Reassessing the bounded affinity theory of religion and the paranormal : formative and ongoing religious rituals

Adam Possamai, Josh Battin, Victor Counted, Tony Jinks

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Drawing on the bounded affinity theory – a theory emphasising the shared commonality of religious and paranormal experiences, data from a crosssection of Australian Facebook users were tested. Results reveal that religious Christian individuals who express a strong level of Christian religious practice display less paranormal belief and engage in less paranormal practice than Christian non-practitioners. Since the instrument used in a previous study by Joseph O. Baker, Christopher Bader and F. Carson Mencken may not have accurately measured the multi-dimensional content of paranormal belief (or separately, the physical and meta-physical constructs of paranormal experience) we reassessed the bounded affinity theory using an alternative instrument, with findings generally supporting the previous assumptions of the theory. Study results suggest that strong levels of religious practice significantly diminished belief in a variety of paranormal belief dimensions, and entities, but not all of them. This article addresses this issue applying a Durkheimian approach and provides a more detailed and nuanced support for the bounded affinity theory. It differentiates the beliefs gained from current church attendance (ongoing religious rituals) and past church attendance (formative rituals), which would have socialised Christian believers who are not currently churchgoers through their formative rituals.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)298-312
Number of pages15
JournalCulture and Religion
Volume21
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

Open Access - Access Right Statement

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

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