Does the Religious Bandwagon Exist?
Would you believe me if I told you that the bandwagon effect is present in religion?
Half of my family is Catholic while the other half is Baptist, so I was raised in a religious environment. When I was asked as a child, I would tell people that I was Christian, but deep down I knew that I didn’t believe in God. I felt pressured into fitting in with my family, so I lied about what I believed in until I was about 15.
As defined by Kendra Cherry, the bandwagon effect happens when someone decides to “adopt a certain behavior, style, or attitude simply because everyone else is doing it”. Looking at my background through this lense, you could say that I jumped on the religious bandwagon in order to fit in with my family.
I wasn’t open about my true beliefs until after hearing a variety of perspectives on monotheistic religion, and most of them came from the internet. Learning about many different ideas gave me the courage to express my own.
Technology vs. Religion
Many people in the US believe that technology has either a positive or negative impact on religion. When asked on Debate.org, one anonymous user says “I think technology is a big help to religion, actually. It can help religion connect with people and help inform them of the religion and possibly grow their following”. While that argument makes sense, one thing that question assumes is that technology has some sort of impact on monotheistic religion, but does it?
When you think technology, the first thing that probably pops into your head is the internet. According to some data from one of PRRI’s surveys conducted by Daniel Cox and Robert Jones, the growth of the religiously unaffiliated has grown from 7% of the US population in 1976 to 24% of the US population in 2016. The creation of the internet likely contributed to this decline because it was used as a platform to circulate ideas and perspectives that people normally wouldn’t hear.
How It All Connects
So does technology have a negative or positive impact on monotheistic religion? After looking into it, one conclusion you could come to is that the internet makes religious material more accessible. Even though that is an impact caused by technology, it’s difficult to categorize it as inherently positive or negative. The increase in accessibility also doesn’t explain why religion has been declining.
The decline in religion could possibly be related back to the increase in communication brought by the rise of the internet. Technology doesn’t directly affect religion, it simply creates a platform that connects people from around the world. Communication directly affects religion.
Now that we know there are many ways to grapple with this topic, we can start more dialogues in order to deepen our understanding on how religion and technology impact one another, directly and indirectly.
