London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK
Proc Biol Sci. 2018 May 30;285(1879). doi: 10.1098/rspb.2018.0023. Epub 2018 May 23.
The scholarship on religion has long argued that collective worship helps foster social cohesion. Despite the pervasiveness of this contention, rigorous quantitative evaluations of it have been surprisingly limited. Here, I draw on network data representing the ties of social support among Hindu residents of a South Indian village to evaluate the association between collective religious ritual and social cohesion. I find that those who partake in collective religious rituals together have a higher probability of having a supportive relationship than those who do not. At the structural level, this corresponds to denser connections among co-participants. At the individual level, participants are more embedded in the local community of co-religionists, but are not disassociating themselves from members of other religious denominations. These patterns hold most strongly for co-participation in the recurrent, low-arousal monthly worships at the temple, and are suggestive for co-participation in the intense and dysphoric ritual acts carried out as part of an annual festival. Together, these findings provide clear empirical evidence of the lasting relationship between collective religious ritual and social cohesion.
宗教研究长期以来一直认为，集体礼拜有助于促进社会凝聚力。尽管这种观点普遍存在，但对其进行严格的定量评估却令人惊讶地有限。在这里，我利用代表印度南部一个村庄印度教居民社会支持关系的网络数据，评估了集体宗教仪式与社会凝聚力之间的关联。我发现，那些一起参加集体宗教仪式的人比那些不参加的人更有可能建立起支持性关系。在结构层面上，这对应于共同参与者之间更密集的联系。在个人层面上，参与者更融入当地的同宗教社区，但不会与其他宗教教派的成员断绝关系。这些模式在共同参与寺庙中反复进行的、低刺激的每月礼拜时最为强烈，而在作为年度节日一部分进行的强烈和令人不快的仪式行为中则具有启示性。总的来说，这些发现为集体宗教仪式与社会凝聚力之间的持久关系提供了明确的经验证据。
