******************** THE MIND OF THE BIBLE BELIEVER ********************

Stephen Doe at New Mexico State University
usenet@nmsu.edu

Well, I've received a lot of e-mail indicating interest in this
subject, so I'll go ahead and start this weekend. Since I'm entering
the end-of-the-semester-crunch here at NMSU, don't be too upset if the
posts come at irregular intervals. Also, I'm going to do things a bit differently than I first thought; instead of summarizing each chapter,
I'm going to summarize each of the main topics. I think that will
make things a bit more coherent. I see at least four posts coming out
of all this, in roughly this order:

1) Historical Perspective. Dr. Cohen spends some time studying three
eras of history--first century Christianity, the Reformation and our
own recent surge of fundamentalism, which he terms a
"mini-Reformation." Since one of his main ideas is that
fundamentalist Christianity is closest to what the Bible authors had
in mind, I thought I'd start with this topic. It's really the first
link of the chain, so to speak.

2) Some Fundamentals of Psychology. Potentially boring to some I
suspect, but crucial since the third post will deal with Dr. Cohen's application of psychology to the experience of fundamentalist
Christianity.

3) The Evangelical Mind-Control System. To some this label may have a
strident ring, but it is a fitting title since Dr. Cohen thinks that
biblical Christianity can have such a devastating psychological
impact. Here I will outline the seven devices used to attract and
retain members of an evangelical community. This also gives an
account for the Bible's success despite the numerous logical
contradictions and "immoral" stories that atheists have been pointing
out for a long time.

4) Social Implications of the mini-Reformation. Here I will outline
Dr. Cohen's concerns regarding the impact the current surge of
fundamentalism is having. He worries not so much about the political
impact as the psychological harm that can be visited upon those caught
up in fundamentalist beliefs.

Some of the responses I've gotten have been rather interesting. Some
have asked for more information on this book, such as the ISBN number
and publisher. The publisher is:

Prometheus Books
59 Glenn Drive
Buffalo, NY 14228-2197


The Mind of The Bible-Believer
Edmund D. Cohen
ISBN 0-87975-495-8

The book is fairly recent (copyright 1988). I ordered it through my
local bookstore, so you should have no trouble if you do decide you'd
like to order it.

Some have questioned the appropriateness of starting a discussion of
this nature on alt.atheism, presumably because telling atheists about
the harmful effects of biblical Christianity is like "preaching to the
choir." Many atheists I know already take the position that
Christianity can be psychologically damaging. But it's one thing to
say, "oh, it's all psychological," and quite another to have a
detailed model of the phenomenon. The a.a FAQ states that atheists
want to get to truth and so should consider all arguments with
skepticism, but also with an open mind. I see no reason why this
attitude shouldn't apply to arguments that would *strengthen* one's
position as well as to arguments against one's position.

Others have suggested moving the discussion to alt.atheism.moderated,
to avoid the inevitably low S/N ratio of unmoderated newsgroups. It
has also been suggested that I try to post these articles on soc.religion.christian (also a moderated group). I may follow up on
these suggestions. But I see no reason why I shouldn't post on the
unmoderated groups as well. I think anyone who wishes to respond
ought to be able to do so, even if it is only to flame me. Also, with
all due respect to mathew, who seems to be doing a fine job with
a.a.moderated, I have an intense dislike for moderated newsgroups in
general. The best thing about the net is that it has come closer to
the democratic ideal of free expression on the part of *everyone* than
any other medium I can think of. Besides, your right to express
yourself doesn't mean others must listen. Many posts in the
unmoderated groups I skip right over as soon I get a glimpse of the
content (or, more accurately, lack of). You don't need to eat the
whole egg to know if it is rotten.

I must say that I am encouraged by the responses that I have received.
I have yet to receive a negative response (though alas, that may
change when we get to the actual substance of Dr. Cohen's ideas!) At
any rate, I am looking forward to the discussion. Expect my first
post sometime this weekend.





...[A] propensity to religious extremism does not require
explanation since it is entirely consistent with basic
religious tenets and authentic religious orientations. It is
religious moderation or religious liberalism, the willingness
of religious adherents to accommodate themselves to their
environment, to adapt their behaviorial and belief patterns to
prevailing cultural norms, to make peace with the world, that
requires explanation.--A professor of political studies at
Bar_Ilan University, Israel[1]


An Historical Perspective


A generation ago the proposition that conservative Christian
churches were about to enter a phase of very rapid growth would have
struck sociologists studying religion as absurd; one might as well
have expected astronomers to flock to the geocentric model in droves. Statistics on church membership indicated a continuing decline. The
prevailing opinion was that religion served to explain the origins of
the universe, and one's relation to the universe. As the more
competent natural sciences increased man's knowledge of the universe, conventional religion became more and more irrelevant. Unless
religion could re-invent itself--and the statistics indicated that
those churches attempting to do so, the liberal and mainline churches, experienced decline in membership as well--religion would, in a
relatively short time, be relegated to the dustbin of history.
Yet we live now in an era in which it is the conservative
churches that show no decrease in vitality--indeed, they show a great
increase. "Contrary to the conventional wisdom of mainline church professionals, those churches that were least "reasonable,"
"tolerant," and "relevant" were (and are) the ones not declining.
Those churches that continued to emphasize the primacy of the Bible,
and to take for real the supernatural salvation plan set out in it,
continued to add to their numbers each year."[2] What is going on
here?
Most of us, I think, would prefer to believe that the
conservatives are just some fanatics that can be dismissed with a wave
of a hand, that their harsh, literalist interpretation of the Bible is
really going against the "spirit" of the Bible. We would like to
think that the kindly, mellow, non-judgmental practitioners of the
more liberal denominations are the true followers of Christ. But what
the liberal Christians fail to recognize is that they are the heirs of
a great tradition of rebellion *against* the harsher implications of
the Bible. Each successive phase of theology served to both obscure
these harsh implications, and to also find Biblical support for what
passed for the conventional wisdom of the day. To see this in action,
we must briefly trace the history of Protestant Christianity, from the Reformation to the present.

The Reformation

Two men figure prominently in the break from Catholicism:
Luther and Calvin. Martin Luther had been a rather timid Catholic
monk, who experienced anguish over his salvation doubts and his
inability to make his life free enough from sin. His solution to this
was to recognize that the Bible counseled that salvation was due
solely to God's grace, and that a person's works have no effect on
upon it. This was of course in contradiction to the Catholic doctrine
that the Church had the authority to dispense forgiveness for sin, and
to sell indulgences from particular sins. The Catholic Church
accepts as authoritative many extra-biblical documents; indeed the
Pope, as Vicar of Christ, is said to be infallible when speaking ex
cathedra. If, as Luther did, one is to reject these extraneous
teachings, one is left with only one possible source of authoritative information concerning God, Christ and salvation--the Bible.
The main goal of the Reformation then, was to fashion a
doctrine that, as rigorously as possible, followed Biblical teachings,
and *only* Biblical teachings. "The Bible, the whole Bible, and
nothing but the Bible." There was no particular interest in
harmonizing the Bible with secular learning (one has only to read
Luther's comments on Copernicus to see that). The man who provided
the most rigorous rendition of the Bible's teachings, and hence the
rendition accepted as authoritative among Protestants until the
late eighteenth century, was John Calvin.
We can set down five essential points of Calvinism, long used
to teach its fundamentals. 1) The nature of man, as a result of
Adam's fall, is totally depraved, so that nothing good can come from
him without God's gracious intervention. 2) God decided before
creating the world which people would receive salvation; that number
may be a very small portion of humanity, God's elect. 3) Christ's
sacrifice on the cross redeemed the elect only. 4) God's grace is irresistable by the elect, so that a decision or voluntary action
by the recipient is not involved in salvation. 5) Those who are
saved cannot lose their salvation.
These five points were formulated in response to five points
of opposite meaning proposed by Jacobus Arminius, who attempted to
humanize Christianity. We can regard Calvinism, as expressed above,
as closed and authoritarian, while Arminianism can be regarded as open
and democratic.
At this point it serves our purpose to compare Calvinism and Arminianism with Biblical teachings. Both, after all, claim to be in
accord with the Bible. With this end in mind, Dr. Cohen combed the
New Testament for verses clearly supporting only a Calvinist
interpretation, and for verses supporting only an Arminian
interpretation. The results: 133 verses clearly in favor of
Calvinism, vs only twenty-three in favor of Arminianism[3]. More
significantly, no parable or story in the NT has an ending consistent
with Arminianism. Calvinism is the clearly the more accurate rendition
of the two. (Of course, it's easier to strain 23 verses to fit
Calvinism, than it is to strain 133 to fit Arminianism!)
How does one know if one is saved? In Calvinism there is no discernable criterion, other than that "he that shall endure unto the
end, the same shall be saved."[Matt. 24:13] One cannot know if
someone is a true saint until the full span of that person's life is
over. (I do not here mean "saint" in the Catholic sense. In the
Bible, all the saved are refered to as "saints.") Aside from that,
only ambiguous, even teasing allusions are given (2 Cor. 13:5, Heb.
4:16, Phil. 2:12, 2 Cor. 10:7).
I hope that the reader can now see how morbid fascination with
question of one's salvation status could develop. Consider a passage
from a sermon by Jonathon Edwards, the arch-proponent of Calvinsim in
America:

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds
a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you,
and is dreadfully provoked, his wrath towards you burns like
fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his
sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes
than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have
offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did
his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you
from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed
to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night,
that you was [sic] suffered to awake again in this world,
after you closed your eyes to sleep[4].

Clearly not an attractive doctrine, however an accurate
rendition of the Bible it may be. To continue to attract new members, Protestantism had to--and did--change. The next phase we can see is
the ascendance of Methodism and Baptism.
John Wesley was one of the co-founders of Methodism. This
movement began in the 1730's at Oxford, where Wesley was educated. In particular, Wesley was strongly Arminian. Hence the emphasis was on
good works and social action. This provided the model for nineteenth
century efforts such as rescue missions, missionary organizations, the Salvation Army, and a generally civic-minded tone. The prevailing
attitude in Methodism and Baptism was that anyone could decide to
become a Christian, and that as a result would perform such good works
as he was able. This charity, in the absence of any comparable
secular efforts, goes a long way towards explaining the vague notion
many have that the Bible is somehow connected to "doing good," despite
the Calvinist injunction that works do nothing to ensure salvation.
The key point to remember is that Wesley made individual
judgment and conscience into a counterbalance upon the literal
authority of Scripture. In fact, the authority of Scrpiture was made *subordinate* to common sense in Methodism. All the while, Wesley
claimed to be following the Bible; as he wrote in his Journal on June
5, 1766, "My ground is the Bible. Yea, I am a Bible bigot. I follow
it in all things, both great and small." An absurd statement, in the
light of the Calvinist verses he passed over. He followed the
"spirit," as his *conscience* dictated, not the "letter." Thus this
teaching is Biblical only in a very superficial sense; for every
negative Biblical teaching, a modern idea was substituted and clothed
in Biblical language. What was achieved was *containment* of the
Bible's true teachings, rendering the Bible remote, confusing and
impenetrable. This lead to dispensationalism, the division of the
Bible into as many as seven epochs, each with different theological
rules. In such a view there is no need for unity, continuity and
consistency in the whole Bible, which is what Calvinism had done.
What does the Bible itself say about the Arminian-Wesleyan
approach? Considering that Jesus himself often spoke in parables and
allegory, it seems probable to assume that parts of it are not to be
taken *literally*. On the other hand it does see itself as
authoritative:

All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is
profitable for doctrine, for instruction in righteousness:
That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto
all good works.[2 Tim. 3:16-17]

Also consider that:

. . .no prophecy of Scripture is of any private
interpretation.[2 Pet. 1:20]

