Religious meaning: Cognitive understanding, emotional positivity, or moral orientation?

Saroglou, Vassilis [UCL] et al.

Religion and spirituality, though not uniquely, have strong affinities with people’s search for meaning, especially those who are religious and/or spiritual. Yet, the question remains on what “meaning” clearly means, especially in the context of religion and spirituality. More precisely, are religious search for meaning and belief in the meaningfulness of the world and the individual life motivated by cognitive, emotional, moral or social inclinations? For instance, presumably, religious meaning serves (a) to cognitively understand the complexity of the world and life by acknowledging order and purpose in the universe. However, it can also be argued that religious meaning serves (b) to emotionally experience feelings of non-emptiness and personal satisfaction; (c) to be morally oriented toward specific value preferences in one’s life; or, finally, (d) to simply be attached to a community or a tradition perceived to have been prestigious throughout history. Using the theoretical framework and measure of the four Bs--basic dimensions of religiosity (believing, bonding, behaving, and belonging; Saroglou, 2011), we examined in the present work whether the belief in “a Transcendence that provides meaning to human existence” and the belief in “having a purpose in life” primarily constitute a strictly cognitive dimension of religiosity (meaning, beliefs), or are also, possibly more importantly, related to the emotional (positive emotions, rituals), moral (behaving morally, values), and social (community, tradition) dimensions of religiosity. To do so, we analyzed data from 14 samples and corresponding nations of various religious traditions (Protestant, Orthodox, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, and Buddhist) totalizing 3,000 participants. The results indicated that these two beliefs have a strong moral connotation across religious traditions, and that it depends on the specific religious culture whether the additional connotation is cognitive, social, or emotional.