Critique of Allports Mature Religion

Ok so some of my views have changed since then, this was a paper I wrote in college, but some people have asked me to put it out there so here it is.

“Unless we are dealing with a religious genius – Christ being the example – we must not expect that the religious sentiment, even when mature, will be absolutely consistent” (Allport 64). Mature religion does not exist in its pure form. Those who supposedly practice an intrinsic faith are merely using better methods of justification and rationalization. Rather than allowing intellectual and moral paradoxes impede on their faith, they accept and explain away their doubts, while seeming to integrate them into their lives. Mature religion is possible primarily as a small factor of the overall religious experience. Immature religion thrives in its purest form as well as in combination with more intrinsic qualities. These mixtures compose pseudo-mature religious sentiments while allowing the blinders of faith to remain. No matter how integrated or internalized the religion is into a person’s life, the element of blind faith impedes its practice. Not to mention that these characteristics are based largely on alternating perceptions of reality and morality, both on the individual and social scale.
In Allport's classic study of religion and personality published in 1950, “the Individual and His Religion”, a mature personality is described as having three Objective attributes:
First a variety of psychogenic interests…which concern themselves with ideal objects and values beyond the range of viscerogenic [worldly] desire…second…is the ability to…be reflective and insightful about one’s own life…finally, a mature personality always has some unifying philosophy of life…(Allport 60)

