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Experimentation in the study of religion and politics.

Paul A. Djupe Paul A. Djupe Department of Political Science, Denison University
and Amy Erica Smith Amy Erica Smith Department of Political Science, Iowa State University
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.990
Published online: 25 June 2019

Experiments in religion and politics model a communication system with three elements: who (the sample) is exposed to what (the treatment) and with what potential effect (the outcome). Most experiments in religion and politics focus on one of three types of samples: clergy, the faithful within certain religious groups, or all citizens within a polity. At the core of the experiment is the randomized treatment : an independent variable that the researcher manipulates and randomly assigns to treatment groups that are supposed to be equivalent in all other respects. Certain kinds of treatments tend to be associated with certain kinds of hypothesized outcomes. That is, most experiments in religion and politics involve investigating either (a) how a randomized treatment related to religion affects a political outcome or (b) how a randomized treatment related to politics affects a religious outcome.

There are several types of religious treatments that closely mirror the actual insertion of religion into public life: manipulating candidates’ religious affiliations, behavior, and rhetoric; manipulating appeals attributed to religious elites and institutions; priming subjects’ own religious or political beliefs or manipulating other religious attributes of subjects; manipulating the characteristics of other citizens; and manipulating religious institutional cues received by clergy.

Experimental methods are everywhere now in the study of religion and politics and provide clear benefits for understanding how religion and politics interact. Perhaps most importantly, the method imposes intellectual rigor, helping scholars pin down theoretically and empirically the precise mechanisms involved in the mutual impact between religion and politics. In addition, experimental control enables scholars to assert more confidently the direction of influence among variables that in the real world plausibly influence each other.

quantitative research methods
experiments
treatment and control groups
list experiments
survey experiments
candidate religion
experiments with clergy
religious beliefs
politics and religion

In almost every corner of the world’s politics, one feels the robust presence of religion. As citizens display their religious identities and expound religious arguments, bystanders within the public sphere are almost inevitably exposed to a dizzying variety of religious stimuli, which in turn activate and perhaps influence the bystanders’ own religious beliefs, values, and arguments. In fact, the public square engages and affects so many facets of religion that it is often difficult to make sense of it all. And trying to tell tales from empirical observations opens research up to countless counternarratives that are challenging to sort through. There are strong reasons to turn to experimentation.

The benefits of experimentation for studying how religion and politics interact are clear. Perhaps most importantly, the method imposes intellectual rigor. Driven by the dictates of experimental design, the researcher has to simplify the forces under study. This helps scholars pin down theoretically and empirically the precise mechanisms involved in the mutual impact between religion and politics. In addition, experimental control enables scholars to assert more confidently the direction of influence among variables that in the real world plausibly influence each other.

Experimental methods are everywhere now in the study of religion and politics. Appearing at every level of outlet from top-ranked to bottom-ranked and appearing in all of the social sciences, experiments are almost expected features of social scientific research on religion. This article counts almost 80 pieces of research on religion and politics containing at least one experiment, almost all in the past decade. 1 Figure 1 shows the distribution of articles over time, documenting the veritable explosion of experimental research after 2009 . In the mid-2010s, about 10 articles were being published a year. It was enough of a flow that editors Paul Djupe and Angelia Wilson filled an entire issue of Politics and Religion with experimental work in 2016 (issue 3).

Figure 1. Publication dates of experimental studies in religion and politics.

A perfunctory examination of these studies reveals tremendous diversity in the ways religion and politics are studied in experimental environments. How can this variety be categorized and understood? In essence, experiments in religion and politics model a communication system. These systems have three elements: who (the sample) is exposed to what (the treatment) and with what potential effect (the outcome).

At the core of the experiment is the randomized treatment : an independent variable that the researcher manipulates and randomly assigns to treatment groups that are supposed to be equivalent in all other respects. Often in the experiments reviewed here, that treatment is related to religion. Sometimes, though, experimenters randomize other aspects of the communication system.

The outcomes studied take two basic forms: political or religious. Some of the political outcomes include vote choice, partisanship, policy attitudes, cooperation and trust, political tolerance and threat, evaluations of political elites and parties, political participation, and others. The religious outcomes include worship attendance, religious identity, religious authority, reliance on religious sources, and more. Certain kinds of treatments tend to be associated with certain kinds of outcomes. That is, most experiments in religion and politics involve investigating either (a) how a randomized treatment related to religion affects a political outcome or (b) how a randomized treatment related to politics affects a religious outcome.

Finally, determining the appropriate sample involves careful considerations of external validity. That is, in the real world, who is typically exposed to the religious or political “treatments,” or stimuli? Are the religious/political messages under investigation directed toward particular audiences? Are other politically relevant audiences unintentionally exposed to those same messages? Sample considerations are not completely separable from treatments, as some treatments only apply to clergy, for instance. Most experiments in religion and politics focus on one of three types of samples: clergy, the faithful within certain religious groups, or all citizens within a polity.

The next section discusses the wide array of manipulations scholars are using. The following section further explores the diverse samples employed by scholars. Throughout both of those sections, we discuss the outcome variables most commonly associated with different treatments and samples. The penultimate section briefly discusses best practices for scholars designing their own experiments, while the concluding section discusses future directions in experimentation in religion and politics.

The “what” refers to the stimulus, or “treatment,” to which people are exposed. But how to manipulate religion? It was not long ago that the notion of randomizing exposure to religion was regarded as a curious concern. Religion was thought a fixture, something that accreted over time beginning with a solid base of socialization in youth. If religion is “traditional,” then it makes little sense to think about variable treatments or to imagine that political choices would fluctuate in the instant following some simple exposure.

This notion that religion cannot—or at least should not—be manipulated persists in a new guise. In a recent essay, Nielsen ( 2015 , p. 2) asks, “Is it ethical to change the religiosity of experimental subjects to learn how religiosity affects political attitudes and behaviors?” He argues “for a distinction: experimental manipulations that allow measurement of an individual’s religious beliefs, practice, or experience are generally ethical, while manipulations that change an individual’s religious beliefs, practice, or experience are more likely to be unethical” ( 2015 , p. 2). Such treatments might include “telling subjects new information that affects their beliefs and attitudes” ( 2015 , p. 5).

For many religion and politics scholars, this is far too restrictive. The notion of religion as a slowly accreting solid base of beliefs off-limits to research fundamentally mistakes the way religion is inserted into the public sphere and individuals’ daily lives. Wholesale conversion from one religious affiliation to another may indeed be relatively rare, momentous life events. Nonetheless, individuals’ religious beliefs and practices are continuously shifting in slight and subtle ways in response to environmental stimuli. Religious and political actors regularly seek to shape and prime religious considerations. Many citizens receive dozens of messages mixing religious and political content in the course of a week.

