, and reassigned their wives and children to other men in the community. Jeffs, like his predecessors, continued the standard FLDS and Mormon fundamentalist tenet that faithful men must follow what is known as the doctrine of “Celestial Marriage” or plural marriage in order to attain the highest degree of Exaltation in the afterlife. Jeffs specifically taught that a devoted church member is expected to have at least three wives in order to get into heaven, and the more wives a man has, the closer he is to heaven. Former church members claim that Jeffs himself has seventy wives.” The FLDS experience is an example of how crisis in belief in a Pillar of Faith can split a community.
The benefit of having Pillars of Faith is similar to the benefits of having a kinship system. In both cases the goal is to help a person quickly decide who they can trust and who they can't, and determining this accurately remains of great benefit even to this day.
Believing in a Pillar of Faith demonstrates that a person is willing to sacrifice to become part of a group. When that happens other members of the same group can trust this person even more - he or she is less likely to betray the group than “outsiders” who do not embrace the Pillar of faith.
The obvious costs are those connected with establishing Us versus Them social barriers. The “I can be trusted” is a warm fuzzy benefit, but when there are numerous outsiders to deal with, that benefit can become a liability when those lots of outsiders are discriminating against the insiders. The chronic persecutions of the Jews around Europe are a dramatic historical example of outsiders making life tough on insiders. Most of the time these discriminations were on the annoying level, but when the outsiders panicked and started witch hunting they got horrific.
Another obvious cost is that these Pillar of Faith beliefs involve doing something in an expensive way rather than an economical way - people in the community are paying extra in time and materials. Ritual food preparation is wasteful compared to modern techniques.
Yet another cost is unexpected betrayal. People of the “Us” side may not be as benevolent as they are expected to be. Pillar of Faith belief supports confidence artists who take on the trappings and appearances of a devoted believer.
The big secondary cost is that the Pillar divorces followers from harsh reality - you have to believe, really believe, or looking around you at what's going on in the real world makes this Pillar activity and thinking look ridiculous. This means believers are being asked to shut down their reasoning skills in certain areas. The question then becomes, “Where do I use my reasoning, and where do I not use my reasoning?” The person who answers that question is the current interpreter of the Pillar, not the individual asking the question. Umm... let's practice some more at being sheep.
The Pillars I have talked about center on religion. But Pillar of Faith thinking is much more wide ranging than that. It can also be much more transitory and situational than the religious versions. Here are some examples of pillars being used in other walks of life.
Pillars of Faith are powerful signaling tools in modern society. If a person says, “I believe in [X]”, they are signaling which Chosen People group they want to be part of. Because the signaling is so powerful, this is a tool used a lot by both media people and politicians.
In addition to signaling faith, Pillars support waste of resources because they are now a ritual, no longer based on practicality. An additional waste is that the faith can lead to surprise betrayal, which is the most expensive kind of betrayal. For these reasons Pillars of Faith need to be recognized as a signaling tool and treated with as much caution and care as any other social tool.