The Trib recently ran an article about a study done by the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion about perceptions of God in the 21st Century. They found that perceptions of God actually reveal four fairly distinct personas of God that Americans recognize and worship. Now, the article says that the study revealed four distinct 'gods' that people worshipped, but I don't think that's exactly accurate. The people were asked to identify how they viewed God, not which god they worshipped. So I think it is more accurate to describe their perceptions as 'personas' of God. Check it out here.
The four personas are the Authoritarian God, the Benevolent God, the Critical God, and the Distant God.
What do you think? I think it's a cool study. Of course, I know that we'll all say, "God is more than that, He's all those things, He's none of those things, He is what He is, etc., etc.,..." But I bet the people who took the survey would say the same things. The point of it seems to have been finding a dominant perception of God. Do any of these match up to your dominant perception of God? Right or wrong? It may be something that you have to constantly talk yourself out of or in to. What did you think about denominational and regional breakdowns in the survey? Like I said, interesting.
If I had to confess my dominant perception, (or misconception), it would have to be Benevolent God. You?
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5 Cachinnations
Interesting post. I think my "default God persona" is the authoritarian one. But I try to regularly and gently remind myself of His benevolence. That is the persona of God that I would like to be my default. After all, He is Love. :)
Posted on 9/19/2006
Interesting results in the survey. One thing that caught my eye - outside of Jewish responders, significantly more people among the various religious groupings believed Jesus to be the Son of God than believed without a doubt that God existed. Um, got the cart before the horse there, don't we? That, very likely, is a shaping influence on which persona of God a person subscribes.
Posted on 9/19/2006
Good eye, Euph. What I think it shows, in part, is that much of our perceptions of God are culturally shaped to the point that people just parrot what they've been told. People raised in a "Christian" environment know that they're supposed to say that about Jesus. That problem of people not developing and understanding their beliefs and instead just adopting society's or family's perceptions of faith is how you arrive at those multiple distinct personas of God. At least that's one of my theories.
Posted on 9/19/2006
Let me rephrase what you're saying, cach: The religion of many people today is cultural and a heritage. I an Irish. I am caucasian. I am American. I am "___" (fill in the religion of your parents). The study also shows this. Take the Jewish results: only 43% have no doubt that God exists, compared to 86% Evangelical protestant and 100% Black Protestant. Or belief of the literality of the Bible: only 9% of Jews and 12% of Catholics believe the Bible to be literal (I'm assuming for the Jews, they are not being asked about New Testament). Being Jewish or Catholic, today, is as much a description of personal ancestory as of religious convictions. (I have a friend who converted from Catholic to Protestant many years ago. She still refers to herself as Catholic, because it is so much a part of who she is today.) Of course, the reverse can be said about the high numbers for Evangelicals; it is as much an ingrained part of their personality as it is a personal conviction.
The study paints some nice pictures, but the ultimate value of its results I do not know. How much was personal belief and how much was, as you say, parroted?
Posted on 9/19/2006
I saw the article. I have mixed feelings. Unfortunately I fall under the category of "well He is all of those things." I also think it is interesting how different ages have different views of the Charachter of God.
These views would bleed over into all areas of art, music, poetry, government, and literature. Who knows? The statistics may flip-flop in 50 - 100 years. It may be the Catholics who take the Bible literally. That has always ebbed and flowed in that Church.
Posted on 9/19/2006