Humility and Religion: Benefits, Difficulties, and a Model of Religious Tolerance

Spiritual experiences evoke awe through the small self in both religious and non-religious individuals

“…It may be that nonreligious people are more open to changing their ideas, though we would want more supporting evidence before claiming this as a reliable effect. But overall, divergence between small self and need for accommodation in response to spiritual experiences presents an interesting paradox: spirituality can promote humility in relation to targets of belief (i.e., God and the sacred), but not humility about one's beliefs (see also Rowatt et al, 2007;Woodruff et al, 2014). Perhaps this apparent contradiction might be best understood through another: spiritual experiences are marked by a profound sense of smallness compared to an all-powerful and all-knowing God, but also connection to that greatness (Bai et al, 2016).…”

Why Religion Helps and Harms Families: A Conceptual Model of a System of Dualities at the Nexus of Faith and Family Life

“…Through a social scientific lens, it may be posited that religion also may (a) create moral certainty in believers that leads to conflict with nonbelievers (Woodruff, Van Tongeren, McElroy, Davis, & Hook, 2014); (b) divide people between believers and nonbelievers, saved and damned, "us" and "them" (Lichterman, 2008;Makowsky, 2011); (c) lead people to experience guilt, repression, and hypocrisy (Inozu, Karanci, & Clark, 2012); (d) promote passive fatalism (Franklin, Schlundt, & Wallston, 2008); (e) create gender inequities in marriage, family, and society (Schnabel, 2016;Sigalow & Fox, 2014); (f) encourage irrational and/or "magical" thinking (Routledge, Abeyta, & Roylance, 2016); (g) enable sexual, emotional, physical, and/or financial victimization and abuse of children, elderly, and other vulnerable persons (Simonic, Mandelj, & Novsak, 2013;Stotland, 2000); and (h) be subject to being employed as a destructive force or weapon (i.e., the Inquisition, pogroms, the Crusades, jihad, the Holocaust, terrorism).…”

Cultural Humility of Religious Communities and Well-Being in Sexual Minority Persons

“…The findings of the present study have several applications for religious communities and individuals. For instance, people often place a tremendous amount of importance and value in their religious beliefs and values, which may make staying humble toward someone with different religious views, beliefs, and values quite difficult (Woodruff, Van Tongeren, McElroy, Davis, & Hook, 2014). One reason for this difficulty may be that religious individuals often infuse religion and spirituality (R/S) into their global meaning system, which acts as a means of orienting oneself to the world (Park, 2005).…”