The worst punishments in Hell are reserved exclusively for those who
bring a false gospel, ie adding to or detracting from the Scriptures. Understanding the Bible is declared to be beyond mere human reason (1
Cor. 2:12-14, 1 Cor. 13:9-10,12). Clearly the Bible, the *whole*
Bible, is taken to be authoritative, though taken on a figurative,
allegorical level as well as a literal one. Also, since the
Scriptures clearly deprecate any non-Scriptural influences
("whatsoever is not of faith is sin" [Rom. 14:23], "But though we, or
an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which
we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." [Gal. 1:8]), we
cannot possibly be meant to leaven Scriptural teachings with lore from
any other source, not even with our common sense.
Thus we can see that by the twentieth century, Protestant
Christianity was well on its way to standing for--absolutely nothing.
When individual conscience is made the primary discriminator between
applicable and non-applicable verses, virtually any doctrine can be
justified. In fact, the Bible can be emptied of any content
whatsoever.
One can consider "modernist theology" to be a complete, 180
degree turnabout from Calvinist doctrine. Paul Tillich provided the
main insights here. To put it very simply, the key concept here is
the *symbol*. A symbol has a few basic properties: 1) It points to
something that it cannot make totally explicit (a totally explicit
notation or character is refered to as a *sign*); 2) The symbol "opens
up levels of reality which otherwise are closed for us." 3) It
"unlocks dimensions and elements of our soul which correspond to
dimensions and elements of reality." 4) "Symbols cannot be produced intentionally." They are spontaneous, they occur to us. 5) They
grow to meet the needs of their users, and die when the symbol has
fulfilled its use, ie has become explicit. A larger system of symbols
is called a myth; something mythic prompts a resonance in those for
whom it has meaning. A myth has psychological truth.
Tillich did little to guide Christians towards a new
idea-content which the Bible could stand for. The void was more than
filled by C. G. Jung's investigation into religious symbolism. He saw
the death-to-life transformation story in the Gospels as an image of
the individual's innate, "authentic" destiny. The demands to submit
to Biblical teaching were re-interpreted as openness to one's
unconsciousness and living out that innate destiny. The focus is individualistic, and the idea that obligation is imposed from without
vanishes. In essence, the goal is the development of one's true Self.
(Notice that this approach completely frees one from taking
any part of the Bible as meaning what it says. A believer who takes a
Biblical verse literally is merely responding to the symbol system
differently than the believer who is further along in
self-development. The approach resembles nothing so much as the
Gnosticism of early Christianity.)
Here was the hoped-for rejuvenation of Christianity--or so
Jung thought. Instead, the period saw no birth of new symbols to help Christians along in developing the Self. Instead, theologians
complaining about the spiritual bankruptcy of contemporary
Christianity were most vocal. The cover of the April 8, 1966 Time
magazine featured the phrase "Is God Dead?" in large red letters on a
black background. Theologians discussed topics such as the synthesis
of Christianity and Marxism and gender-neutering the Bible.
Against such a backdrop, the rise of conservative Christianity
becomes a bit more comprehensible. The conservative message is, at
least, unequivocal. "The Bible means what it says it means, and
that's that!" In times of great social upheaval, such certainty is
compelling, particularly if the liberal approach becomes more and more uninspiring. Furthermore, the liberal gloss put on the Bible by
preceding generations has prepared people for the notion that it
contains some sublime wisdom, while leaving them unfamiliar with the
Bible's actual content. Thus for the first time since the
Reformation, we have a significant portion of the population once
again ready for the old Calvinist/Paulinist doctrine. The
alternatives have played themselves out.



I hope the reader of the preceding is ready to accept, at
least in a provisional way, the notion that the Bible really does mean
what it says it means, that the Calvinist doctrine really is the
closest approximation of the Bible's message. Then we are left with a conundrum. Liberal Protestantism grew out of a rebellion against
Calvinism's nastier implications. Yet churches built on liberal,
humanistic premises have grown progressively weaker over time, while
the conservative churches of our time (not to mention first century,
Paulinist Christianity) display a great deal of vitality. Obviously
there is something about Christianity that enables it, in its pure,
undiluted form, to spread like wildfire, while tampering with the
"recipe" spoils the effect.
But if Calvinist/Paulinist Christianity is so repulsive as to
have spawned the liberal Protestant rebellion against it, what is
there to draw people towards it? The answer is that the themes of
cleansing, rebirth, peace, prayer and so on, seen by the conservatives
as literally true, by the liberal religionists as symbolic of sublime
wisdom, and by skeptics as sheer invention, are not really any of the
above. The Bible is primarily a *psychological* document. The
relevant criterion for evaluating the contents of the Bible is not the
Bible's intellectual content, but the Bible's psychological effect.
Unravelling the Bible's true, psychological purpose will be a
fascinating undertaking. But first, the foundations for discussion
must be laid down. My next post will deal with the psychological
premises at the core of Dr. Cohen's model.


[1] Trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1958), p. 182.

[2] The Mind of the Bible Believer, Edmund Cohen, (Buffalo, NY:
Prometheus Books, 1988) p. 41.

[3] Verses consistent only with Calvinism: Matt. 2:6; 7:16-20;
9:37-38; 10:5-6; 11:25, 27; 13:24-30; 37-43; 15:13, 24; 20:23, 28;
22:2-14; 24:22; 25:32-34; Mark 4:11-12, 15-20; Luke 1:77; 3:17;
6:43-45; 8:5-15; 10:22; 13:23-30; 14:23; 16:31; 18:7; John 1:12-13;
3:6;6:44, 65; 10:14, 16, 26; 15:16; 17:2; Acts 2:39; Rom. 8:29-30, 33;
9:15-16, 21-24; 10:20; 11:5; 2 Cor. 10:7, 18; Gal. 1:15; Eph. 1:4-5;
2:8; 2 Thess. 2:11-12; 2 Tim. 2:10, 19-20; 1 Pet. 2:8; Jude 4; Rev.
7:3-15; 13:8; and 22:11.
Verses consistent only with Arminianism: Matt. 11:28; Luke 2:10;
11:9-10; 13:34; 20:38; Acts 2:17; Rom. 10:9, 13; Gal. 5:13; Eph. 4:6;
Phil. 2:10-11; Col. 1:28; 1 Tim. 2:4, 6; 2 Tim. 2:21; Titus 2:11; 2
Pet. 3:9; and Rev. 22:17-19, 21.

[4] "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," preached July 8, 1741.
In Ola Elizabeth Winslow, ed., Jonathon Edwards: Basic writings (New
York: New American Library, 1966) p. 159.

The initial word does not lie within the province of the
theologian, but of the historian and the psychologist.--Hugh
J. Schonfield, _The_Passover_Plot_


I ended Part 1 by asserting that the Bible is primarily a
psychological document, and that the long and bitter debate over its
didactic content had missed the point. To continue in this review, we
must lay down the psychological premises at the core of Dr. Cohen's
work. We may sum this up as follows: Freud's stance towards
Christianity was the correct one, but his method was flawed; Jung's
stance towards Christianity was flawed, but his general psychodynamic
concepts (minus the religious theory) are useful. Dr. Cohen seeks to
unite was is useful in both approaches.

Freud

For the sake of brevity, I assume the reader is familiar with
the basic Freudian concepts--id, ego, superego; resistance, libido,
Oedipus complex; and the five stages of psychosexual development. The
basic idea was that from the id, two drives emerge: the erotic drive
and the self-destructive drive. The aim of the former is possession
of the parent of the opposite sex; the aim of the latter, the
reduction of all tension and a return to the inorganic state. The
attainment of either goal would have antisocial consequences, so only displacements, substitute gratifications are possible. These reduce
tension but do not eliminate it. The ego develops through the fives
stages of psychosexual development to cope with the outside world,
where there are objects that psychic energy, libido, can be invested
in. The superego develops out of the internalization of prohibitions
laid down in childhood. The aims of the two drives are so terrible
that they cause anxiety, and hence are repressed by the superego.
This allows an individual to retain socially acceptable illusions
about himself. Repressed material can cause various neuroses;
analysis consists of bringing repressed material to consciousness, one
small dose at a time.
How did Freud view religion? Freud was a radical materialist.
Almost alone among behaviorial scientists of the time, Freud was a
destructive critic of religion. (This makes sense if we remember that
religion was almost the sole provider of charitable outreach at the
time, and that most of the destructive teachings in the Bible, which
they would have criticized, were being explained away by liberal
theologians anyway. Also, many of the behaviorial scientists had
liberal Christian affiliations themselves. They were very gentle
critics indeed, seeking mostly to encourage the positive
effects--charity--that were socially useful. One has only to read
William James' _Varieties_of_Religious_Experiences_ to see this
attitude.) Freud saw three functions of religion: 1) The
explanatory function, ie creation myths, which were losing
significance with the advance of science; 2) the wish-fulfilling
function, in which the need for a "protector," a father-figure, was
projected onto God, and (in contradiction to his notion of a
self-destructive urge) death was denied; 3) the social regulatory
function, in which religion takes over the parental role of laying
down rules against anti-social gratification. Freud saw the first two positions as illusions, while the third function would have to find
some foundation other than religion, which was built up from false
premises. Freud once said that participating in a universal neurosis
such as religion spared one from constructing an individual neurosis.
In Dr. Cohen's view, there are some things to commend in
Frued's attitude. The first is that it helps to stand apart from the phenomenon being studied, to refuse to apply more lenient standards to religious truth claims. The second is that looking beneath surface
impressions is necessary; we are looking for something that
theological study serves to divert our attention from. The third is
that the religious problem ought not be severed from the other motives
and conflicts present in a person; Freud had a good point, in seeing
religion could serve as a substitute neurosis.
All the same, there are aspects of Freudianism to be avoided.
One is its rigidity. No theory other than the sexual one is
considered worthy of discussion; anyone proposing otherwise is
diagnosed as having unanalyzed resistance to it. Any critics must
have horribly intense, and repressed, sexual complexes. When Jung and
Adler, his prize disciples, broke with him over the theory, they were
accused of currying favor with outsiders. (It is interesting to note
that in some aspects--namely, the negative view of humanity, and the demonization of outside views--Freud mimics aspects of conservative Christianity. An ironic result, considering that Freud proclaimed
himself a proponent of the scientific method!) Misuse of history also
ought to be avoided. Freud sometimes tailored history to fit his
views. Christianity itself is an example of this. If Christianity's
purpose was social control, then it was superfluous, as many such
controls already existed in the Roman Empire. We will see later than maintaining social order is really not what early Christianity was
concerned with.
The key point then is that while Freud's insight into religion
was good--ie, that it can act as a substitute neurosis--we will need
some more flexible tools to extend this insight. (I hope the reader
doesn't analyze this as "resistance" on our part!) Next we shall
consider the views of Jung.