These attributes must be present in order for maturity to exist. Allport defines sentiment as “interest, outlook, or system of beliefs” which are always the product of motivated organization or a system of readiness. When this system of readiness is ingrained, as in driving, it becomes habit. A sentiment does not need to be concrete and can be more abstract, as in devotion. When definitions for maturity and sentiment are applied to religion, the mature religious sentiment is seen as the readiness to react to central principles in life, which are permanent in reality in a manner consistent with one’s belief.
A mature religion is differentiated, meaning all interests are articulated into one thought. It will be dynamic, creating new meanings and motives based on religious sentiment. Following religion will cease to be “going with the flow,” as it becomes autonomous and comprehensive in nature. Mature religion is consistently directive of behavior in order to sustain morality, and direct one’s behaviors in a manner corresponding to their religious morals. The world makes sense, because paradoxes have been integrated into the self and the overall sentiment. Finally, the mature religious individual will have an underlying knowledge of a meaning in life, whether the meaning can be articulated in written or verbal form, or not.
Religious sentiment is more often than not immature. Immature religious sentiment best described, is like brushing your teeth, its habit, something you have to do because you were taught to. The earliest forms of religion in children, according to Allport, are egocentric, and self-gratifying in nature. The child’s imagination and perception control their view of reality. They will often attribute things such as thunderstorms, as personal punishment from God, “just as they think that Santa Claus, whom they often equate with God, pays primary attention to their own private interests” (Allport 32). They are able to easily and quickly justify and/or rationalize things that they perceive as sinful. “WHY?” the question is the most common out of a child’s mouth and when it is not answered, they often allow their imagination to create responses. They see power as the defining role, God is more powerful than dad, and therefore better, they also see God as a humanoid character, recently a superhero. They follow the subtle path of social learning, following their parents’ religion at first rebelling, and frequently returning.
As the child grows and begins to mature, their intelligence, or moral reasoning begins to raise paradoxes in their religion and they either drop it entirely, or follow the model of their elders and become less self-centered in their faith. Their egocentric desires and beliefs still remain, they just desire to be in the in-crowd, and by this point they know selfishness to be socially wrong. When puberty hits, two thirds of children abandon religion or shift to a religion different from their parents. The children who abandon religion entirely have normally found rationalism that helps them live a lifestyle more of their own choosing. This conversion can be caused by either guilt, shame in their beliefs, or their intellectual advances begin to point out paradoxes and injustices in religion, that they are unable to rationalize into their religious framework.
For those who abandoned their religion there are three religious awakenings that explain a return. The first is a definite crisis, which means they returned because of some trauma that could only be resolved through a return to God. The second is some type of emotional stimulus, similar to the crisis, but not drastic. Most frequently it is a gradual awakening that is not marked by any identifiable trauma. Most who return to religion become absolutist’s making harsh moral judgments themselves, they believe that God exists because he has to in order to uphold these morals they live by. They also believe that evil must exist, because it is the only way to justify suffering with their moral God. Throughout all of this religion is still aesthetic and thusly appealing.
Allport also did a study on Personal Religious Orientation and Prejudice in 1967. This study advanced his findings on religion and maturity with it’s insights into the overall religious tolerance attitudes of churchgoers and non-churchgoers. In the introduction he sites eight previous studies that had also validated his findings. These studies showed higher rates of intolerance, ethnocentrism, and authoritarianism in those who believed their faith to be internalized.
His study showed that most people were not intrinsic in their religious sentiments, however this was not a key focus, and he did state that Intrinsics were a significant minority. He also concluded that those who were indiscriminately pro religious, the most extrinsic of the bunch, were the highest in levels of intolerance. The intolerance was not restricted only to race but ideologies as in the Kirkpatrick study of 1949 that he sites. Allport’s study concluded that most churchgoers perceived “religion is OK “(Allport 441), he stated that knowing a person is religious has no bearing in the role religion plays in the economy of their lives. Those who exhibited the most intrinsic qualities were those who claimed to have no religious sentiment or those who attended church more often than ten times per month.
According to Peter Berger in his book “The Social Construction of Reality,” Each religion has a different set of morals that they perceive as the ultimate reality. He states the reality of everyday life is taken for granted as the ultimate reality by the suspension of doubt provided by religion in a routine existence. This means that people cling to religion as a means of defining reality, and they attempt to take into their scope, all aspects of the world, while allowing them to fall into the category of temporary reality. The paradoxes, that Allport claims become internalized and differentiated into a persons religious sentiments are simply being filed away, or rationalized as temporarily real. They do this so that they can have the perception of a mature internalized religion, without actually doing any damage or adaptation to their previous religious reality. The reality that they perceive through religion remains so due to faith. It provides a meaning; they were unable to supply themselves with.
Allport’s heuristic phase of mature religion does not exist according to Berger, the religion itself provides the meaning, and it is simply accepted and passed off as being internalized. They go to church in order to see the religious symbols that they have come to integrate into their reality, meaning without these symbols, their reality must change. There is a problem simply binding inconsistencies to the whole, which is what Berger claims Allport’s integration has occurred, without any real transition.
Frederick Feere, in his essay, Mapping the Logic of Models in Science and Theology, points out that incorporation, more often than not, leads to nihilism rather that maturity, because is has a firm hold on the perception of reality, People who are truly mature in their religious sentiments base their entire reality on their religion, and without it nothing is real, therefore, religion endures, simply to maintain the perceived reality of it’s practitioners. Religion hides the vestiges of society’s vested interests; by being exactly what one needs when one needs it, depending on its interpretation.
Mature religion rarely if ever, exists in its “pure” form. Those who supposedly practice an intrinsic faith are merely using better methods of justification and rationalization. Rather than allowing intellectual and moral paradoxes to impede on their faith, they accept and explain away their doubts, while seeming to integrate them into their lives. Immature religion thrives in its purest form as well as in combination with more intrinsic qualities. These mixtures compose pseudo-mature religious sentiments while allowing the blinders of faith to remain. These characteristics are based largely on alternating perceptions of reality and morality, both on the individual and social scale. God is like Santa Claus, every child believes in Santa because his parents tell him he is real. They believe he is keeping a list and checking it twice, just as religious people commonly believe that God is watching over them and making a list for judgment day. Eventually, a child realizes that there are too many inconsistencies with the Santa Clause story and they stop believing in him. With religion and God; these inconsistencies are rationalized away, by either a socializing agent or the perception of integration. This allows for the belief to persist because reality is defined by it. While some people may truly have mature religious sentiments, most who claim, or believe they do, are simply relying on their perception of reality to lead them through their immaturity, to a higher meaning.