Credo, Cognition, and Culture: An Anthropology of Religion

Abstract

Religion seems to be universal to all human societies (D. E. Brown, 1991). Recent evidence and hypotheses from evolutionary psychology have preferred a gene-culture coevolution approach in understanding modern human sociality and cognition. Such evolutions, in turn, are argued to have provided the foundations for large-scale cooperation and phenomena such as institutionalised, prosocial religions and religiosity generally, particularly since the advent of agriculture around 12,000 years ago (i.e., the Holocene; Matthews, 2012). This article aims to provide a full anthropological account of religion by equally involving a socio-cultural and ethnographic inquiry and insight into such cognitive manifestations of credence (i.e., beliefs and practices), whilst paying sensitive attention to methodological approaches within the social sciences. By providing these two lenses, this article addresses religion anthropologically in the broadest way, presenting one proposed genesis of religion and the multiple lived realities and experiences of religion.