Jung

Jung viewed the subconscious as a much livelier place than
Freud's dour trio of id, ego and superego. The fundamental concept
here is that of the complex, which is defined as a grouping of
energy-laden psychic contents which are compatible and belong
together. These act as organized centers of activity within a
personality, which the conscious is not aware of. They are distinct
from the ego-personality because they embody attitudes at odds with
the conscious attitude.
Dr. Cohen gives us an apt analogy when he compares the various complexes to a parliament. "In a normal person, there is a majority
party (the ego-personality) and a relatively docile, loyal opposition
(the complexes). . . In a neurotic person, there is also a majority
party, but the opposition is disruptive and combative, largely because
the majority party has been too narrow and intransigent, not allowed
the minority a hearing, and made too few concessions. In the
schizophrenic, no party is able to form a government and confusion
reigns."[2]
There are several complexes for us to consider. The first is
the ego-personality. This is the person's awareness of self,
including memories and knowledge. The ego-personality grows and
becomes more differentiated as it matures. There is the persona, the
image presented to the outside world. Several unconscious complexes
that one attempts to deal with in Jungian analysis are the shadow, the
anima (in a male) or animus (in a female), and the Self. From the
conscious standpoint, the shadow embodies all that is related to bad conscience. The anima or animus embodies qualities missing from the
conscious attitude, and in dreams is represented as a person of the
opposite sex. The Self is the "final complete quintessence towards
which the person is growing," often represented as a child or an
abstract personification. As such it has a relation to the idea of
God, and to a Jungian, the personal religious quest and actualization
of the Self (individuation) are the same. In the Jungian view,
compensation is important in relating different aspects of the psyche,
just as causality is important in the exterior world. Thus
unconscious elements embody psychological opposites to the conscious
attitude.
Other Jungian concepts include intraversion vs extraversion,
the four functions, and archetypes. Introverts feels overstimulated
by their environment; extraverts, understimulated. The popular usage
of the terms is what Jung means as well. The four functions are
diagrammed thus:

Thinking

Sensation + Intuition

Feeling

Thinking means mental activity from an objective standpoint; feeling, subjective menatal activity. These are the raional functions, because
they involve reflection. Sensation and intuition are irrational
because they are kinds of perception. Sensation involves the explicit
data of perception, while the intuitive type deals with tacit,
subliminal data. Each individual has one of these functions most
developed; that function is the main function. The psychologically
opposite function is the inferior function--inferior in the sense of
its poor response to voluntary conscious control. Archetypes can be
thought of as universal symbols, that occur in the same way despite
differences in culture and time because the psyche has fundamentally
the same structure. This fascination with religious symbolism
dominated Jung's later career.
In Jung's view maturity is reached through the synthesis of
opposites. "A psychic state or condition at a particular time,
expressible in symbols, will finally combine with another, from the unconscious, that is in some ways it opposite, and a higher synthesis
will emerge."[3] This is a continually ongoing process; there is
always some finer nuance of individuation to be experienced. Jung
connected this with his religious theory.
Life's true main issue is the personal religious quest.
Meaningful religious symbols are created and enable one to get in
touch with deeper levels within oneself. As I've alluded to earlier,
this resembles the Gnosticism of early Christianity, and has also been
viewed as compatible with Tillich's conception of symbols. Jung was
thus much friendlier to Christianity than Freud was--but Christianity
in the Tillichian sense. He made no concession at all to the Bible's declarations about its meaning.
One disturbing aspect of all this is that Jung and his
disciple's seem to have been overwhelmed by the rich religious
symbolism available for study. As Dr. Cohen says, "Jungians turn out
to be escapists. . ."[4] and that they "prided themselves on putative
superior individuation, and disdained those less withdrawn than
themselves as benighted and unconscious. To me, they seemed like
refugees from reality. . ."[5] We can correct for this by severing
Jung's psychodynamic theory from his religious theory, and saying that individuation, the reconciliation of psychic opposites, is the goal.
This is accomplished through projection, the application of the
archetypes to stimuli (which we can call the progressive flow of
libido, or psychic energy) and withdrawal of projections that don't
fit and result in the blockage of progressive flow (which we can call regressive flow).
Having defined the mentally healthy individual as one in whom individuation takes place, one who can successfully distinguish
fantasy from non-fantasy (we use "non-fantasy" because reality can be
a loaded term), we can speak of mechanisms that prevent individuation. Dissociation occupies roughly the same place in Jungian thought as
repression does in Freudian. Psychic contents become dissociated
(placed within the unconscious) which are incompatible with conscious attitudes. That which is dissociated is always a matter of bad
conscience to the person. Dissociation is the ego-defense mechanism,
in which one seeks to 1) avoid negative emotions associated with the dissociated material, and 2) avoid incongruity or conflict in
attitudes. As we shall see later, dissociation induction, and the
management of dissociation, is one of the most important features of
the Biblical program, which Dr. Cohen refers to as "the Evangelical
Mind Cointrol System."
One can view Jung's notions about individuation as similar to Goldstein's view of "self-actualization." This is defined as
"adequate, adaptive behavior, in accordance with the capacities and capabilities of the organism." In both we can see one overall,
teleologically constituted drive--not for the reduction of tension,
but for the maintenance of an optimum level of tension.
The key insight of Jung's theory is that individuation takes
place through the synthesis of psychic opposites. We can take our
provisional definition of mental health to be that state in which individuation, or self-actualization, takes place. Now we can ask ourselves--is the Biblical system such an environment?

The Biblical View of Human Nature

Not to put to fine a point on things, we must say that the
Bible has the most negative possible view of human nature. If it were
even more negative, the whole system would be untenable. Some
applicable verses:

The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as
soon as they are born, speaking lies. [Ps. 58:3]

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being
justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is
in Christ Jesus. . .[Rom. 3:23-24]

. . .there is none good but one, that is God.[Mark 10:18]

The implication is that this guilt is universal. Good works
do not cure it. Outside of the Biblical program, there is no source
of self-esteem.
One objection to this scheme is the good that the unsaved do.
The Bible's answer to this is that the unsaved have a form of the Law
written in their hearts. Presumably this is put there to prevent the
unsaved from wiping the saved off of the face of the earth. At any
rate, this conscience that the unsaved have is vastly inferior to
knowledge of the Scrpitures. Certainly conscience is never portrayed
as a source of relief from Bible prescripts that are repugnant.
Secular culture is uniformly condemned as "unprofitable."
This takes advantage the fact that most people innately feel
"wrong, inferior and unhappy." We have a distorted view of our own
moral nature. Dr. Cohen's service as a defense attorney provides an illustration of this. Often he was called upon to defend street
criminals. These people had fairly good information as to the
punishment risk of their crimes; in general, they decided the crime
was worth it. The sole exception to the rule comes in the area of
confessions. Each criminal knows that what he says will be used
against him, so self-interest dictates one say nothing. Yet a
substantial number of convictions would have been unattainable had not
the defendents essentially convicted themselves. There is typically a compulsion to confess, indicative of sound but guilty conscience.
This blind spot to our own moral nature may serve a purpose.
After all, it is those criminals whose self-esteem remains high are
most prone to repeating crimes. Feeling "wrong, inferior and unhappy"
serves to prevent us from doing great harm to others and ourselves.
Being deprived of these feelings would be akin to being deprived of
pain sensitivity. Mental-health officials do us no favors when they
advocate a bland, untroubled state of mind, life on an even keel. The
emphasis on self-esteem stems from a tendency to over-react, to do
whatever seems to be the opposite of the bad, old way of doing things.
The Bible exploits this tendency to its fullest, aggravating
and distorting it enormously. Often we will hear Evangelicals say
that Christ is the only thing that prevents them from being very
wicked people. Yet we never hear from people for whom the Bible has
helped to relieve an immense burden of guilt. What the Evangelicals
seek relief from is a fairly low-key, nagging sense of guilt. They
are guilt "dilletantes."
On the other hand, the Bible does offer some sound advice on
managing inner discord:

Bear ye one another's burdens. . .[Gal 6:2]

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to
man: but God is faithful. . .but will with the temptation
also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.[1.
Cor. 10:13]

In the world ye shall have tribulation. . .[John 16:33]

These realistic pieces of advice protected the Bible authors
against losing credibility with their hearers.
The Bible author's approach then, is to start with some sound insight--tacitly expressed perhaps, but unmistakeable--about their
people. They offer some useful practical advice about it. Then they
veer off into something contrived and artificial. We can see that the
Bible is profoundly "anti-Jungian"--the unconscious is protrayed in
profoundly negative terms. The believer is not to seek individuation, reconciliation with psychological opposites, but instead to widen the
gap between conscious and subconscious as much as possible. The good
in man can only come from the outside. As complete an alienation from
one's own inner being as possible is advocated. From the viewpoint of
our provisional definition of mental health, such an attitude is sick.
Here we are already seeing the psychological acumen of the
Bible authors in action. They were not trying to create an
intellectually corect model; they wanted to create a human
organization that could get started without social power, prestige or
acclaim on their side. The aim was not education, but indoctrination.
In the process, they created the most successful assault on human
psychological vulnerabilities ever devised.




We have seen that, from the viewpoint that the primary drive
in humans is individuation, the Bible authors advocate a scheme
profoundly at variance with this goal. They advocate widening the gap
between conscious and subconscious as much as possible. In my next
post, I shall outline the seven devices the Bible uses to attract new
devotees, to induce dissociation in the believer, and stabilize that
state within believers.

SD

[1] (New York: Bernard Geis Associates, 1965), p. 51.

[2] The Mind of the Bible Believer, p. 97.

[3] Ibid., p. 91.

[4] Ibid., p. 96.

[5] Ibid., p. 96.



Our method of explaining why people hold certain religious
views can easily degenerate into argumentum ad hominem if used
improperly.
The most impressive Christian apologetic argument for
believing things that cannot be verified as propositions in
other fields is that Christianity's long history of attracting
and holding the loyalty of people of good will must reflect
that its truth and beneficiality was manifest to those people,
even if it cannot be explained, or appreciated within the
narrow breadth of the individual's perspective. That
argument, and the history behind it, is the crucial datum for
which social scientists studying religion have never
accounted. Our purpose, which has never been undertaken
before, is the explanation of the psychological attraction
that has given Christianity such a tenacious hold upon people,
despite the unverifiability or wrongness of its ideas. In so
doing, we make no statement about Christians more derogatory
than that they possess normal human psychological
vulnerabilites. It is perfectly consistent with our approach
to concede that nearly all Christians are sincere and bona
fide, and that many of them are intelligent.
The key to distinguishing ad hominem from fair criticism of
psychological bias in holding any given view, is to keep track
of who should have the burden of proof. The proponent of a
position that is neither self-evident nor supported by
intelligible argument, or the one attacking a point that has
been made and supported by some proof, must draw on substance,
or else we are entitled to suppose that it is only subjective
motives and desires that account for the views expressed. If
a Christian comes at me, saying that my failure to believe as
he does indicates my lack of the Holy Spirit, or my having
received a spirit of blindness, it is up to him to prove it.
If he believes for no articulate reason, then it is fair for
me to try to explain away his belief psychologically. Behind
his biblical pseudopsychological analysis of me necessarily
lies an indirect attack on my character. If my psychological
analysis fails to make sense and fit the facts, then it is no
better. The end result hopefully will be observables brought
together and made intelligible by my analyses. The
Christian, unable to make fact and his doctrine cooperate,
will finally be heard to say that his view is right because it
follows biblical teaching, and the Bible is right because it
says it is.----Cohen, The Mind of the Bible Believer, p. 140.




We are now prepared to discuss the seven psychological devices
embodied in the Bible. These devices reinforce each other, so that
their effect when working together is much more powerful than one
would suspect. Some of the devices outlined would be too blatant to
work on their own; others are so subtle that without other devices to
reinforce them, their effects would quickly subside. The devices are
arranged from the more obvious to the more hidden, from the more
important in the experience of the newcomer to the more important in
the deeply involved and indoctrinated believer.


Device 1: The Benign, Attractive Persona of the Bible


One way of understanding the kindly, mellow, non-judgmental
and charitable liberal and mainline churches is to recognize that they
have taken the lovely surface impressions of Jesus in the Gospels and
built a whole new religion out of them alone. In essence, a few
well-chosen fragments were taken to stand for the whole. This
corresponds roughly to the "Arminian" viewpoint that we discussed in
the first post--ie, that one could choose to be saved, and that doing
good works went a long ways towards ensuring salvation.
As we shall see later though, the more deeply indoctrinated
believer must gradually be weaned away from the Arminian notions of
doing good in this world, and gradually introduced to the notion that
only preaching the salvation message is important. The newcomer is
gradually made to understand that the teachings mean something
different than what appears on the surface--and that it is oriented to
the next life, not this one. The only promise kept is that a
tranquilized state of mind will be attained, but with a net
detrimental effect on mental health.
These misleading surface impressions are crucial. Without
them, recruitment of new members would be impossible. Once in the
fold though, the old "bait-and-switch" sales pitch is what takes
place!


