Who qualifies as a Christian? Or a Muslim, or a Jew? The answer may depend on who you ask. Global data show that some religious people believe that practices like daily prayer or belief in God are essential for group membership, while others within the same tradition may disagree. This divergence illustrates a construct that we call allowance for religious deviation (ARD)—how much variation around core beliefs and practices individuals tolerate among religious ingroup members before disqualifying them from group membership. We propose that ARD is not fixed: people may strategically adjust their ARD in response to trends like globalization, disaffiliation, and competition from other religions, which can threaten religious groups’ size and traditions. High ARD may help religions grow in the face of size threats, while low ARD may increase commitment in the face of tradition threats.
Across diverse religious and cultural groups, we will (1) develop and validate a series of measures of ARD; (2) map the correlates of ARD and identify people’s lay theories of how varying levels of ARD would impact their religious groups; and (3) experimentally test whether people strategically adjust their ARD in ways they believe will benefit their group in the face of different threats to their religion.
This research will develop a novel framework for investigating a dimension of religious change that has yet to be systematically studied. It will further expand the scientific approach to studying religious change through key deliverables including multi-lingual measures, international datasets, and academic manuscripts. This work also has implications beyond the scientific community. It will deepen society’s understanding of when schisms within faith groups may be most likely to emerge in response to societal changes and when the boundaries between different traditions might be the most and least rigid, with implications for addressing ongoing and emerging conflict between groups.
