Ryan T. Cragun - What You Dont Know About Religion (but Should)

Pitchstone Publishing

Durham, NC 27705

www.pitchstonepublishing.com

Copyright 2013 by Ryan T. Cragun

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9780985281557

To contact the publisher, please e-mail info@pitchstonepublishing.com

To contact the author, please e-mail ryantcragun@gmail.com

Cover design by Casimir Fornalski, casimirfornalski.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cragun, Ryan T.

What you dont know about religion (but should) / Ryan T. Cragun.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-9852815-3-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-9852815-4-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Religion. I. Title.

BL50.C685 2013

200dc23

2012043541

For my accomplice and my hope, Debi and Toren.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book was largely inspired by my wife, Debi Cragun. Through her work, we spent a lovely evening with some of her colleagues at a beautiful house in Eugene, Oregon. As most of the guests helped themselves to their third or fourth glass of wine, the conversation, which had largely focused on their shared interests in public health, turned to me and my work. When I explained to those present that I studied religion scientifically, they wanted to know more. I gave them an example (basically, chapter 8All Demons Are from Hollywood). They seemed intrigued, but I didnt realize the extent of their curiosity until a few days later. My wife told me that, over the next few days, all of the people at dinner that night commented on how interested they were in my explanations of religion. My wife then suggested that most educated people would be equally interested. That led to us discussing this book. I had already been considering something similar, but I realized she was onto something. So, I owe a great deal of credit to my wife for helping me develop the idea for this book.

My wife has also helped me write this book in more practical ways. Most of this book was written during the only time I could findfrom about 11:00 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. Saturday nights/Sunday mornings. Given all of my other commitments, that was the only time I could find when I wouldnt be disturbed by e-mails, phone calls, or other issues. That meant I was pretty much useless Sunday mornings for about a year while I worked on this book. My wife accommodated my uselessness.

Finally, she probably knows the contents of this book better than anyone but myself as shes willingly discussed these chapters as Ive developed them. She also proofread most of the book and offered helpful feedback. Therefore, I owe a great debt to my wife and thank her for all of the above.

Im also going to acknowledge my son just because hes awesome. He didnt really help with this book as far as proofreading goes; hes three. But I do tell some stories about him and use him in some examples. Regardless of his contributions, hes the coolest son anyone could ever have. Toren, your dad loves you.

There are others who have been very helpful as well. Kristina Cappello, one of my students at the University of Tampa, spent most of a summer finding news stories on different topics related to religion for this book. Most of those stories never made it into this book, but some did. And those that didnt make it into the book did help convince me that the stories I selected were not isolated cases. Thank you, Kristina.

My mentor, Rhys Williams, who has shared with me innumerable bits of wisdom, is the reason why this book includes stories at the beginning of every chapter. At a conference in Portland he gave a presentation that included several very engaging stories. Afterward he said to me, If you can make your point with a story, everyone will listen. And, of course, he trained me as a sociologist, which is why Im even able to write this book. Rhys, thank you.

I am also indebted to Darren Sherkat. His blog, iranianredneck.wordpress.com, covered some of the topics in this book and helped shape my thinking in some chapters. Plus, his blog makes me look like Im religions best friend.

I also need to thank Starbucks for providing the caffeine to keep me awake at night. (I would gladly accept free coffee in return for this plug. Hint. Hint.) The manuscript for this book was created using LibreOffice and Zotero, two wonderful pieces of FOSS, running on an Ubuntu machine. Thank you to the programmers who make that software available. I also want to thank the composers of a variety of musical compositions for writing music that inspired me while I wrote. My writing music included the soundtracks of The Lord of the Rings series, Gladiator, Gattaca, Brokeback Mountain, Jurassic Park, Memoirs of a Geisha, the Bourne series, The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain, the Indiana Jones series, The Last of the Mohicans, and World of Warcraft. Clich? Perhaps. Epic? Definitely!

Finally, thank you to Kurt Volkan, the editor of Pitchstone Publishing, for taking a chance with this book and providing helpful feedback.

INTRODUCTION

You prayed and God told you that Joseph Smith was his prophet, that the Book of Mormon is true, and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the one and only true church on the planet. If you do not get baptized into our church, you will go to hell.

Elder Cragun, May 1996

I was nineteen years old when I said the above. The recipient was a middle-aged, lower-middle-class woman in Costa Rica. My companion, Elder Smith, and I had taught her about Mormonism and asked her to pray to god to find out if it was true, and she had done just that. When we returned to see if she had received an answer, she said that she hadgod told her that the Book of Mormon and the Mormon Church were true. When Elder Smith asked her if she would get baptized, she said she couldnt because it would cause problems with the rest of her family. Thats when I said she was going to go to hell. She cried. I didnt feel bad. I was doing gods work. I was doing what I had been taught my whole life I was supposed to do. I was on a mission for god; convert or condemnthose were the only options.

In addition to believing that praying could actually determine the accuracy and truthfulness of a book and religion, I also believed that I could heal the sick, cast out demons, and get baptized for dead people. I even believed that, with sufficient faith, I could wield the powers of a god to literally move mountains.

Mind you, I was not born in 1900 or even 1950. I was born in 1976. How could I, a public-school educated, moderately intelligent American raised with access to media, books, libraries, and computers (though not the Internetthat became popular while I was condemning people in Costa Rica) be so incredibly naive?

I was religious.

I thought at the time that I knew enough about religion to not only teach people about my own religion, but also to convince them that their religions were false and of the devil. As I will discuss in a later chapter, religious people tend to be quite arrogant. I should know; I was. I knew very little about religion. I also didnt realize that the tools I was taught to use to manipulate people into taking me seriously as a missionary were largely developed by social scientists.

In retrospect there were two things I didnt know: (1) I didnt know much about the history and doctrine of religions, mine or any others; and (2) I knew nothing about religions as social scientific phenomena. While I have learned a great deal about the former since my mission, this book is almost exclusively about the latter. If youre interested in the doctrines and histories of religions, there are other, better books for you to read. But if youre interested in what the social sciences can tell us about what religion is, what groups of religious people are like, how religious institutions influence their members, and what the future holds for religious people, keep reading. In short, this book will reveal what you dont know about religion (but should).