In such a context, many experimental treatments are no more invasive than reading the newspaper. For instance, the authors of this article believe it is ethical to inform participants that the Christian Right is active in elections even if the information decreases some participants’ reported religiosity as a result, since such information is widely available in the public sphere. However, providing specific, false, or damaging information would be unethical (e.g., attributing specific views or behaviors to the subject’s own pastor). The subsections that follow describe several types of religious treatments that closely mirror the actual insertion of religion into public life.

Experiments Manipulating Candidates’ Religious Affiliations, Behavior, and Rhetoric

One of the oldest and largest branches of experimentation in religion and politics involves manipulating voter information about or perceptions of candidates’ religious characteristics. 2 These scholars have drawn on social psychological theories elucidating how individuals perceive and evaluate each other. The dependent variables involved in candidate studies have been diverse. Most often, the intention has been to understand electoral behavior. Sometimes the goal is simply to gauge prejudice against candidates from particular religious out-groups, especially Muslims, Mormons, Jews, and atheists. Other work focuses on how candidate information shapes voters’ inferences about those candidates—including their ideology and party, competence and intelligence, as well as trustworthiness, patriotism, or religious affiliation itself.

The conceptually simplest experiments manipulating candidate religion aim simply to measure voter preferences for candidates from some religious groups over others. These experiments maintain a relatively static view of religion as a label ascribed to elites. Beginning in the early 2000s, and continuing through the present, scholars have been asking “what if?”: what would happen if an atheist ran for president? a Jew? These questions have in part been driven by the increasing religious diversity of the candidate pool in the United States. For instance, in the wake of Mitt Romney’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, scholars explored the extent to which American voters might discriminate against Mormon candidates (Calfano, Friesen, & Djupe, 2013 ; Campbell, Green, & Monson, 2012 ); Joe Lieberman’s historic vice presidential nomination led Kane, Craig, and Wald ( 2004 ) to investigate discrimination against Jewish candidates.

List experimental studies have asked, would voters discriminate against “Religious Outgroup X” if they thought no one was watching (as is the case in the privacy of the polling booth)? Respondents are randomly assigned to receive one of two lists of items and asked to report the number of items with which they agree. For instance, interviewers in Kane et al.’s ( 2004 ) study of Americans’ discrimination against Jewish candidates read control group respondents the following prompt:

Now I’m going to read you FOUR things that sometimes make people angry or upset. After I read all four statements, just tell me how many of them upset you. I don’t want to know which ones, just how many:

One: the way gasoline prices keep going up.

Two: professional athletes getting million-plus salaries.

Three: requiring seat belts be used when driving.

Four: large corporations polluting the environment. (p. 284)

Interviewers gave respondents in the treatment group not four but five items; the fifth item read, “Five: a Jewish candidate running for vice president” (p. 284). 3

In list experiments, the difference in the number of items reported in the two groups is the key finding of the research; for instance, if respondents in the control condition report on average 2.0 items and respondents in the treatment report on average 2.4 items, researchers deduce that 40 percent of respondents in the treatment chose the experimental item. Researchers can further analyze the differences between treatment and control in varying subpopulations—for instance, testing if levels of discrimination are higher among evangelical Christians. Hence, list experiments enable researchers to estimate population and subpopulation average levels of discrimination, but they do not allow for finer-grained, multivariate analysis of the factors associated with greater or lesser levels of discrimination. Using their list experiment, Kane et al. ( 2004 ) found minimal levels of discrimination against Jewish candidates. Nearly a decade later, however, Benson, Merolla, and Geer ( 2011 ) found substantial discrimination against atheist and Muslim candidates in a list experimental study.

Most other candidate-related experiments have involved creating fake candidate profiles, holding all aspects of the candidate constant in treatment and control groups, except for key traits that are varied. To explore voter discrimination, researchers gauge how different candidate religious affiliations affect respondents’ reported support for and self-reported likelihood of voting for those candidates. For instance, using such methods, Calfano, Friesen, et al. ( 2013 ) found that U.S. voters discriminate against Mormon candidates under some circumstances, which can be mitigated by religious value priming. Outside the United States, Smith ( 2019 ) showed that Brazilian evangelical voters are more likely to vote for fake candidates described as evangelical, while Campbell and Cowley ( 2014 ) found that giving British parliamentary candidates stereotypically Muslim and Jewish names slightly reduced voter support for those candidates.

Moving beyond religious affiliation, scholars have manipulated other religious characteristics of fake candidates. Boas ( 2014 ), for example, explored voter evaluation of evangelical pastor candidates in Brazil (see also Boas, 2016 ). Meanwhile, many studies manipulate a candidate’s level of religiosity, often without explicitly specifying the candidate’s religious affiliation; in these cases, it seems safe to assume, as Sumaktoyo, Ottati, and Untoro ( 2016 ) argue, that voters typically impute the local majority religion to the candidates. Similarly, reminding voters about the candidate’s religious affiliation and the historical voting patterns of the religious group help to reinforce the voting coalition (Boas, 2015 ).

Benstead, Jamal, and Lust ( 2015 ) used photos as the treatment, manipulating the religious/secular dress of fake candidates in Tunisia. More typically, scholars have varied candidates’ supposed levels of religiosity using textual cues (Castle, Layman, Campbell, & Green, 2017 ; Clifford & Gaskins 2016 ; McLaughlin & Wise 2014 ; Smith, 2019 ; Sumaktoyo et al., 2016 ). 4 McLaughlin and Wise, for instance, found that telling American respondents that the religious candidate had decided to run for office after “prayerful consideration” alienated many voters yet attracted religious voters’ support. Meanwhile, also studying the United States, Castle and coauthors manipulated both the fake candidate’s ascribed level of church engagement and the religious content of his language; more religious candidates were found to attract Republican voters, while more secular candidates attracted Democrats.

In many of the studies discussed until this point, the goal has been to understand approval or support for candidates with different religious characteristics. However, an important group of studies has gone further, exploring how cues regarding candidates’ religious traits can serve as heuristics that voters use to draw inferences about a candidate’s ideology and partisanship (Campbell, Green, & Layman, 2011 ; McDermott, 2007 , 2009 ; McLaughlin & Thompson, 2016 ; McLaughlin & Wise, 2014 ), trustworthiness (Clifford & Gaskins, 2016 ), and patriotism (Braman & Sinno, 2009 ). 5 One of the earliest studies took as inspiration the erroneous perception that Ted Kennedy was pro-life in 1980 when he was running for president (Granberg, 1985 ). To understand the cross-sectional results, Granberg primed respondents by asking them for the religious affiliation of the candidates, and those choosing Catholic were more likely to attribute a pro-life stance to Kennedy. In one innovative study, Berinsky and Mendelberg ( 2005 ) showed that priming “discredited stereotypes” that respondents rejected (“Jews are shady”) could cue them to rely more strongly on socially acceptable stereotypes (“Jews are liberal”) in evaluating candidate positions.