Device 2: Discrediting "The World"


In my first post I covered some biblical teachings that
require believers to distrust reliance on their own minds for
knowledge. Only through the biblical teachings does any knowledge
come. In essence reliance on any of the four Jungian functions is shunned. Since this state of mind is elusive, discrediting of people other than believers and of the environment is added.
The Bible defines three sorts of people for the believer, as
well as modes of conduct towards each. There are: 1) believers; 2)
ordinary unbelievers and 3) missionaries of "false" gospels. The
Bible doesn't prescribe depth of contact between believers and
ordinary unbelievers; unbelievers are often referred to as "crops" to
be "harvested," or "fish" to be "netted." Abundant numbers of
contacts are being mandated. When the believer is in the presence of
an unbeliever, it is to preach and "witness," not to listen. When we
look at some indirect references to unnatural self restraint and
apparent freedom from negative emotions in the face of provocation,
(Luke 6:29-31, 1 Pet. 2:23) a pattern of conduct emerges. Believers
in the presence of unbelievers are put in a frame of mind that closes
them off to anything unbelievers might have to say. The unbeliever
also sees in the believer a very odd state of euphoric calm, which the unbeliever mis-interprets as a spriritually higher, happier state.
Actually, as we shall see in the later Devices, what actually occurs
in the believer is artificially induced inner turmoil, masked by the
dulled, divided state the believer is in. The believer develops a
knack for being aloof and oblivious to what the unbeliever has to say;
this is often mistaken for tolerance on the believer's part.
Within the churchly life, protected by outside influences,
believers can open up to each other--to a limited degree. (Col.
3:1-17, Phil 2:1-11) Complete immersion in the Bible is prescribed;
other human priorities are devalued, and any investment of psychic
energy in them is withdrawn. Intolerance for individuality is at the
core; believers see each other as organs in the "body of Christ."
While differences in gifts are praised as having their purpose,
individuality of personality is not. (1 Cor. 12:12-31, Eph. 4:1-16)
We also see that while other supernaturalistic premises are
presented as being extremely hazardous (indeed, proponents of "false"
gospels are the only ones to receive even harsher punishment in hell), devaluation of anything that passes for learning is implied. Paul
often equates whatever is not in the Biblical program with
homosexuality (eg Rom. 1:18-27) Consider the following:

For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver
and an anti-christ. Look to yourselves, that we lose not
those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full
reward. Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not with the
doctrine of Christ, hath not God. . . If there come any unto
you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your
house, neither bid him God speed[ie, give him no greeting]:
For he that biddeth him God speed is partaker of his evil
deeds.[2 John 7-11]

The implication of this teaching for our times is that
"secular humanists", educators, mental health practitioners and
liberal politicians, as well as proponents of other religious beliefs,
all fall within the definition of "false prophets," preaching false
gospels. The believer is not to heed any of them. The believer is
effectively insulated from other doctrines.
Also, looking for confirmation of biblical beliefs in the
outside world is effectively discouraged. Although the believer
constantly prays, he is not to tempt God by praying for a sign. If
the thing prayed for didn't happen, it just means God said no. When
bad things happen to good people, and good things to the wicked, it
just proves how far beyond our sin-cursed, wicked minds God's wisdom,
justice and foresight are. Thus no pattern of events fail to take on
an aura of purpose for the believer. No matter what happens, the fact
that it did, proves it is God's will.


Device 3: Logocide


In the Appendix of 1984, Orwell describes the purpose of
Newspeak, which was to provide a mode of expression for the mental
habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc (English Socialism), *and*
also to make other modes of thought impossible. This was done by
overburdening some words, and eliminating others. We can see a
similar technique in key biblical terms. Dr. Cohen coins the term
"logocide" for the technique of so overburdening words with ponderous, contrived, dissonant meanings that they are effectively put out of
commission. Key terms (life, death, truth, wisdom, righteousness,
justice, liberty, bondage, love, hate, will, grace, witness and word)
are given this treatment in the Bible. In our discussion, biblical
distortion of these terms will be denoted by a '; that is, "life" will
refer to the usual connotations of the word, and "life'" will refer to
the biblical meaning.
Life and death are two such terms. Superficially, the Bible
promises eternal life to those who heed its message. Naturally, most
of us are interested in anything that promises to circumvent death.
Yet if we look into life and death a little more deeply, a double
layer of meaning is evident:

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after
me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow
me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and
whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.[Matt.
16:24-25]

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the
righteous into life eternal.[Matt. 25:46]

But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury
their dead.[Matt. 8:22]

God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.[Matt.
22:32]

. . . [T]he dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and
they that hear shall live.[John 5:25]

Clearly the Bible promises continuity of existence to all,
saved and unsaved. But instead of solving a problem, a new one is
added: now we have to worry about eternal damnation. Death' means
not the end of biological existence, but lack of salvation. Life'
means attaining salvation, not continuity of existence, which the
Bible promises to everybody. The confusion between the two serves the
Device 1 purpose of recruitment as well. Paul added a key ingredient
of confusion masquerading as profundity:

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of god is eternal
life through Jesus Christ. . .[Rom. 6:23]

. . . [R]eckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but
alive unto God through Jesus Christ. . .[Rom. 6:11]

. . .[T]o me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.[Phil.
1:21]

To be alive', then, is simply to be a believer.
Another important thing to recognize is that truth, wisdom, righteousness, and justice, which we all recognize as terms ascribing
value to their referents, are completely arbitrary in the Bible. The commandments depend on the notion that God, as Creator, has the right
to do as he will with his creations.

. . .O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the
thing formed say to him that formed it, Why has thou made me
thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same
lump to make one vessel unto honour[ie, dignity, economic
value], and another unto dishonour? What if God, willing to
shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much
longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And
that he might make known the riches of his glory on the
vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory, Even
us, whom he hath called. . .?[Rom. 9:20-24]

The question of God's righteousness is a thorny issue with
believers, given the record of the many acts of God that would be
wicked, had they been committed by anyone other than God. The answer
to the question "Is God unrighteous?" becomes a deep mystery for the
believer. Yet there is no mystery here, but simply a sterile
tautology. God is *defined* as righteous; whatever God does is by
definition "good", "wise," "just" and "righteous," no matter how
repugnant those actions are to man. All these words are redefined in
terms of Him.
Wisdom' and wise', righteous' and righteousness', simply
become code words for believers. Truth' refers not to the factual
content of a statement, but to its accordance with doctrine:

Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?
He is antichrist, who denieth the Father and the Son. . .But
the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you,
and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same
anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no
lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.[1
John 2:22, 27]

One term that in particular suffers from inflation is "grace."
Since the Reformation, this has been regarded as a Christian mystery.
But when we look at the ancient-language texts, we find grace' to be
pretty much an artifact of translation. The words translated as
"grace" could just as well be translated as "favor" or "preference."
Only the context determines when "grace" is to be inserted into the
text. If not for the inflation of grace', the relevant verses would
more clearly illustrate the arbitrariness of the bestowal of eternal
life':

For by. . . [preference] ye are saved through faith; and that
not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest
any man should boast.[Eph. 2:8-9]

Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father,
which loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and
good hope through. . .[preference].[2 Thess. 2:16]

Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the . . . [favoritism]
that is in Christ Jesus.[2 Tim. 2:1]

The last term I wish to discuss is love'. Again we see
inflation of this term, when we consider some biblical definitions of
it:

. . .[L]ove is the fulfilling of the law.[Rom. 13:10]

And this is love, that we walk after his commandments.[2 John
6]

Could it be that this new kind of love, said to be so much
superior to our own inclinations, is nothing but a very strict and
obsessive type of self discipline? It seems so. We can harmonize all
the Bible has to say about love' by saying that love' is "Holy
Spirit-aided self-discipline in internalizing Christian doctrine and
performing the devotional program." Too bad for the new believer;
he's getting love' when he expected love.
There are also indications that the believer's love' for God
consists not of love, but of the outpouring of energy:

And Jesus answered him, the first of all commandments is,
Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this
is the first commandment.[Mark 12:29-30]

In psychodynamic terms, God is a complex, siphoning libido
from ego-personality, disrupting the balance between progressive and
regressive flow of libido. This harmonizes with the biblically
mandated alienation from the world and other people.
The last topic of discussion pertaining to Device 3 is that of contradiction. There are some examples of factual contradictions in
the Bible, mostly in the Old Testament. Such errors can be
explained away as scribal errors or testing devices to lead the
unfaithful astray. Atheists tend to focus on these contradictions;
and so fall into the trap of considering these contradictions to be
the ones of consequence. The inconsistencies we should be concerned
with are all camouflaged. They consist not of contradictions so much
as dissonance between biblical statements. Camouflaged
inconsistencies can be best highlighted by a method Dr. Cohen calls
triadic anti-apologetics--bringing together three passages that
highlight inconsistency. Through the interaction of these statements, inconsistencies calculated to stick in one's unconscious are impressed
upon the believer. Consider the following:

. . .[E]very creature of god is good, and nothing to be
refused, if it be received with thanksgiving. . .[1 Tim. 4:4]

Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil;
cleave to that which is good.[Rom. 12:9]

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.
If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in
him.[1 John 2:15]

Also consider how we are exhorted to obey god and secular authorities simultaneously:

. . .[W]e have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us,
and we gave them reverence: shall we not rather be in
subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they
verily chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our
profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.[Heb.
12:9-10]

No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the
one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and
despise the other.[Luke 16:13]

Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything. . .[Col.
3:22]

Since "the whole world lieth in wickedness," then submitting
oneself to unsaved earthly authorities makes one a partaker in that
wickedness. But that is just what is being commanded. One is
required to serve two masters, and to serve each totally and
exclusively--a logical impossibility.
Consider also an antiapologetic triad on love:

As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye
in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my
love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide
in his love. . . This is my commandment, That ye love one
another, as I have loved you.[John 15:9-10,12]

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of
me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not
worthy of me.[Matt. 10:37]

If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother,
and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and
his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.[Luke 14:26]

The ambiguity here serves a purpose; to make affections for
others equal, (so that they lose their distinctiveness) and
unimportant compared to the God-complex. Coupled with instructions
stressing obedience, discipline and prohibition of emotional
spontaneity, libido is siphoned away from people and concerns of this
world and cathected towards the God-complex.
We see here a consistent pattern of words that have
significant connotations for us being devalued, becoming code words
for an obsessive program that, if it were expressed in plain terms,
would lose all power to enthrall. This also reinforces Device 1, as
the newcomer naturally uses these terms with their ordinary
connotations. Deeply indoctrinated believers use the biblical
connotations, though they usually have trouble articulating these new connotations. Believers and unbelievers are not just speaking about
different concepts, but in different languages.









If we are mentally unbalanced because of spiritual
despondency--and a lot of mental imbalance comes from
this--the fear of hell and mental imbalance can be an escape
mechanism to escape the reality of having to face the judgment
throne. . . anything of this nature still leaves man a
sinner. . . --Harold Camping, 1985


Devices 4-7


Now I will outline Devices 4-7 and conclude this discussion of
the Evangelical Mind Control System.


Device 4: Assaulting Integrity


I know that labelling this device "Assaulting Integrity" will
strike Christians as an insult. Before I begin, let me offer this
little caveat from Dr. Cohen's book:

There is no group around, whose people as a rule are more
sincere, well-meaning, generous, natively tolerant if no one
inveigles them into being otherwise, and free from saying one
thing while intending another than the conservative
Evangelicals. It will seem incongruous and even mean to claim
that impairment of integrity has to do with their believing as
they do. The reader versed in the mental-health professions
will note drawing a blank as to technical understanding, there
having been little written, and no consensus, on what is meant
by integrity.--Edmund Cohen, The Mind of the Bible Believer,
p. 234.

