I have been digging this song lately:
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
What an experience
So I have been working on this research project for most of this semester about religious experiences and it has thrown me a bit of a curve ball this past week.
Initially the expectation was that what we experience in our lives will make a difference in what we believe, our values, and how we interpret the world around us. One piece of that massive jigsaw puzzle is our relationships. For example, say you have a friend that you call. In one case you just leave messages for them and they never call back. In the second case you call your friend and they do return the call, even if it is when they want to. You would be more certain about your relationship in the second case as opposed to the first.
This was the basic idea of my project. I had data on people that had an 'experience' with God where He directly interacted with them. I also had data on how certain people were that they would go to heaven. Surely there would be a difference between the people that God did not directly interact with and those that he did in how certain those people are that they would go to heaven - after all, they have proof that he likes them!
Alas, this is not the case as I found out this week. The opposite isn't necessarily the case either. There is just no relationship between the two. I tried everything possible to no avail. Here is what is interesting though - the most consistent predictor in the bunch was church attendance. That is, people that attend church more are also more certain that they will get into heaven. Although this may seem relatively uninteresting, I think it is really interesting.
This means that merely being in church more makes a big difference in how certain people are of getting into heaven (22% more confident, per increased level of attendance!). I think a big part of this is the content, specifically the music, people are exposed to while there. One researcher says that the type of music in the church will shape the frame from which people make sense of their world. Another says that each time a community sings together, they recreate their identity anew, "carrying the past forward into the present." So in a very real way churches' members are collectively creating a reality and frame of reference that they then take out into the world with them.
Worship content stuff is probably going to be the focus of my summer research project, so maybe I'll have more to say later... or maybe I won't bore you (all) with more of that.
Initially the expectation was that what we experience in our lives will make a difference in what we believe, our values, and how we interpret the world around us. One piece of that massive jigsaw puzzle is our relationships. For example, say you have a friend that you call. In one case you just leave messages for them and they never call back. In the second case you call your friend and they do return the call, even if it is when they want to. You would be more certain about your relationship in the second case as opposed to the first.
This was the basic idea of my project. I had data on people that had an 'experience' with God where He directly interacted with them. I also had data on how certain people were that they would go to heaven. Surely there would be a difference between the people that God did not directly interact with and those that he did in how certain those people are that they would go to heaven - after all, they have proof that he likes them!
Alas, this is not the case as I found out this week. The opposite isn't necessarily the case either. There is just no relationship between the two. I tried everything possible to no avail. Here is what is interesting though - the most consistent predictor in the bunch was church attendance. That is, people that attend church more are also more certain that they will get into heaven. Although this may seem relatively uninteresting, I think it is really interesting.
This means that merely being in church more makes a big difference in how certain people are of getting into heaven (22% more confident, per increased level of attendance!). I think a big part of this is the content, specifically the music, people are exposed to while there. One researcher says that the type of music in the church will shape the frame from which people make sense of their world. Another says that each time a community sings together, they recreate their identity anew, "carrying the past forward into the present." So in a very real way churches' members are collectively creating a reality and frame of reference that they then take out into the world with them.
Worship content stuff is probably going to be the focus of my summer research project, so maybe I'll have more to say later... or maybe I won't bore you (all) with more of that.
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