A related body of work drills into how candidates use religious language or “God talk” to shape the ways voters perceive them. This work goes beyond the black box of religion as a label others ascribe to an individual to consider strategic religious speech. Several authors have shown that using religious rhetoric can boost candidate support, particularly among religious conservatives (Calfano & Djupe, 2009 ; Chapp, 2012 ; Sumaktoyo et al., 2016 ) and those with high levels of “external religious motivation” (Jennings, 2016 ). Such language can sometimes serve as an effective “dog whistle”—signaling shared religious background to evangelicals while conveying little to religious liberals and the nonreligious (Albertson, 2014 ). It can also reduce voter prejudice against candidates who are members of religious or racial outgroups (Calfano, Friesen, et al., 2013 ; Calfano & Paolino, 2010 ). Finally, God talk not only affects candidate support; it also—perhaps not surprisingly—effectively signals candidate ideology (Calfano, Djupe, & Wilson, 2013 ; Weber & Thornton, 2012 ). Conversely, Djupe, Lewis, Jelen, and Dahan ( 2014 ) discover that “rights talk”—framing claims with religious implications in the language of rights, rather than religion—signals politicians’ ideological moderation and helps build support for religious liberty for evangelical dissenters (Djupe, Lewis, & Jelen, 2016 ).

Some of the most interesting work manipulating candidates’ religious traits and language has taken an intersectional approach. A few scholars have asked how candidates’ religious traits intersect with other attributes such as their race and gender. For instance, do U.S. voters evaluate religious African American candidates differently than they evaluate religious White candidates (McLaughlin & Thompson, 2016 )? Does religiosity affect Tunisians’ evaluations of female candidates differently from the way it affects their evaluations of male candidates (Benstead et al., 2015 )? Or do voters evaluate female candidates differently from male ones, or Black candidates differently from White ones, when they use God talk (Calfano & Djupe 2011 ; Calfano & Paolino, 2010 )? In all cases, the answer is yes—voter perceptions of candidates depend on the complex intersection of candidates’ religion, race, and gender.

Finally, one striking study explored how describing a candidate in various ways could affect the inferences voters drew about his religious affiliation itself (as Muslim or Christian). Studying the U.S. 2008 election, Layman, Kalkan, and Green ( 2014 ) sought to understand the widespread but false belief that Barack Obama was Muslim (he is actually Christian). Though the researchers were ethically constrained to present only true information, they manipulated the way Obama was described: with or without his middle name “Hussein” and focusing or not on his family background and childhood exposure to Islam. They found that both respondent ideology and political awareness affected the extent to which the treatment led respondents to report falsely that Obama was Muslim.

Yet the dependent variable in candidate experiments does not always need to be related to candidate inferences or preferences. A new and rapidly growing body of literature reverses the causal arrow, examining how politics affects citizens’ religious affiliations. Thus one intriguing recent study examined whether candidate information—in particular, exposure to fake candidates who exhibited varying levels of religiosity—affected respondents’ own secular orientations (Campbell, Layman, Green, & Sumaktoyo, 2018 ).

Experiments Manipulating Appeals Attributed to Religious Elites and Institutions

Another approach to experimentation grew from a finding that directly challenged the notion that religion was stable, socialized, and united. Studying the United States, Smith ( 2008 ) and Djupe and Gilbert ( 2009 ) found that the political speech of Catholic and Protestant (respectively) clergy had essentially no discernable effect on congregants—clergy political opinions and speech patterns were largely uncorrelated with congregant opinions. Instead, Djupe and Gilbert found evidence of defensiveness—disagreement drove down accurate perception of clergy cues. Yet in other contexts, research discussed later indicates that the political positions of clergy do sometimes directly affect congregants’ attitudes. Such mixed findings have motivated scholars to analyze clergy–congregant communications to understand when clergy are able to circumvent congregants’ defenses.

Beyond political messages, researchers have also examined the impact of clergy speech on religious topics. While congregants might be motivated to ignore clergy political speech, few would deny their clergy the role of articulating and interpreting religious messages. Importantly, there is no shortage of religious values (regarding how the world should work and how individuals should act), religious beliefs (regarding how the world works and is constituted), or religious behaviors that may have political effects. Of course, there is no need to explicitly attribute religious cues to religious elites; religious messages can be manipulated experimentally without attributing them to any particular messenger, as if in a vacuum. But it is important to consider theory in which those cues are at least implicitly offered by religious elites in the context of religious institutions (or at least in some context). Those elites have different attributes (e.g., men vs. women in some denominations), and people have often complicated histories with both the elites and their institutions. Or, put another way, would religious messages have the same influence coming from any source in any other context? It is likely or perhaps just plausible that people think about their own clergy and congregation when primed with religious cues of some sort. Fortunately, some research has begun to disentangle these threads and highlight the leverage that can be gained by making the elite or institutional source explicit.

A few experiments have manipulated the physical appearance of the elite source, comparing clergy to other authority figures. Condra, Isaqzadeh, and Linardi ( 2019 ) randomly assigned Afghan clerics to wear religious or civilian dress, comparing the effects on charitable donations; they also manipulated the use of a scriptural appeal versus a common good message. They found that clerics were able to induce higher compliance rates but not to increase the size of donations, while including scriptural messages in the cleric condition also increased donations. They concluded that clergy can induce norm compliance, but religious messages are more powerful in inducing generosity than the particular source conveying that message. Similarly, in a lab-in-the-field experiment in Ghana, McCauley ( 2014b ) compared subjects’ cooperation with a Pentecostal preacher versus various forms of a regional “strong man”—the same experimental confederate but dressed and described differently. Examining giving in a dictator game, he found evidence to suggest “Pentecostal exclusivity, excessive allegiance to leaders, and a shift away from ethnic-based patronage to Pentecostal patronage” (p. 761).