Thus our first step is to make up for this deficiency on the
part of mental-health officials and define "integrity."

. . . with the complex model and varieties of psychopathology
in mind, we perceive that all psychological conditions other
than integration and relative cooperation of the
ego-personality with the other complexes involve impairment of
integrity. An ego-personality with control over its own
boundaries, communicating with and continually integrating
what lies in those reaches of the psyche beyond those
boundaries, has a measure of integrity that the "psychotic" or
the "neurotic" lacks. One who can use his capabilities to
come to continually better terms with the circumstances of his
existence we would say has integrity.--Cohen, p. 234.

The main idea is that the believer uses the knowledge process to
maintain self-deceptions rather than to make the conscious attitude as
well informed as possible. It becomes like a journalist who makes
selective use of information to make propaganda seem credible instead
of communicating information fairly. An example of this assault can
be seen in the case of the hysterically blind soldier patient that Dr.
Cohen discusses. This soldier had seen a friend die in combat, and
naturally began to wonder if he had done all he could to save his
friend. Eventually an hysterical symptom manifested
itself--blindness. In a demonstration Dr. Cohen once witnessed, such
a patient was led into a room, and in his path was a stool. The
patient was led so that he could not avoid stumbling over the stool,
if he were truly blind; yet the patient avoided the stool. On one
level, the patient knew he wasn't blind, but to maintain his illusions
he repressed that information.
Now the knowledge process keeps on trying to work properly;
assaulting integrity requires energy. The inducement to expending
this energy is avoiding the pain that goes with bad conscience, as we
can see in the example of the hysterically blind soldier. How does
the Bible induce one to expend that energy? Basically, the believer
is subtly encouraged to repress any tendency he might have to think
critically about his beliefs.

The point of the stratagem of assaulting integrity is inducing
the believer, for the sake of obedience, to affirm teachings
that are inherently incredible, not germane to, and in discord
with, the rest of the Bible. He violates his conscience, his
common sense, his good inclination to tell the truth as it
occurs to him, to call things as he sees them.--Cohen, p. 241.

An extreme example comes from Luke:

And he [Jesus] spake a parable to them to this end, that men
ought always to pray, and not to faint [shirk]; Saying, There
was in a city a judge, which feared not god, neither regarded
man: And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto
him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not
for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I
fear not God, nor regard man; Yet because this widow troubleth
me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary
me. And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith. And
shall God not avenge his own elect, which cry day and night
unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you he will
avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man
cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?[Luke 18:1-8]

Here God is likened to a wicked judge, lazy and infirm, tiring
easily. The notions of God's perfection and faithfulness, and the
selflessness the believer strives for, are turned topsy-turvy in this
passage. By passively accepting passages such as this, by being
encouraged to see them as enhancing those notions of God's perfection
and faithfulness, though they seem in discord with those notions, the
believer subtly attacks his own integrity.
There is an amplification of this "vicious cycle" of
continually repressing the bad conscience caused by assaulting
integrity, by loading some biblical content with lurid, scandalous implications. The biblical content implicates both relatively neutral
things, made taboo only by biblical doctrine, and aspects of the
personality that would be taboo in any civilized society. Thus a very
powerful dissociation is triggered.
We can see here the sadistic and masochistic activities the
believer is supposed to partcipate in. We are so hardened to these
topics that we must pause and reflect to see them clearly. How many
stop to really think about the fact that Christianity takes as its
main symbol a Roman instrument of terror? There are many aspects of Christianity that we would deem nauseating, if it were part of a
tradition outside our culture. One example is the communion ritual,
in which believers are urged to eat Christ's flesh and drink his
blood. This goes way back to ancient beliefs in the ingestion of
totem animals or enemies. The biblical image of ". . .having their
conscience seared with a hot iron[1 Tim. 4:2]" is ironically an apt
metaphor for the state of mind a believer must be in, desensitizied to
the unappetizing notion of eating flesh and drinking blood.
Christians of course characterize this as a deep, spiritual mystery,
but this doesn't change the character of the communion ritual.
Another example is the idea of substitutionary atonement, the
remedy for the sin affliction. The premise of the idea is that man is
so wicked and depraved that there is nothing he can do to please God.
For some reason, God requires propitation for sin, which man comes
into the world totally saturated with, yet somehow becomes
supersaturated by the inevitable bad deeds. So Christ had to be
sacrificed in man's stead. The enormity of Christ's sufferings are
supposed to guilt-trip the believer into obedience. But how enormous
were those sufferings? The Father sacificed his "only begotten son,"
but unlike mortal fathers he had his son back safe and sound in three
days. Christ's sufferings began with his anxiety attack in the Garden
of Gethsemane and ends with his death on the cross. (The Bible hedges
on the question of whether Jesus was even *conscious* before
resurrection.) Viewed objectively, the suffering seems about on par
with what after all must have been the fate of many a Jewish partriot
of the time; certainly one begins to question if it really equalled
all the sins of humanity!
We should also note here another method of assaulting
integrity, which is the call to evangelize others. Many of the most intelligent men in Christianity's history spoke of how terrifying God
can be for those who know the Bible too well. Luther for example
described his state of mind before hitting on the notion of "grace":

Is it not against all natural reason that God out of his mere
whim deserts men, hardens them, damns them, as if he delighted
in sins and in such torments of the wretched for eternity, he
who is said to be of such mercy and goodness? This appears
iniquitous, cruel, and intolerable in God, by which very
many have been offended in all ages. And who would not be?
I was myself more than once driven to the very abyss of
despair so that I wished I had never been created. Love
God? I hated him![1]

Frequently these men had mentors who recommended that they go out and
preach as a means of getting themselves to believe. Luther's mentor,
Dr. Staupitz, arranged for Luther to preach, and to succeed to his
university chair of Bible[2]. Wesley also encountered such advice, as
his Journal entry of March 5, 1738 illustrates:

Immediately it struck into my mind, "Leave off preaching.
How can you preach to others, who have not faith yourself?"
I asked Bohler whether he thought I should leave it off or
not. He answered, "By no means." I asked, "But what can I
preach?" He said, "Preach faith till you have it; and then,
because you have it, you will preach faith!"

Such a self-deception would be obviously seen as illegitimate in any
other setting; yet these men freely accepted it.
The basic idea behind this device is that the Bible's
unbelievable premises, which the believer strives to believe anyway,
are always accompanied by latent taboo content. These premises remain
in the believer's blind spot, so that focussed thought about them
becomes less likely. We can close this section with a quote from Dr.
Cohen:

When Christianity comes on with the figure of the man in
whose words the echoes of the best human achievements of
the far distant future must have resounded, being tortured,
mutilated, killed early in what should have been the prime
of his life, for its central emblem, it is telling us
plainly what it proposes to do to the corresponding tendencies
in ourselves, and we are too desensitized to turn away in
nauseated disbelief! That emblem is, itself, an "integrity
assaulting" piece of business, seen in that light.--Cohen, p.
258.

Now we come to the core of Dr. Cohen's work. What does it
take to make a person believe that he believes? What does it take to
turn a Luther from hating God to loving him? The answer to these
questions is covered in our discussion of Device 5.


Device 5: Dissociation Induction


This Device is the core of Dr. Cohen's work. Here we at last
get into an intensive application of depth-psychology insights to
explain the Bible's power over people. The previous devices set the
stage for the this one; the last two devices stablize its effects.
In conventional Christianity the notions of "sin" and "faith"
are essential. In Dr. Cohen's work they are also essential notions,
since dissociation lies at the root of the matter.
What is "sin?" In the Bible, we actually see two senses of
the word. In the Old Testament, the majority of mentionings of sins
refer to epsisodes of disobedience to scriptural rules. But there is
also a notion of sin portrayed in Genesis 2 and 3, and in the writings
of Paul, that have nothing to do with individual behavior--in other
words, original sin. Individual sins only add to a sinful condition
that was already total from birth.
To Christians, what was wrong with Adam and Eve's behavior was
simply disobedience. It makes no difference that they violated
neither the Ten Commandments nor the Golden Rule--the law had not been
laid down at the time. Although some might infer that sexuality is
part of God's curse, there is no indication that sex was unknown
before the Fall, or a result of the newly acquired knowledge. The
implication one gets is that the desire for knowledge, for
self-awareness, is the essence of the transgression against God. A
few more indications of this are present in the first eleven chapters
of Genesis. One example is the story of the Tower of Babel.
Apparently the advance of human science and technology, and the drive
for mankind to cooperate as a single global community, usurps God's prerogatives.
One can interpret the first eleven chapters in terms of the
Jungian ideas of psychodynamics. First there is the division of
primordial chaos into upper and lower parts, followed by the
appearance of dry land. Then an innocent and naive male is created,
and out of him an anima figure, Eve. Next a shadow figure, Cain,
appears, cursed by God but essential as the ancestor of Enoch and
Noah. Consciousness gets restricted to Noah's ark, with the rest of
the human and animal imagoes swept into unconsciousness. After the
Flood, the unity and concentration of human energies symbolized by
Noah's descendants is fragmented into many language groups, i. e.
complexes.
What is sin then? Clearly gaining self-consciousness,
psychological integration, is the essence of sin. One is to believe
that there is nothing in the unconscious is worth redeeming, that it
is all, in Jungian terms, shadow, and that all one can do is to keep
the shadow in check. Having one's energies unified and focussed for
an individualistic goal is essentially what the Bible abhors. This is
what lies behind the idea that original sin makes one totally sinful,
that sinful acts are just the outwards signs of this inner condition. Immorality or unethical behavior or thought is not even of the essence
of sin.
We can see further hints as to the nature of sin by examining
the proposed remedy, faith. The Bible gives the definition of faith
in the following verse:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence
of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good
report. Through faith we understand that the worlds were
framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were
not made of things which do appear.[Heb. 11:1-3]

Faith is belief in that for which there is no direct evidence, only
hearsay evidence--i. e., the Bible. The nature of faith is ultimately subjective. References to faith as a mystery[1 Tim. 3:9] and as a
supernatural gift[1 Cor. 12:9 and Eph. 2:8] rule out the notion that
it is somehow an extension of human intuition.
In many places we find the Bible exhorting the believer to do something, or to adopt a certain mental attitude. If faith is a gift
bestowed by God, why exhort the believer to do something? The things
the believer is exhorted to do are arranged so that the connections
between them and the subjective experiences the believer goes through
are cleverly obscured. All these exhortations basically boil down to
fostering dissociation. We can divide them into four categories: 1)
Explicit Devotional Program Instructions--concrete acts that the
believer is commanded to do. 2) Implicit Devotional Program Instructions--exhortations to do an act not meant to be done
literally. 3) Direct Suggestions--allegory that serves to illustrate
the mental state wanted of the believer. 4) Reverse
Suggestions--some allegory, particularly those involving animals,
demons and disasters, serve to illustrate the negative psychological
effects of being a believer, subtly providing the believer with
feedback.
The most explicit instructions deal with prayer. The Bible is
very specific about the sort of prayer it requires. Prewritten or
rote prayers, and liturgy in foreign languages, are not really what
the Bible authors had in mind. Instead, intelligible content,
engaging the believer's conscious mind, is the key. (The Lord's
Prayer [Matt. 6:9-15, Luke 11:2-4] is presented as an example, not as a
rote formula.) By continually telling God what he thinks God wants to
hear, the believer internalizes biblical doctrine and forces the
conscious mind to conform to it. Prayer boils down to
self-brainwashing. As a result, the God-complex, if nourished with
enough psychic energy, causes the believer to experience the illusion
that another presence possessing personality is there. Hence the
declaration that believers experience a "personal" relationship with
God. Constant prayer is necessary to keep the God-complex energized,
hence the need for church twice on Sunday, constant prayer and
devotion, and maybe having a religious radio station playing in the
background, to keep the God-complex pumped up.
Also the various instructions to "put on" certain qualities,
and to "put off" others, constitute Explicit Devotional Program
Instructions.
Earlier we examined the biblical definition of "love," and
found it be little more than following the rules laid down in the New Testament. If we look at statements involving faith and love, we see
further clues to the nature of faith:

