To be clear, I am not arguing that belief is not important to Christians. It is obviously important. But secular Americans often think that the most important thing to understand about religion is why people believe in God, because we think that belief precedes action and explains choice. That’s part of our folk model of the mind: that belief comes first.
And that was not really what I saw after my years spending time in evangelical churches. I saw that people went to church to experience joy and to learn how to have more of it. These days I find that it is more helpful to think about faith as the questions people choose to focus on, rather than the propositions observers think they must hold.
If you can sidestep the problem of belief ”” and the related politics, which can be so distracting ”” it is easier to see that the evangelical view of the world is full of joy. God is good. The world is good. Things will be good, even if they don’t seem good now. That’s what draws people to church. It is understandably hard for secular observers to sidestep the problem of belief. But it is worth appreciating that in belief is the reach for joy, and the reason many people go to church in the first place.
NO doubt, in part, true. But there is that pesky problem of adherence to actual belief in Jesus as Messiah and LORD that pops up under joy, adversity, trial and persecution. It may be in part a sociological phenomenon but it is far more than that. Need I mention wheat and tares? So to what extent is the merely sociological ultimately explanatory? There remains that which is endured and persevered through for the “joy set before” the believers.
This is both illuminating and reductive. It throws light on folks lived experience of worship which is significant because it seems the sorts of people that the author addresses (“secular Americans”) have very little sense of it.
On the other hand it’s explicitly reductive (“you can sidestep the problem of belief”). Of course it is, it’s functionalist anthropology. A similar methodology might (and has) found that folks in scientific communities or San hunter gatherers (etc. etc.) find their lives and practices variously meaningful.
Though it is not the anthropologist’s task – one might want to ask, but is it true?