Most experimental work in this area manipulates not the physical manifestation of a clergyperson but his or her political or religious speech and opinions. Clergy influence on key public issues has been confirmed across a wide variety of studies, each offering some complications that make aggregation difficult. In the Brazilian context, Boas and Smith ( 2015 ; also Smith, 2019 ) find that campaign-related messages from (hypothetical) evangelical clergy can shift vote choice. And a number of studies examine immigration attitudes in the United States. For instance, there is some evidence that pro-immigration messages from in-group clergy (from the same denomination) are able to move Americans’ opinion on immigration, though the degree of influence depends on the religiosity of the recipient (Wallsten & Nteta, 2016 ). Similarly, Margolis ( 2018a , 2018b ) finds that American evangelicals’ attitudes on immigration shifted in response to the advertised messages of the Evangelical Immigration Table, though immigration reform opponents were demobilized by them. More general messages of tolerance also seem to work. Respondents exposed to a clergy’s argument to be respectful of all people expressed warmer feelings toward immigrants and more liberal immigration attitudes as a result (Djupe, Neiheisel, & Olson, 2015 ).

However, other work has found effects conditional to time—evangelicals exposed to anti-Trump messages from a credible religious elite in the 2016 election expressed less warmth toward the Republican nominee in September, but similar messages did nothing a week before the election (Djupe & Calfano, 2018 ). In the case of evangelical support for Trump, partisanship appears to dominate religious considerations.

Likewise, other work finds that in-groups are not necessarily ready consumers of whatever arguments are proffered to them. Evangelicals have always lagged behind others in their support for environmental protection, which made the National Association of Evangelicals’ shift to support for taking action on climate change in 2003 potentially highly influential. Experimental evidence suggested that the particular justification clergy offered for the decision mattered (Djupe & Gwiasda, 2010 ). Using an evangelical decision-making process (through reflection and prayer) was influential for evangelicals, but only among those who were not personally invested in the issue (captured through low issue importance). Another study affirmed the mechanism—that credibility and trust go up when arguments are accompanied by a trusted decision process language (Djupe & Calfano, 2009 ; see also Djupe et al., 2016 ).

A good amount of other work has found religious elite influence bounded by other considerations. In their study of reactions to extreme proposals calling for stripping rights and liberties from an opponent, Calfano and Djupe ( 2015 ) found that participants summarily dismissed and ignored clergy advocating for gay rights. They judged anti-gay rights clergy, especially evangelical clergy, as credible, and more so when the clergy expressed intolerant opinions (stripping rights from those they disagreed with—in this case lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender activists). Adoption of their arguments depended on in-group status, and intolerant appeals only received less support from non-evangelicals. That is, evangelicals supported the in-group clergyperson, even when they called for a clearly unconstitutional “law to stop homosexuals from lobbying for their immoral agenda.”

Other work offers almost painful complications to theories of clergy credibility. For instance, McCauley ( 2014a ) finds that the effectiveness of postconflict prejudice reduction strategies in the Ivory Coast depends on the religious group. Muslims react well to theological messages regardless of the religious or political source delivering them, while Christians react well to politicians delivering an anti-bias message regardless of whether it has theological content. Adkins, Layman, Campbell, and Green ( 2013 ) find that when religious and nonreligious leaders’ stances are presented in opposing pairs, those stances primarily tend to move liberals, Democrats, and secular respondents away from religious leaders’ positions, and especially those attributed to evangelical leaders—thus more out-group rejection than in-group embrace of positions. In contrast, Robinson ( 2010 ) finds evangelical activists are more likely to embrace a religious elite’s argument when the elite is plausibly within the Christian conservative movement than when the elite is outside the movement (Catholics vs. mainline Protestants in this case), especially when the activists have had greater contact with that group.

To summarize, a large body of research demonstrates that religious elites’ political and religious positions can affect citizens’ attitudes and behavior on a very wide array of public issues. However, clergy do not always fulfill their potential. The barriers to religious elite influence depend in part on whether clergy adopt behavior and communication strategies that send signals of credibility to adherents. Even more importantly, though, clergy influence also depends on the broader social and political context—including the strength of partisan and ethnic ties, the dominant political and secular norms, and the strength of messages citizens received from other, nonreligious, social and political elites.

Yet it is important to note that the contextual limits on religious influence apply to religious influence on politics more broadly—they do not only inhibit clergy influence in particular. For instance, in the Brazilian context, Smith ( 2019 ) finds that citizen adherence to secular norms conditions their responses to information about candidate religiosity. Citizens more strongly committed to separation of church and state are turned off by candidates who advertise their religiosity, while those who favor the intermixing of church and state are attracted to candidates who publicize their own religiosity. In short, context and norms likely always impose limits on the scope of religious influence on politics.

Experiments Priming Subjects’ Own Religious or Political Beliefs or Manipulating Other Religious Attributes of Subjects

Can researchers randomize whether citizens are, say, Buddhists or Christians? As discussed earlier, experiments involving religion face a natural limit: it is probably impossible to randomly assign individuals to one religious tradition or another. Even if it were possible, most people would likely consider doing so unethical. Yet creative researchers have found partial workarounds. In one shrewd approach, Clingingsmith, Khwaja, and Kremer ( 2009 ) studied the effects of an actual lottery drawing for Pakistanis to participate in the annual Hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca. The scholars concluded that performing Hajj attaches participants to the international form of the religion and less to the localized forms.

It is also possible to create a sense of religious experiences. Throughout research in this area, there is a tight connection between observational research and experimentation. Hirsh, Walberg, and Peterson ( 2013 ) ask, if religious people tend to be conservative and “spiritual” people tend to be liberal, why? The researchers induced subjects to complete a four-minute, guided meditation exercise delivered by video, expecting that spiritualism that involves the “dissolution of self-boundaries and an enhanced sense of connection with the world” (p. 15) would lead to more liberal orientations. Indeed, the treatment reduced participants’ levels of social dominance orientation, an orientation closely linked to conservative political attitudes and identity.

Yet more commonly, scholars seeking to test the impact of subjects’ religious experiences prime participants with religious elements of their own traditions. In effect, they offer a reminder of some message citizens have likely been exposed to before. Priming is the act of raising a consideration in memory so that future decisions may draw upon that consideration. The essential logic is that people have a wide variety of considerations that compete for their attention and that, over time, religious messages get buried by secular ones. The exhortation from Christian clergy that religion is not just a Sunday practice explicitly acknowledges the need to keep religion “at the top of the mind.”

There are now several strands of priming work: some prime respondents’ beliefs and behaviors, some prime their religious identity, and others prime religious values. This section takes them up in turn.