. . .[F]aith . . .worketh[energeo, has effect] by love.[Gal.
5:6]

. . .[Y]our work[ergon, expenditure of energy] of faith, and
labour[kopos, toil] of love, and patience of hope in our Lord
Jesus Christ, in the sight of God. . .[1 Thess. 1:3]

. . .[W]e pray always for you, that our God would count you
worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of
his goodness, and the work[ergon] of faith with
power[dunamis]: That the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be
glorified in you, and ye in him, according to the grace of our
God and the Lord Jesus Christ.[2 Thess. 1:11-12]

While these passages do not explicitly define faith, we are notified
that it requires effort and labor, that it is difficult. The Greek
words highlighted, besides being the roots for words like energy, erg
and dynamic, hint at a notion psychic energy in accord with that we
have developed. Faith consists of a constant outpouring of energy;
obsessive conscious concentration is lauded, and mental relaxation,
shunned. Let down your guard, and that could be the moment Christ
returns "like a thief in the night," and sends you to Hell. This
tense, on-guard sense of faith is further elaborated by Paul:

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power
of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may
be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. . .Stand
therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and
having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet
shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all,
taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to
quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet
of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word
of God. . .[Eph. 6:10-17]

The Bible's cynicism about human nature, supposing he can rise no
higher than passive follower, is expressed here. The believer is to
be in uniform and cumbersome military attire, submerging his
individuality, restricting freedom of movement, and insulating him
from all but a few kinds of approved stimulation. The objective of
the campaign is to use "the sword of the Spirit," the word of God, to
pierce others, and to use the shield of faith to avoid being pierced
by any other insight. Faith is a barrier against unapproved psychic
content.
One Bible incident brings these themes together, which also
comes closest to defining the true nature of faith:

And straightaway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a
ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent
the multitudes away. And. . .he went up into a mountain apart
to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone.
But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with
waves: for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of
the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea, they were
troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out in fear.
But straightaway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good
cheer; it is I; be not afraid. And Peter answered him and
said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.
And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the
ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when he saw
the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he
cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched
forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of
little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? And when they were
come into the ship, the wind ceased. Then they that were in
the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art
the son of God.[Matt. 14:22-33]

This story contains the central psychological paradigm of the Bible.
In the Bible as well as in our psychology, water represents the
unconscious, a mountain or high place a particularly lucid state of consciousness, and stormy weather to passion and emotion. In other
verses the believer learns that by faith he can make mountains go into
the sea, i. e., he can rearrange psychic contents so unbiblical
thoughts or attitudes are submerged into the unconscious. Here he
learns that by faith he can strengthen the barrier between conscious
and unconscious. But if his concentration is diverted, as Peter's was
when he failed to tune out natural stimuli (i. e., his own emotions),
then the barrier reverts to its usual permeability. Failing to be
obsessed with Jesus results in a rapid deterioration of faith, and
then one has to confront one's unconscious, mischaracterized as a
stormy sea in which to drown. But it only seems that way when one
bottles it up, forcing it to express itself too turbulently.
On another occasion Jesus and his disciples cross the sea. In
the stern, Jesus lies asleep, and an afternoon storm arises. The
disciples, becoming afraid, awaken Jesus, who orders the sea to calm
and chides them for their lack of faith. (One wonders at the
disciples apparent lack of faith, when they could see and hear Jesus,
and, being relatively provincial and uneducated, would have no trouble believing in the supernatural premise of Jesus' ministry.) Again the
fluid boundary is smoothed over, and troublesome emotions gotten out
of the way by faith, which seems to be enhanced if Jesus is in the
forefront of attention.
There are other references to water and to boats that pertain
to fishing and the casting of nets. Jesus' disciples were "fishers of
men." Paul describes loss of faith as "shipwreck." Mark and John
also tell us what the disciples were doing in the boat before Jesus
arrived, that is, rowing against the wind in a troubled sea. Here we
see another image of the work that faith really entails.
An image of heaven, according to our analysis, might that of a solidified membrane, so that proscribed mental contents are kept down
without constant effort. Such an image is contained in the following
passage:

And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven
angles who had seven plagues, which are the last, because in
them the wrath of God is finished. And I saw, as it were, a
sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who had come off
victorious from the beast and from his image and from the
number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, holding
harps of God. And they sang the song of Moses the bond-
servant of god and the song of the Lamb. . .[Rev. 15:1-3]

The sense of a peaceful, restful state, yet one that takes constant
effort, is expressed in the mixture of solid, inert glass and gaseuos,
active fire.
The theme of personality fragmentation is also symbolized by
images of bodily fragmentation and division. Hence references to
those who eunuchs "for the kingdom of heaven's sake"[Matt. 19:12],
figures of plucking out an eye, a hand or a foot, rather than entering
hellfire whole, and division between left and right, "let not thy left
hand know what thy right hand doeth,"[Matt. 6:3. Also passages
refering to this left/right theme include Matt. 25:31-37, 40-41, 46,
Matt. 27:38, Rev. 10:1-2, Matt. 20:20-23].
The true biblical program is one that promotes this state of
inner dividedness. Paul gives us an outstanding example in the
following passage:

. . .[W]e know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal,
sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not[i. e., don't
understand]: for what I would, I do not; but what I hate,
that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent
unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that
do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me
(that is, in my flesh), dwelleth no good thing: for to will
is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I
find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil
which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not,
it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I
find then a law that, when I would do good, evil is present
with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward
man: But I see another law in my members, warring against
the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law
of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am!
who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank
God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind
I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law
of sin.[Rom. 7:14-25]

Apparently the peace that passeth understanding doesn't come until the
next life; hence Paul's explanation of the old nature remaining as an
outer shell. Alienation from the world, others outside church, and
oneself are in view here. Putting noncomplying mental content into
the unconscious does not get rid of it. We can see this in two other
biblical themes: that of evil spirits and the Trinity.
If we make the connection between complexes and spirits, then
the Bible shows if people do not integrate the unconscious to the
conscious attitude, then they are doomed to live out the implications
blindly, perhaps as weird neurotic symptoms. This is expressed in
this reverse-suggestive passage:

When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh
through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then
he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out;
and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and
garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven
other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and
dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than
the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked
generation.[Matt. 12:43-45]

Unclean spirits represent the unconscious from the conscious standpoint. The attribute most clearly identifying them as so is
their knowledge; they know much more about Jesus than human
onlookers[Matt. 8:28-32, Mark 1:23-28; 3:11 and Luke 4:33-35]. They
are characterized as legion[Mark 5:9, Luke 8:30] and yet speak with
one voice, exhibiting unity of mind. They do not cease to exist when
cast out, but must go somewhere else, such as swine--symbolizing a
lower, more primitive level of the psyche[Matt. 8:28-32]. Negative
images of the unconscious are once again conveyed.
The personality fragmentation expected of the believer is also
conveyed in passages about the multiple personality of God:

And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto
thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not
what I will, but what thou wilt.[Mark 14:36]

Jesus saith. . . I am the way, the truth and the life: no
man cometh unto the Father but by me. . . Believest thou
not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The
words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself[i. e.,
on my own initiative]: but the Father that dwelleth in me,
he doeth the works.[John 14:6-7, 10]

I and my Father are one.[John 10:30]

But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the
angels. . . neither the Son, but the Father.[Mark 13:32]

The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is
sent greater than he that sent him.[John 13:16]

. . .[W]hen he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide
you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself[i. e.,
on his own initiative]; but whatsoever he shall hear, that
shall he speak. . .He shall glorify me: for he shall receive
of mine, and shall shew it unto you.[John 16:13-15]

According to Scrpiture, Jesus determined who would receive saving
knowledge of God, and the Father determined who would sit on Jesus'
left and right hand. Jesus and the Holy Spirit only serve as parrots
in declaring God's Word. Yet they *are* God's Word and were with him
from the beginning. Jesus apparently does not know the hour of his
own second coming. All three persons of the Godhead are endowed with
God's power, yet the Father is apparently more omnipotent. This
picture of God resembles nothing so much as a case of multiple
personality disorder.
Another source of dissonance concerns God's moral nature.
Although the "lovingkindness" of God is often touted, the Bible
contains many examples of God's apparent wickedness. In the book of
Job for instance, God lets Satan torture Job, a righteous man,
apparently so that he can win a bet with Satan. Job is unequivocal
about making God responsible for evil, whether he does evil actively
or by allowing evil angels to persecute his chosen. One also gets a
sense of such hand-in-glove cooperation between God, Satan and other
evil angels in other passages[2 Chron. 18:17-21, 1 Kings 22:20-23].
God sends lying spirits to those he chooses to harden, ". . .God shall
send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie."[2 Thess.
2:11] Yet despite these many references to God's evil, despite
references to God blinding people *spiritually* as well as causing
physical suffering, believers overwhelmingly continue to perceive God
as good, loving and just. Why? Because the believer is conditioned
to project all his more positive qualities onto the God-complex.
Psychologically the images of the good cop/bad cop God, and
the trinitarian, three-faces-of-God God cancel each other out. The
pull of one image keeps the other from coming into focus, leaving one
with the task of identifying with an indescribable blob. That
God-image is the ideal stumbling block for the "related" flow of
psychic energy. Other descriptions of God can be understood as
metaphors for mental activity:

God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship
him in spirit and in truth.[John 4:24]

. . .God is light, and in him no darkness at all.[1 John 1:5]

God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God,
and God in him.[1 John 4:16]

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.[John 1:1]

. . .[R]eceiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have
grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and
godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire.[Heb. 12:28-29]

God turns out to be nothing but a psychological complex. The goal is
to give the God-complex so much psychic energy that other complexes
are drowned out. The believer thinks he is free of them, but actually
he has covered them up with the shared psychopathology, as Freud
indicated. Thus the Christian claim to a transformed outlook is true,
in a rather ironic sense!
Dissociation Induction consists of stratagems to get a person
to inwardly divide his awareness, to project his better qualities onto
a God-complex and to occupy his mind with biblically prescribed artificialities. There are secondary gains as a result of this
strategy, such as relief from whatever neurotic symptoms may be
present (at least, in the short run), but so much energy goes into
stifling one's authentic humanness, that it is no exagerration to say
that this is a case where the cure is worse than the disease!


Device 6: Bridge Burning


In several ways the New Testament seeks to make the gap
between believers and outsiders so wide the believers do not get out,
though outsiders should get in. Passages against family and
association with unbelievers, and passages suggesting that believers
are to be blind, deaf and dead to worldly things, all work together to
keep believers from even considering outside influences, even when
exposed to them constantly. To accomplish this, something a lot more
powerful than that which attracts a few a susceptible people to
sequestered cults is needed. The dissociated state of mind is that
powerful.
Here is a passage illustrating that gap between believers and unbelievers:

Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for
what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?
and what communion hath light with darkness? And what
concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that
believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple
of God with idols?. . . Wherefore come out from among them,
and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean
thing; and I will receive you, And will be a Father unto you,
and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord
Almighty.[2 Cor. 6:14-18]

Muted disgust is to be the the reaction to the world outside the
flock. Also, the life of the believer is described in terms of
hating those members of his earthly family who do not come along, of
leaving them and all one's possessions behind to be a follower. One
is to burn all bridges behind one, to make it as hard as possible to
return. Besides the flock, one is to have on other place to go.
If the believer were to notice how convenient for controlling
him it is for him to perceive outside ideas as emanating from Satan,
he would first have to give himself permission to think such a
firbidden thought. But he needs to entertain such thoughts first,
before he could give himself that permission. The well-indoctrinated
believer can't quite get himself to do either. To see his position in perspective, he needs to clear away all the biblical irrelevancies he
is presently occupied with; but to identify the irrelevancies, he
would already have to have that perspective. This paradox produces intellectual deadlock in the believer. The believer fixates on this
paradox, and thus adds one more irrelevancy to the many already
occupying his conscious thought. An impasse in rational thought is
created.
Thus Bridge Burning strengthens Dissociation Induction by
splitting the believer's psychological reality into the realms of
believers and unbelievers, and widening the gap so much that it remains uncrossable. This can be done by poisoning his mind against
unbelievers, or placing logical conundrums in his path out of the
Bible's semantic labyrinth, or bluffing him with the prospect of how
harmful anything that would dispel this biblical intrusion from his psyche would be. Bridge Burning can't create the gap, but it can keep it
open and widen it, lending stability to the mind control already in
place.


