{"id":355,"date":"2009-09-29T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-29T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2009\/09\/why-religious-communes-succeed-and-secular-ones-fail.html"},"modified":"2014-11-13T18:02:28","modified_gmt":"2014-11-13T17:02:28","slug":"why-religious-communes-succeed-and","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/epiphenom\/2009\/09\/why-religious-communes-succeed-and.html","title":{"rendered":"Why religious communes succeed and secular ones fail"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Sosis_2003_commune_longevity\"<\/a>Here\u2019s an interesting graph. It\u2019s from a study comparing religious and secular communes in 19th century USA. Michael was talking about this study in the comments so I thought it would be nice to show the data and talk it through.<\/p>\n

It looks at how long each commune lasted, and compares it with the onerous commitments (everything from giving up certain kinds of food, to abstaining from sex, to cutting ties with the outside world) that each commune demanded from its members.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s two things to notice here. First, the religious communes lasted a lot longer than the secular ones. Second, the more \u2018costly requirements\u2019 imposed, the longer the commune lasted \u2013 but only for religious communes, not secular ones.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s going on here? Well, the idea is that the \u2018costly requirements\u2019 allow potential members to send a signal. If you are prepared to put up with all the arbitrary rules that make your life difficult, then that\u2019s good evidence that you really, really want to be part of the group. It\u2019s a classic \u2018costly signal\u2019.<\/p>\n

So why doesn\u2019t it work for secular communes? Sosis argues that religious rituals are more powerful, because of the supernatural connection (p230):<\/p>\n

Thus, it appears that the relative success of religious communes is a result of religious rituals and constraints being imbued with sanctity, whereas the rituals and constraints of secular communes are not consecrated. As Rappaport (1971) stated, \u201cto invest social conventions with sanctity is to hide their arbitrariness in a cloak of seeming necessity\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think that\u2019s part of the explanation. A costly commitment has to be justified if people are going to accept it as a price of group membership. For religious communes, it\u2019s fairly straightforward. You can argue it\u2019s what the god demands \u2013 and who can prove otherwise?<\/p>\n

For secular communes, there has to be a \u2018real world\u2019 justification. If you are going to ask people to hand over their possessions, you\u2019d better have thought through your rationalization pretty well.<\/p>\n

You can see this in Sosis\u2019 data. 90% of secular communes have five or fewer costly commitments, whereas half of religious communes have six or more. Secularists simply aren\u2019t attracted to this kind of mentality. It\u2019s a tough sell.<\/p>\n

But I also think there\u2019s something else going on here. For people to join a group and stay in it, they have to get something out of it. Crucially, they have to get more out of it than they put in.<\/p>\n

For the religious, there\u2019s a lot to gain from being in a religious commune. Typically, they might feel that they\u2019ll be rewarded by their god in this life or the next. And, arguably, the stricter the group the more rewards they might feel they\u2019re going to get.<\/p>\n

For the secular, all rewards are solely in the material realm (I don\u2019t mean possessions, I mean rewards like being among friends you can trust). And the potential payoff from group membership has to be greater than the costs of membership.<\/p>\n

After all, that\u2019s the whole point of costly signalling. It acts to screen out people who aren\u2019t really committed to the group. For the secular, there just isn\u2019t very much point to being a commune member. It\u2019s a religious idea, which has been taken up by idealistic secularists only for them to see their vision fail.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Sosis, R., & Bressler, E. (2003). Cooperation and Commune Longevity: A Test of the Costly Signaling Theory of Religion Cross-Cultural Research, 37<\/span> (2), 211-239 DOI: 10.1177\/1069397103037002003<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Creative<\/a><\/span>This work by Tom Rees<\/a> is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s an interesting graph. It\u2019s from a study comparing religious and secular communes in 19th century USA. Michael was talking about this study in the comments so I thought it would be nice to show the data and talk it through. It looks at how long each commune lasted, and compares it with the onerous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2091,"featured_media":1837,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy religious communes succeed and secular ones fail<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Here's an interesting graph. It's from a study comparing religious and secular communes in 19th century USA. 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