Perhaps the simplest type of prime stimulates respondents to ponder words associated with their own religious tradition. Scholars might give respondents puzzles that induce them to reflect on words such as “God,” “Jesus,” “Mohammed,” or “karma.” For example, Shariff and Norenzayan ( 2007 ) asked randomly selected respondents to unscramble sentences that included five target words: spirit , divine , God , sacred , and prophet . Such studies provide evidence that religious reminders affect behavior, promoting trust and cooperation and inhibiting social defection, perhaps because the primes remind subjects that God is watching and will punish noncompliance (e.g., Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012 ; Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007 ). Word primes also affect broader social and political dispositions. It turns out that priming Buddhist respondents with Buddhist concepts decreases ethnic prejudice in most cases (Clobert, Saroglou, & Hwang, 2015 )—the opposite finding of priming Christian respondents with basic concepts from their own religion (Johnson, Rowatt, & LaBouff, 2010 ).

A surprisingly uncommon approach is to prime particular religious beliefs. When Be’ery and Ben-Nun Bloom ( 2015 ) primed the message that God is in control, it served to elevate support for the welfare state, not opposition to it as cross-sectional studies have found from those with higher religiosity. Likewise, priming the self-affirming message of the “ God-given potential” citizens possess (emphasis in original) in Nairobi, Kenya, led to greater political participation (McClendon & Riedl, 2015 ). And studying Italy, France, Ireland, and Turkey, Warner, Kilinc, Hale, Cohen, and Johnson ( 2015 ) primed subjects’ own religious beliefs by asking them to write an essay on one of six topics: “duty to God, community expectations, similarity, deservedness, and God’s Grace.” They found that priming these varying religious messages affected charitable contributions.

Another approach has been to prime respondents’ own religious beliefs, identity, and practices by randomly varying the placement of relevant survey questions on those topics. In a series of papers, Ben-Nun Bloom and Arikan ( 2013 ; Ben-Nun Bloom, Arikan, & Courtemanche, 2015 ) primed citizens’ religious beliefs by asking about belief in God, life after death, heaven, hell, and the existence of a soul before asking about support for democracy, though it is effectively a measure of political tolerance. In both cases, priming belief undercut democratic stances, either with a generalized measure (Ben-Nun Bloom & Arikan, 2013 ) or involving immigrants specifically (Ben-Nun Bloom et al., 2015 ). Priming belief systems, they argue, serves as an instrument of mental closure around the group, akin to dogmatism (see also Sagioglou & Forstmann 2013 ; see Albertson [ 2011 ] for an implicit attitudes context).

In those same studies, Ben-Nun Bloom and Arikan ( 2013 ) also used question ordering experiments to prime religious behavior (worship attendance) and found the exact opposite pattern. Compared to the control, those primed to consider the communal worship experience expressed greater support for democracy (tolerance) and decreased prejudice. In this case, consideration of the diverse set of people in the pews and the difficulty of collective action with them has a direct logical extension to democratic processes and norms.

The boundaries between the self/group and others are probed more directly in a series of studies by Djupe and Calfano ( 2013a , 2013b , 2013c ). Their inspiration comes from the religious economies approach, which arrays religious groups on a scale from inclusive to exclusive as a way to differentiate their offerings (Stark & Finke, 2000 ). While this takes form in the practices of houses of worship, clergy will also communicate these commitments as values—commands of how to engage the world. Priming inclusive values, where believers are encouraged to reach out and involve/engage new people and reduce group boundaries, while priming exclusion, where believers are encouraged to keep to themselves and protect the in-group, should enhance boundaries with the world.

This is just what Djupe and Calfano ( 2013c ) found in a range of experiments. In Springfield, Missouri, they found that priming inclusive values weakened threat perceived by a least liked group and thereby enhanced tolerance. In another study (Djupe & Calfano, 2013a ) that involved religious adherents from a range of religious traditions sitting in their home pews, they found that priming inclusive values did not affect attitudes on American foreign intervention since they are effectively chronically accessible as measured through clergy’s self-reports. Instead priming exclusive values augmented support for go-it-alone military interventions and reduced support for cooperative (United Nations) interventions. And, lastly, they found that priming these values affected immigration attitudes in consistent ways—inclusion boosts support for immigration reform, while exclusive values undercuts support (Djupe & Calfano, 2013b ). Hsiung and Djupe ( 2018 ) used these values, along with some other information, as part of religious worldviews that, when primed, affect social and political trust. The key revelation is that these values are expected to vary across time as the needs of the congregation change and thus lead to a range of potential policy attitude outcomes even as general patterns obtain.

Finally, a related approach primes religious identity directly. Of course, reminders about participants’ beliefs and behaviors could prime identity, so the separation between these various strands is not a clean one (e.g., Ben-Nun Bloom & Arikan, 2013 ; Ben-Nun Bloom et al., 2015 ). But McCauley ( 2014c ) takes a different tack in studies of Ghana and Ivory Coast, priming religious versus ethnic identity by mentioning religious (as opposed to ethnic) groups in society in the context of five-minute radio broadcast treatments. He finds that priming religious identity leads respondents to prioritize society-wide policy, rather than an emphasis on “club goods” produced by priming ethnic identity.

Experiments Manipulating the Characteristics of Other Citizens

Yet another type of experiment does not manipulate the attributes/behavior of clergy or the respondent but rather varies how fellow citizens are described. The aim of such studies is generally to test how those varying descriptions affect respondents’ out-group attitudes. For instance, Karpowitz, Monson, and Patterson ( 2016 ) conducted an online study of norms toward derogatory speech regarding religious out-groups. Respondents read the following prompt:

While discussing religion and politics on a national television news program, a political commentator recently made the following statement, “People don’t know much about [Mormons/Catholics/Jews/Muslims/evangelicals/Mitt Romney]. When they find out, they are amazed at how weird they (he) really are (is). They’re (He’s) just not normal. What a strange group (guy)—they’re (he’s) disgusting, really.” (Karpowitz, Monson, & Patterson, 2016 , p. 518)

The authors sought to understand how varying the identity of the target group affected respondents’ levels of discomfort with the derogatory speech, using a battery of items such as “People should be reprimanded for making statements like this” and “I feel uncomfortable when I read comments like this.” They also assessed how the varying identity of the out-group affected respondents’ perceptions of the commentator as prejudiced (or not). Results revealed that both Democrats and Republicans exhibited the highest level of unease when the negative comments were made toward Jews. By contrast, there were very large partisan differences in perceptions of derogatory speech about Muslims. While Democrats were nearly as protective of Muslims as of Jews, Republicans exhibited the lowest levels of unease toward negative speech about Muslims of any target group.