Device 7: Holy Terror


Basically, frightening people into compliance with biblical
doctrine is what it is all about. Every other issue we have examined
is transformed into something radically different from the
superficial, Device 1 form. The initial promise to transform mundane
life is modified later on by the knowledge that in this life, we will experience persecution. Evangelicals disparage the "relativism" they
see in non-biblical beliefs; but we have seen that the notion of the
punishment fitting the crime is "spiritually naive." All that
biblical "justice" comes down to is dwelling on offenses that pertain
to keeping indoctrination in place, ratifying any existing secular
state decrees, and maybe incorporating any prohibitions against theft,
murder, etc. that all human groups invent anyway; it's only thanks to
the rhetorical style that there seems to be anything more to it. What
of the "love" a believer is to receive? We have seen that "love"
boils down to an obsessive self-discipline in accord with the
devotional program. The "hope" a believer receives is that there is
some small chance that he won't spend eternity getting worked over in
God's torture chamber. And as for the Bible being "pro-family"--the
best it does is to provide some pro-family verses to cancel out the
anti-family verses. Only the fear appeal remains the same as the indoctrination deepens. (Of course, pastors have developed the habit
of saying that "fear" really means awe or reverence, just as "hate"
really means psychological distance. Unfortunately, there's not much
in the way of contextual, thematic or etymological justification for
such an approach. This is a variation on the theme we have developed
of selective dissociation, of isolating emotion from the idea that
elicits it.)
The Bible threatens non-elect with the worst fate
imaginable--namely, eternal punishment coupled with the catastrophe at
the end of the world, i. e. the destruction of everything the
non-elect loved in this life. The punishment is described in terms of corporeal punishment, so that even densest of the rank and file will
get the point. Thus the references to burns inflicted eternally[Matt.
25:41, 46; Luke 3:9, 17; 16:24; John 15:6; Heb. 10:27; Jude 7; Rev.
14:10; 19:20; 20:10 and 21:8], being deprived of rest, and being
whipped [Luke 12:47-48]. Whatever happens takes place in darkness,
elicits weeping and gnashing of teeth, and will be worse than what
happened to Sodom and Gomorrah.
How does this fear appeal help foster dissociation? The Bible
authors state that though heaven and earth pass away, it is with their
earthly bodies and present psychological makeup that the unsaved are resurrected. Not only does the punishment consist of pain being
inflicted upon one's now indestructible body, but also the denial of
all creature comfort to creatures that still desire it. The saved on
the other hand, get "incorruptible" bodies. The Bible doesn't say a
lot about the way the saved will live in the new heavens and new
earth, but apparently the "joy" of their existence will be release
from creature wants and bonds of affection that only seemed important.
The saved will be like the angels--no gender, no intimate bodily
functions, no ordinary human feelings or compassion. The image one
receives is that heaven is mainly the received ability to sit through
an eternal church service without getting bored or without getting an
aching posterior.

And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto
crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the
throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.
And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast
like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and
the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. And the four
beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were
full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying,
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and
is to come. . . The four and twenty elders fall down before
him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for
ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne,
saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour
and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy
pleasure they are and were created.[Rev. 4:6-8, 10-11]

(Here we can see the four beasts representing the despised
unconscious, three parts animal and one human, and fragmentation
indicated by the multiplicity of eyes, representing complexes. The
beasts both regard the throne and are superimposed on God the Father,
who occupies the throne even while the beasts are in the "midst of the
throne." Also God here is protrayed as receiving power from the
twenty-four elders worshipping him, which is consistent with the
notion of a God-complex being constantly energized by believers. Once
again, the conclusion is that God consists of pieces of oneself,
projected and energized with one's own energy.)
This contrast between saved and unsaved modes of existence in
the afterlife--which really represents the state of the psyche--is
just another way of pitting conscious against unconscious, where
unconscious is once again negatively portrayed in terms of the shadow. Christianity comes down to a destructive, wasteful effort towards the
goal of keeping the conscious and unconscious estranged; fear of hell
is a metaphor for the fear of the consequences of letting the two
mental realms communicate. If the dissociation should weaken, the
fear of hell drives the believer to redouble his efforts, to perfect
the dissociation, perhaps by praying more, going to church to get peer re-assurance, more Bible readings, etc.
What keeps this fear from getting out of hand? The great
genius of Christianity lies in the fact that it protects itself with intricately contrived non-disprovability. That which could disconfirm Christianity is is (conveniently) out of reach, beyond the grave as it
were. Thus even though, like our hysterically blind soldier, the
believer knows on some level he has no real proof for the belief, and
so must dissociate this awareness to maintain the belief, he also
knows that nobody has any direct basis for declaring the belief false.
This "double orientation" keeps the fear remote enough for it not to
get out of hand, and accounts for the mind knowing, at some level,
what to expel from conscious awareness.
Also it must be admitted here that there will be an enormous
difference in effect on "inner-directed" and "other-directed"
individuals. "Inner-directed" individuals are mainly guided by
conscience, where "other-directed" individuals take their cues from
other people. Most people are really more "other-directed" than we
would like to think. The Devices we have been describing have a much
greater impact on such "inner-directed" individuals than they do on
the rank-and-file, who just "go with the flow" in any event. The
great danger for the "other-directed" believer is to spend most of his
life working into a position where the superficialities of Device 1
wear off and the true implications of the Bible make themselves felt.



Because of the Protestant tradition of the last couple
centuries of obscuring the Bible's true import, of making the Device 1
"sales pitch" into the whole religion, present-day Evangelicals have a potential crop of clientele almost as unsuspecting as those of the
first century must have been. Once again, people are "open" to the
concept that a kind of weakness, i. e. inner dividedness, really
represents strength. Part of the blame lies with the failure of
secular ideologies to provide a satisfactory answer--they all made
falsifiable promises, and they were all, indeed, falsified. Add an
underlying end-of-the-world hysteria, fostered by biblical images
resembling a nuclear holocaust, and the approach of the year 2000, and
it becomes quite conceivable that a socially dangerous situation could
be brewing. Even in the best-case scenario, the new biblicism is
probably resulting in needless fear, manipulation and mental anguish
being spread all over our country.


[1] Bainton, Roland H. Here I Stand (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon
Press, 1978), pp. 44-45.

[2] Ibid.





Having experienced it before, in my Jungian phase, I call
giving up on reality and withdrawal into fantasy and fiction
by a different name: decadence. For me, Christianity is
simply a cleaner form of decadence than recreational drugs,
perverse sex, or rock and roll. Christianity has shown me
that I, too, could be decadent. But, serious person that
I am, I chose the way wherein one can be decadent--and still
not have much fun at it.--Cohen, Mind of the Bible Believer,
p. 405.



We have painted a very drastic picture of the harmful
psychological effects biblical Christianity can have. By such an
analysis, one might be led to conclude that the biblical authors
cynically pushed Christianity upon an unsuspecting populace. Such a
conclusion ignores two pertinent facts: 1) We have shown, via
appropriate quotes from Luther and Wesley, that the biblicist can
essentially "brainwash" himself. It is perfectly consistent with our
view that the Bible authors "brainwashed" themselves with their own
doctrine, even as they invented it. 2) The unique historical
situation, i. e. the Roman conquest of Israel, and the influence of
Hellenistic culture, did much to create the situation in which such a
strange doctrine as Christianity could come into being.
But even though we acknowledge that present-day Evangelicals
are sincere, we must evaluate biblical Christianity upon its effects,
not upon the intentions of its practitioners. This final post in the
series examines some of the social implications of the
mini-Reformation.


Mental-Health Implications


We have seen that, as Freud led us to expect, there is a
relation between the biblical, devotional program and neuroses. The
program basically helps the individual to become more neurotic,
widening the gap between the conscious attitude and the rest of the personality. The believers share the symptoms in this case, and
spurious intellectual interpretations of these symptoms are provided.
While the biblical program may help those with addictions, by
diverting energy to a God-complex; while Christianity may not have
that much of an effect upon those "other-directed" enough not to put
the implications of the belief together in a coherent manner; the
inescapable conclusion is that biblical Christianity is a poor
substitute for optimum psychological integration.
The main problems to be observed in conservative Christians
are those of fear and depression. Because most mental-health
professionals do not recognize what they are dealing with in
conservative Christianity, those with Christian fear are usually
misdiagnosed as phobic. But when properly questioned, the fearful
Christian can discuss what he is afraid of, unlike those who come by
irrational fears in other ways. What they are afraid of, of course,
is hell, and they weary themselves with the anticipation of it.
Fearful Christians tend to stay away from anything that remotely
threatens to send them there by accidental death, and avoid situations requiring action, lest more demerits be entered into God's record
book. (Dr. Cohen remarks that this "reflects faulty epistemology, not illogic.") Fearful Christians will testify that Christianity has
delivered them from even greater mental distress; they don't identify
the program as the source of the problem as well as the source of the palliative for it. It resembles nothing so much as addictive
behavior, which may explain Christianity's success in helping some
cope with other addictions. (An example can be seen in Old Order
Amish. Though they eschew most forms of technology, they do avail
themselves fully of modern medical care: they seem even more
preoccupied than others with delaying the end as long as possible!
This may be accounted for by over-riding fear of the hereafter.)
The other main problem is depression. The Bible-believer
needs constant exhortation and encouragement from others and, with
that and self-discipline, attains a certain momentum that prevents
what would otherwise be complete inactivity. One can see this
depressed demeanor in the few conservative denominations with a long
tradition. In the new, successful conservative church, one encounters
a well-planned and well-acted show of cheerfulness, which partly
compensates for the cheerlessness implicit in the doctrine, and also
acts as more Device 1 "sales pitch." Basically, the purposeful
misrouting of mental energy is draining, so the conservative must
convince themselves that it is otherwise by "testifying" to how
empowered they feel. (Again, using Old Order Amish as a an extreme
example of a conservative sect, we can see some confirmation of our expectations. In the general population, the major cause of admission
to mental-health facilities is schizophrenia; among Old Order Amish,
the major cause of admission is depression[1].)
How should these problems be dealt with? Unfortunately, we
cannot say that the secular mental-health professionals necessarily do
good. Every secular competitor to religion turns out to have too many
orthodox defenders of some doctrine. Such doctrines always seem to
have an overly simple but appealing concept of human nature at its
core, subtly misleading and harmful in the long run. (One thinks of Freudianism, with its negative view of human nature, of Jungians whose religious quest has degenerated into escapism, of Rogerians with their
"radical nonjudgmentalness," in which they basically repeat back to
the client what he has said using different words.) Both the
Christian and secular programs that promise a "better" life, life on
an even keel, ought rightly to be viewed with suspicion.
Self-reliance is the way to go. But a therapist can help, just by
using his intuition and basic human qualities; just being
reality-oriented is helpful to someone put through the wringer by
conservative churches.