Note that randomizing the target group was critical. If each respondent had been presented with negative comments toward all six targets, respondents with strong norms of fairness might have been inclined to self-censor, aligning responses to reduce the perception that they were being unfair or inconsistent (see also Ben-Nun Bloom et al., 2015 ). Similar dynamics played out in Aarøe’s ( 2012 ) study of Europeans’ tolerance toward religious displays. Her study used the following prompt: “Do you agree or disagree that a ban should be introduced prohibiting judges from wearing a [necklace with a Christian cross/necklace with a Muslim crescent/Muslim headscarf] at work?” She found that respondent opposition to the religious display was affected both by the religious group under consideration and by the prominence of the display.

Alternatively, researchers could randomize not the target out-group but the way a single out-group is described. For instance, Calfano, Djupe, Cox, and Jones ( 2016 ) examined how descriptions of Muslim Americans as patriotic or unpatriotic affected anti-Muslim attitudes. They found that among respondents who trust the Fox News Channel, positive descriptions of Muslims actually led to a backlash in which respondents expressed more negative views toward Muslims.

Others have manipulated how other countries are described in religious terms. Focused on the public’s role in foreign policymaking through their attitudes, Lacina and Lee ( 2013 ) explored whether opinion shifted in response to learning the regime type (democratic vs. nondemocratic) and the dominant religious affiliation (Islam vs. Christian), finding that religious affiliation was the dominant force shaping trust and threat perceptions. Isani and Silverman ( 2016 ) elaborate on these findings, exploring how the way that Islam is conveyed to people matters to their response: exposure to a message involving “shari’a” invokes fear, especially among conservatives, and more Islamic cues produce additive effects. On the flip side, religious Americans show “my brother’s keeper” effects, meaning a willingness to intervene in other nations’ affairs in order to protect fellow Christians (Wu & Knuppe, 2016 ).

Experiments Manipulating Religious Institutional Cues Received by Clergy

One last set of experiments in religion and politics seeks to understand the behavior of a narrow but important set of actors: clergy. Several recent studies explore how varying institutional cues affect the political behavior and attitudes of clergy using question order experiments. A question order experiment randomly varies the order in which questions are presented in the survey as a means of influencing what clergy are thinking about at the moment they answer the question or questions that serve as the dependent variable. The questions the clergy receive immediately before the dependent variable serve as a prime to consider certain influences.

Thus Calfano and Oldmixon ( 2016 ) surveyed Roman Catholic priests in the United States, asking them which of various entities (the bishop, Church doctrine, etc.) was the most important source of guidance in their decision making. One-third of respondents received the dependent variable (i.e., the question about sources of guidance) immediately after receiving an “institutional cue”: a four-question battery of Likert-type agree/disagree statements designed to make priests think about the institutional demands they faced. Another third received the dependent variable immediately after receiving an “interpersonal cue” designed only to make them think about pressures within their own parishes. The last third received neither prime before answering the dependent variable. The researchers discovered that priming priests to think about the Catholic Church hierarchy pushed them to rely on guidance from their bishop in discharging their responsibilities (see also Calfano, Michelson, & Oldmixon, 2017 ).

Other studies have followed a similar pattern. Smith ( 2016 , 2019 ) included a question order experiment in her survey of clergy in Brazil, which served to prime feelings of market pressure from other churches for congregants. Studying Roman Catholic priests in Ireland and Northern Ireland, Calfano, Oldmixon, and Suiter ( 2014 ) found that institutional primes led priests to adopt more populist economic attitudes and more conservative cultural attitudes, relative to interpersonal primes or no primes. They argued that both types of attitudes were “(religious) establishment preferences” (p. 397).

Experimentation forces researchers to think carefully about the appropriate sample (the “who”). What is the relevant population? That is, in the real world that the study seeks to imitate under controlled conditions, who might reasonably be exposed to such a stimulus? In broad strokes, religion and politics experiments typically target one of three types of populations: adherents to specific religious traditions, clergy within specific religious traditions, and general national samples.

Attention to the sample is particularly important when the treatment involves phenomena to which individuals are usually exposed in specific, segmented religious communities: for instance, clergy messages or religious beliefs and practices. Researchers could expose people to all sorts of religious elements to discern their effect, but it often makes little sense to do so. Treating a group of Sikhs with a Christian communion ritual would only induce confusion or perhaps anger. Instead, within a reasonable potential outcomes framework (Holland, 1986 ), religion and politics scholars need to experiment with treatments that people would likely be exposed to in their own social worlds. In the best of all possible worlds, the researcher would also have a sense of the actual distribution of exposure to those elements.

For instance, McClendon and Riedl ( 2015 ) observed sermons in Pentecostal churches in Nairobi, Kenya, that told believers they could achieve anything they set their faith to. Though the message was ubiquitous only in certain churches, people in Nairobi tended to attend various churches, so it was plausible that any Christian could reasonably be exposed to prosperity gospel-style messages. Hence their sample was composed of Christian identifiers in that city.

Likewise, Djupe and Calfano ( 2013b , 2013c ) studied the effect of exposure to inclusive and exclusive values in the United States, following Stark and Finke’s ( 2000 ) definition of different church models. Based on clergy survey data that showed variation in the presentation of the two value sets, they decided that the appropriate population involved all religious people who attended worship services and so conducted their experiment in actual houses of worship in one instance.

Often the appropriate sample is the general adult (eligible voter) population within a country. This is particularly the case with studies manipulating candidate traits. Such experiments can illuminate how citizens respond to cues that are relatively rare in the real world. Sometimes, everyone is exposed to a religious cue precisely because it is unexpected, alienating, or simply disliked. So how do people respond to a Catholic candidate (McDermott, 2009 )? Are Floridians willing to vote for a Jewish candidate (Kane et al., 2004 )? Under what conditions do voters attribute undesirable motives (e.g., support for terrorists) to a Muslim candidate (Braman & Sinno, 2009 )?

Sometimes scholars run experiments after finding a relationship in a cross-sectional data set based on a national sample. Many times that observational correlation is from very high quality data (e.g., the American National Election Study or the General Social Survey), but the researchers seek causal confirmation of the hypothesized processes. Under those circumstances, the experimenter often turns to a lower cost sample to run an online experimental study. There is a continuing debate about the usefulness of Mechanical Turk (MTurk), the Amazon worker-for-hire platform. Even though the distribution of religious identification is heavily skewed toward nonaffiliation, Lewis et al. ( 2015 ) find that some basic relationships between religious items and ideology are comparable to those found in the General Social Survey. However, others who compared experimental treatments in probability samples to MTurk opt-in samples have found disjunctures (Krupnikov & Levine, 2014 ).