Three Unproductive Questions


Journalists and liberal commentators often fail to ask
conservative Christian leaders the right questions. Instead, we often
hear questions like "Don't you see truth isn't black and white, that
there are many shades of gray?" "Do Jews who reject Jesus go to
Heaven or don't they?" "How can you say your interpretation of the
Bible is correct, when there are so many floating around?" These
questions don't give outsiders any insight into conservative
Christianity, and the conservative Christian in turn can reassure
himself that the know-it-all interviewer really has no inkling as to
what Christianity is all about.
1) "Don't you see truth isn't black and white?" There is a
caricature of the Evangelical as one with simple, pat answers to
everything, as one who can't tolerate ambiguity. Actually, the
Evangelical is just the opposite--he tolerates too much ambiguity,
lets artificial confusion operate where there should be clarity.
The caricature of Evangelicals stems from the authoritarian
personality theory, which says that conservative political attitudes
result from personality inadequacy. The symptoms are supposed to be
defensive over-compensation against anti-social impulses, rigid,
overly conventional attitudes, and intolerance of ambiguity. This
theory came out of the McCarthy era and implies that anyone not
politically ultraliberal and not "radically non-judgmental" is
mentally ill. It's an appealing theory, but is not confirmed by the
empirical data gathered to prove it.
The skillful Evangelical apologist can make it seem as if
logic, rationality and self-discipline are exclusively Christian
virtues, which "secular humanists" are necessarily against.
2) The second question can be described as a clumsy ploy to
get Evangelicals to say that they are anti-Semitic. Actually
Evangelical leaders deserve a lot of credit for instilling pro-Jewish
and pro-Israel attitudes in their flocks. The Evangelical can
honestly reply that unconverted Jews just don't go to Heaven, any more
than unconverted Gentiles do, and that the Evangelical is just trying
to save anyone he can.
One can sharpen this question by changing it into what Dr.
Cohen calls the "Anne Frank question." We can fairly describe Anne
Frank as a "secular humanist," and it is quite possible she remained
one right to the bitter end. The inescapable conclusion, from the
biblical viewpoint, is that after the earthly Nazi death camp, she
will be eternally remanded to God's death camp, where her torment goes
on forever. Quite a picture of God's "lovingkindness!"
3) "How can you say your interpretattion is any better than
anyone else's?" The assumption here is that the Bible is so ambiguous
and incomprehensible, that it can be used to support any conceivable
position. We have seen that, though the Bible does make use of
ambiguity and contradiction for mind-control purposes, it *does* set
forth a specific doctrine. Only the liberal Protestant tradition of
encasing the Bible in an ever-thickening layer of obscuration gives
the impression that the Bible can be made to stand for any doctrine.


Religion in Politics


We are by now nauseatingly familiar with politicized
Evangelicals such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. These preachers basically got a free ride from Evangelical churches, because despite
efforts to politicize him, the Evangelical develops a fatalistic
attitude towards worldly affairs. Ceasing to become concerned with
worldly things is, after all, a prominent part of the teachings of
Jesus. Extreme concern with worldly things can be construed as
symptomatic of unbelief! The religious right are reacting to a real
failure on the part of the old-left intellectuals to make liberalism
live up to its promises; this is what gives the religious right the
opportunity to make conservative Christianity seem like an uplifting
lifestyle.
Aside from this disinclination to become involved in worldly activities, we see two Big Lies being propagated by the Evangelicals:
that our nation has a Christian foundation, and that the Bible has
something to contribute to our democratic tradition.
The Founding Fathers were mainly Anglicans, with a minority of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Roman Catholics and Jews.
Their generation wasn't noted for religious fervor. Prominent
Founding Fathers include Franklin, Jefferson and Paine, individuals
with religious views so unorthodox that I doubt they would be
tolerated in public life today. Many of the Founding Fathers were
also Freemasons, which meant they spent much of their free time
participating in a religious tradition at variance with their nominal Protestantism or Judaism. Fervent religious groups sat out the
Revolutionary War, mostly because they were pacifists. One has only
to read documents left behind by men such as Franklin and Jefferson to
realize that these men were scarcely fervent Christians.
As we have seen, the Wesleyans learned not to look too closely
at the Bible, so that they could espouse a humane salvation plan. The abolitionists had reason to pass over the Bible even more lightly,
given its unequivocal support of slavery. This is a part of history
that Evangelicals conveniently overlook, when they claim that our
nation has a Christian heritage. The archaic, authoritarian social
views, which the Evangelicals uncover when they strip away the layers
of tradition obscuring what the Bible really says, are ultimately
foreign to our democratic tradition. (Peter's admonition in Acts,
that "we ought to obey God, not men" applies exclusively to spreading
the Gospel. Nowhere does the New Testament instruct the believer to
oppose the State for other forms of injustice. Instead, we are
instructed to be good slaves of both God and of earthly authorities,
despite being told elsewhere that no one can serve two masters. In
any event, given the negative biblical view of man's nature, we can
hardly envision a Bible-authentic believer picturing "noble savages"
coming together and basing a decent society on a social contract, a la Rousseau!)


Charity


We have seen that one motivation for nineteenth and early twentieth-century mental health professionals to treat Christianity
gently was that Wesleyan-style Christianity provided much charity that
was not then being provided by the secular sector. In Evangelical
circles we don't see that much emphasis on charity, not because they
are a bunch of skinflints but because they correctly interpret the
biblical figures of providing food and clothing to the needy as
figures for spreading the Gospel. (After all, when do we see Jesus
and his disciples providing food and shelter for the unfortunate?
More often than not, they were the recipients of such charity, not its providers.) In any event, we can expect the Evangelical to say that
bringing eternal life to unbelievers takes precedence over making
things better in this life, because the suffering in hell will be so
much more awful than anything that could occur in this earthly life.


Creationism


[Dr. Cohen has little to say on this topic, but because it
seems an important one, I have interpolated some of my own comments
here.]
Along with the surge in Evangelicalism, there has been a surge
in so-called Scientific Creationism. In the 1980's Arkansas and
Louisiana passed laws mandating equal time in schools for evolutionary
theory and Creationism. I think with Creationists we see another kind
of "double orientation" that we saw earlier in the hysterically blind
soldier patient. Not too put too fine a point on it, Creationists
regularly use tactics that most ordinary scientists wouldn't have
anything to do with--not due to superior morality, but because
engaging in such tactics undermines the scientific method itself.
Creationists routinely misrepresent evolution, and then "demolish" it
with straw-man arguments; quote prominent scientists out of context;
use old arguments against the occurence of evolution, such as the one
based on the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, that were long ago shown to be
false. They regularly distort evidence for evolution, as can be seen
in their arguments about "transitional forms." They chide scientists
for making extrapolations into the past (such as assuming that
radioactive decay rates are constant) but extrapolate wildly when it
suits their purposes.
The failure of "scientific" creationists to construct a
rigorous scientific theory of creation, and their assertion that in
any conflict between what the data seem to be telling us and what the
Bible tells us, the Bible takes precedence, ought to alert us that
something other than science is going on here. The "double
orientation" we have spoken of can help us understand why they seem
convinced by arguments that strike those who understand evolution as
so faulty. On some level they know they are falsifying science to
suit their beliefs; and since doing so is an integrity-assaulting
piece of business, they have to repress that knowledge more deeply,
and often accuse scientists of the very tactics they indulge in! In Creationists we can see that the need to interpret Genesis literally
prevents one from attaining the insight that it is really an allegory.
And if Genesis can be interpreted as allegory, what is to prevent
other parts of the Bible--such as Jesus' watery walk that we
highlighted in Device 5--from being interpreted allegorically? The
need to interpret Genesis literally is symptomatic of the need to
suppress the conscious awareness that one is subconsciously
interpreting the whole Bible as an allegory, symbolizing the
believer's inner state. Thus we can expect Creationism to be a
continuing preoccupation of Evangelicals.


Scapegoating


Evangelicals tell us that the Bible is a great guide for
modern life, but never seem to make the conscious connection that part
of the indoctrination leads to alienation and unconcern for others
unlike themselves. While they have very commendably distanced
themselves from racism and anti-Semitism, they have filled their need
for scapegoats by adopting homophobia. The norm for conservative
Christians seems to be hatred towards homosexuals. When AIDS first
became prominent news, the immediate reaction of every conservative
Christian spokeperson seemed to amount to gloating over God's wrathful
judgment on the homosexuals. The thought that Christian spokepersons
ought to evince some compassion never seemed to occur until after the
demagogic benefit had been reaped from the "fag-bashing." (For anyone
who thinks that the Bible advocates tolerance for homosexuals, check
out Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 5:11; 6:9; 11:14; Phil. 3:2; Jude 7; Rev.
22:15 and of course, Deut. 22:5.)
Scapegoating is integral to the biblically authentic program.
Not only is one to expel negative thoughts and emotions from
consciousness, but also the sort of natural affection and empathy that
our "relatedness" psychology requires. One is to be a good Christian
soldier, like those Roman soldiers who were among the first Gentile
converts. One can see this mental approach in the present-day
Afrikaaner, working the machinery of apartheid, and who typically has
had a very severe, Scripture-saturated Christian-school upbringing.
If some Evangelicals had their way, a pogrom against homosexuals would
probably commence immediately. And to satisfy their appetite, they
would then need more outgroups to bash. . .


The End of the World


Another peculiarity of our time concerns end-time events. The resemblance of some biblical images to a nuclear holocaust, and the
immanent approach of the year 2000, has fueled intense interest in
end-time scenaria. Here is the key New Testament passage concerning
the end of the world:

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men
count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not
willing that any should perish, but that all should come
to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come as a
thief in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with
a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent
heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall
be burned up. Seeing then that all these things shall be
dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye be in all holy
conversation and godliness, Looking for and hasting unto
the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on
fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with
fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise,
look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look
for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him
in peace, without spot, and blameless. And account that
the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our
beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given
unto him hath written unto you. . .[2 Pet. 3:9-15]

The biblically-authentic believer is to regard the destruction of the
natural world as immanent, and thus encouraged to cultivate unconcern
for the natural world, and emotional disinvestment in it.
There are three consequences that concern us here. Obviously
the biblical images have a similarity to images of a nuclear war.
That correspondance may be the single biggest factor behind the mini-Reformation. This situation prompts people to shift everything
important to them to another plane, away from the impending calamity.
The second consequence is a lack of interest in conservation, in
preserving natural resources for future generations at the expense of short-range goals. James Watt, former Secretary of the Interior, is
an outstanding example of this tendency. The third consequence
concerns the Jewish people. Many of the end-time scenaria include a
gory end for contemporary Israel. Perhaps the Evangelicals will
eventually become less benign in their feelings towards Israel than at
present.


Conclusion


I have outlined a theory concerning Christianity that is at
variance with both the standard theories of religion and the standard
theology that believers occupy their conscious thoughts with. We
cannot directly observe the unconscious of the Evangelicals, but we
can look for symptoms such as fear and depression, scapegoating, the
need to twist scientific evidence to make creationism look tenable,
and lack of charitable outreach on the part of Evangelicals as
trends that tend to confirm Dr. Cohen's theory. Also his
interpretations do more to make the Bible into a united, coherent
whole than any Christian position I have encountered, liberal or
conservative. Conservative Christianity comes down to a withdrawal
into a shared fantasy, possibly as a result of the fact people are
becoming tired of rapid social and technological change, and the fact
that the end of the existence of all living via a nuclear holocaust
has been a real possibility since the 1950's, and yet a possibility
that in some ways seemed beyond our control during the Cold War. This
sense of futility, more than anything else, may be the root cause of
the mini-Reformation. As indicated in the quote at the beginning of
the article, this comes down to a form of decadence, albeit of a
cleaner variety than other activities we associate with the word.


SD


[1] Janice A. Egeland and Abram M. Hostetter, "Amish Study, I:
Affective Disorders Among the Amish, 1976-1980," American Journal of Psychiatry, 140, no. 1 (January 1983), pp. 56-61.



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