Another consideration relates to heterogeneity in treatment effects across different populations or subpopulations. When multiple identity groups are exposed to a stimulus, do they respond differently? Many experimental studies assess how treatment effects vary by respondent-level traits such as partisanship or religious affiliation; however, scholars have, with a few exceptions, largely ignored the possibility of country-level heterogeneity. Only a handful of studies take place in multiple countries: among them, Warner et al. ( 2015 ), Sumaktoyo et al. ( 2016 ), Ben-Nun Bloom et al. ( 2015 ), and Calfano et al. ( 2017 ). This is an unfortunate oversight. Many research questions in religion and politics seem to have an obvious comparative angle. To name one example, do voters respond more negatively to religious cues in countries with stronger separation of religion and state? Or are clergy more responsive to institutional political cues in countries with weaker separation of religion and state and higher regulation from the state?

Best Practices in the Study of Religion and Politics

So what should a scholar interested in conducting an experiment in religion and politics do? Given the tremendous diversity in approaches reviewed in this article, it is not possible to develop a single checklist detailing the steps to effective experimentation. Nonetheless, a series of best practices can improve experimental design.

First, observe . The most efficacious research often seems to begin with observational study—both qualitative and quantitative—to describe religious phenomena in the real world. Observational research should establish both the nature and the distribution of exposure to certain stimuli.

Second, simplify . An effective experiment radically simplifies reality. It sheds what child psychologist William James once called the “buzzing, blooming confusion” of the real world to create a mental model involving a small number of variables—often as few as two (i.e., the treatment and the outcome). And then the experimenter must figure out how to randomize exposure to one of those variables and to measure the other. This advice may seem obvious, but in the anecdotal experience of the authors of this article, the simplification stage is often where scholars new to experimentation stumble. Young researchers often have a hard time either developing a sufficiently simple mental model or designing an experiment that manipulates the hypothesized treatment and only the hypothesized treatment.

Third, complicate . All effective experiments begin by dramatically paring down reality. However, the most interesting studies often strategically bring a bit of complexity back in. One type of complexity involves randomizing exposure to multiple treatments—for instance, by using a “two-by-two” design that randomizes exposure to fake candidates who vary in both race and their use of religious language. Another type of complexity could entail examining the heterogeneity of treatment effects across different populations.

To some degree, the growth in experimentation in religion and politics work has tracked (with a bit of lag) political science’s concerns about causality and growth in experimentation generally. The goal of social scientific work is to explain and predict, and that demands a causal explanation with a solid understanding of the mechanism of influence. Experimentation is not absolutely necessary to accomplish those aims, but scholarly understanding is certainly greatly facilitated by employing experiments.

Aside from the general trajectory of political science, the other move that cleared the way for experimentation is a shift in theoretical perspective within the social science of religion. Given the lack of detailed measures available in the omnibus surveys that supported most research in American religion and politics, scholars generated theories that best fit the data—seeing religious attachments as long-standing, socialized connections that shaped political attachments through instruction, absorption, and selection (Green & Guth, 1993 ). As Kellstedt and Green ( 1993 ) memorably described the measurement of religious affiliation, “It has never been clear whether such [denominational] measures refer to ethnic histories, doctrinal beliefs, social status, or social group attachments, and such measures have often been characterized by imprecision and social desirability effects as well” (p. 53). The literature has demonstrated over and over that making inferences about influence based on correlations between such measures and political dependent variables is fraught at best.

The shift away from this perspective sought both to redress these deep-seated problems and to explain why religious influence often worked. In psychology, scholars often treated religion as a concept to be primed. For instance, the search for a mechanism that promoted cooperation and reduced defection led psychologists to uncover the belief in surveillance (“God is watching”). In political science, researchers focused on modeling the communication system described at the outset of this article. Understanding religious influence depended on making connections, often but not always explicit (as in priming), between religious beliefs, dictates, identities, or simply information and some political outcome or behavior. Capturing the extent and distribution of exposure to religious communications in observational research is difficult, and experimentation affords the necessary degree of control to standardize experience. Helpfully, this exposure/adoption framework (Djupe & Calfano, 2013b ) follows the influential receive/accept/sample system for understanding public opinion (Zaller, 1992 ). Notably, religion can influence not only what people are exposed to but also how they react to stimuli, which provides a simple but fruitful model for designing experiments in religion and politics.

There is no single right next step for experimentation, except to conduct more experiments. However, one promising direction will be to reflect more carefully on the contexts in which religious influence might and might not work. That context may vary by the extent of threat, majoritarian status, the degree to which religious freedom operates, or other characteristics.

11 Documentaries Profiling Cults & Controversial Religions to Stream

The Vow HBO Participants in NXIVM programs

We’ve seen countless scripted shows about cults, including The Path , The Following and the aptly-named Cult . But truth is stranger than fiction—and often, judging from the accounts of former members, far more disturbing.

The star-studded NXIVM saga, for example, inspired back-to-back docuseries last year, one of which is returning for a second season soon.

Read on for more about those shows and other streaming docuseries and documentary films that center on deadly and scandal-ridden groups.

(Content warning: Many of these documentaries, their trailers and their synopses describe instances of suicide and abuse.)

TV's True Crime Craze: A Round Up of the Best, From 'Tiger King' to 'The Vow'

Children of god.

This documentary—which aired on Britain’s Channel Four in 1994—chronicles the one family within the titular organization, “a cult whose disturbing practices include the sexual abuse of children,” according to Netflix, where it’s streaming .

Cults and Extreme Belief

With firsthand accounts from former members of cults and other organizations, 20/20 alum Elizabeth Vargas “goes on a search to uncover how these sects use their influence to prey upon people’s desperation to create powerful and often destructive belief systems,” per the synopsis of this 2018 A&E docuseries streaming on Hulu .

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

For this 2015 HBO documentary, now on HBO Max , Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney profiled eight former Church of Scientology devotees—including, notably, Crash director Paul Haggis —as they “describe the systematic history of abuse and betrayal by Church officials,” says the network.

Heaven’s Gate: The Cult of Cults

How did a cult that started with the disappearance of 20 people in 1975 end with the deaths of dozens of members two decades later? Find out in this four-part documentary, which hit HBO Max in 2020.

With footage captured from more than 20 years inside the religious movement Buddafield, this 2016 documentary has director Will Allen “showing how his idealism began to unravel as more is revealed about the true nature of this cult,” according to IMDb TV, where it’s currently streaming .

Jonestown: Paradise Lost

Airing on History in 2007 and now streamable on YouTube , this documentary blended interviews with reenactments to show the final days of Jim Jones’ settlement in Guyana, before more than 900 men, women and children died of cyanide poisoning in 1978.

Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath

Former King of Queens star Leah Remini went from one of Scientology’s most famous members to one of its biggest enemies. In this Emmy-winning A&E series —which concluded in 2019—she recounts her own experience, with frightening detail, and interviews other ex-members. It’s now streaming on Netflix , Hulu and Discovery+ .

Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult

India Oxenberg, daughter of Dynasty alum Catherine Oxenberg , starred in this 2020 Starz docuseries as she detailed her escape from NXIVM, the “self-help” organization that led to a 120-year prison sentence for leader Keith Raniere and a three-year sentence for Smallville alum Allison Mack .

Ending its first season on the same day that Seduced premiered, this HBO documentary, now on HBO Max , also covered NXIVM but featured commentary from former members Sarah Edmondson, Mark Vicente and Bonnie Piesse. Season 2 premieres later this year.

Waco: The Inside Story

Dozens of members of the Branch Davidian religious sect died in 1993 when the ATF raided its compound outside Waco, Texas. This 1995 Frontline installment “probes the untold story of the fierce political infighting inside the FBI’s Waco command center and in the corridors of power at the Justice Department in Washington,” says PBS, where it streams .

Wild Wild Country

With Mark and Jay Duplass on board as executive producers, this 2018 Netflix docuseries shows how Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh moved his thousands of faithful followers from Pune, India, to Wasco County, Oregon, and clashed—sometimes violently—with local Oregonians.

Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief - HBO

Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief where to stream

Heaven's Gate: The Cult of Cults where to stream

Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath - A&E

Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath where to stream

The Vow (2020) where to stream

Going Clear: Scientology & the Prison of Belief

Heaven's gate: the cult of cults, the vow (2020).

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The Experiment Podcast: ‘Evangelical’ Is Not a Religious Identity. It’s a Political One.

White evangelicals have succeeded in becoming the most powerful voting bloc in America, one church mailing list at a time. But is the cost of victory too high?

A sign reading “PRAY FOR AMERICA VOTE NOV 3RD” is illuminated outside a church in Swansea, South Carolina.

Listen and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Google Podcasts

These days, everyone assumes that this is just a fact of life: Evangelicals are Republicans, and Republicans are evangelicals. The powerful alliance culminated in the 2016 election of Donald Trump, tying the reputation of Christianity in America to the Trump brand—maybe permanently.

It wasn’t always like this. One man—a political operative from Georgia named Ralph Reed—devised a plan to harness the energy of young Christians and turn them into America’s most powerful voting bloc, one church mailing list at a time. Decades later, when Donald Trump came on the political scene, Reed knew he would be big—and convinced his fellow evangelicals that they should give him a shot.

Trump’s election was everything Reed spent his entire career fighting for: a president who was anti–abortion rights, listened to evangelical leaders, and advocated for Christians who felt pushed out of the public square. But Reed’s victory had a cost. Many, many Christians have come to feel that their church cares more about politics than Jesus. They have spoken out. They have grieved. And some of them have left.

This week on The Experiment , we have the first episode in a two-part series: Meet the man who turned a disparate group of evangelicals into America’s most powerful voting bloc and invented the evangelical political brand. Then join us next week for Part 2, when we’ll look at the human cost of political victory—a cost that might ultimately be very high.

Further reading: “A Christian Insurrection”

Be part of The Experiment . Use the hashtag #TheExperimentPodcast, or write to us at [email protected] .

This episode was produced by Katherine Wells and Alvin Melathe, with reporting by Emma Green. Editing by Julia Longoria, Tracie Hunte, and Emily Botein. Fact-check by William Brennan. Sound design by David Herman.

Music by Parish Council (“ Looking for Tom Putt ,” “ Leaving the TV on at Night ,” “ Mopping ”), Ob (“ Ere ”), Keyboard (“ Staying In ”), R McCarthy (“ Big Game ”), H Hunt (“ Journeys ”), and Infinite Bisous (“ Brain ”); provided by Tasty Morsels . Additional music by Lorne David Roderick Balfe (“Petrify (b)”). Additional audio from Warner Bros. Pictures , Access Hollywood , C-SPAN , UCLA’s communications-studies department , and The 700 Club .

A transcript of this episode is presented below:

( A soft indicator sound, like the “Fasten seat belt” notification on an airplane, intones one note over the quiet hum of recycled air. )

Emma Green: I’ve been thinking a lot about the way that little actions by a single character really do have the power to change history. And I think that’s this story.

Julia Longoria: Emma Green is a staff writer at The Atlantic .

Green: I write about religion and politics mostly. All the uncomfortable stuff.

Longoria: She recently told me a story about a moment I’d never heard of—but one that turned out to have huge consequences for the country.

Green: Okay. Hear me out. Hear me out. I get that it sounds implausible, and other people might tell this story differently, but I think that there is a strong argument to be made that one of the biggest things that’s happened in the last half decade—which is that Trump got elected—that that happened, that was finalized, that was cinched, in the middle of this Tom Hanks movie.

Longoria: ( Chuckles lightly. ) Okay, tell me what happened.

( Sparse percussive music enters and slowly builds in the background. )

Green: So it happened in October of 2016. The 2016 election was really neck and neck. People weren’t sure what was gonna happen. Trump had kinda come out of left field.

Ralph Reed: I don’t know. It was probably about 4 or 5 o’clock in the afternoon, on a Friday afternoon.

Green : It has to do with this guy named Ralph Reed. He’s a political operative, and has kind of become this spokesperson for the Christian right. You could maybe think of him kind of like “Mr. Evangelical.” And he had just finished a long day at work.

Reed: So I went to a movie theater, and I was watching the film Sully, with Tom Hanks …

Tom Hanks: (As Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger.) Birds. (The sound of birds cawing, then an impact, then an explosion".)

Reed: Which, incidentally, is a great movie. And he’s terrific in it, as you can imagine.

Hanks: (As Sully.) Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is Cactus 1529. Hit birds. We’ve lost thrust … (Movie audio fades out, except the sounds of Mayday signals, which continue lightly.)

Reed: (Interrupted periodically by a cellphone’s vibrations.) And I was in this film, and my phone kept buzzing incessantly. So I was getting all these text messages and all these calls, and I thought to myself—after about 15 minutes of this, when it wouldn’t stop; it was in my pocket—I just went, “Good grief! I mean, has somebody died?”

Hanks: (As Sully, echoing.) Brace for impact.

Green: So finally he pulls out his phone, probably starting to annoy his neighbors in the theater.

Reed: (Over the sound of an iPhone unlocking.) And I crouched down in my seat, and I started scanning through my text messages, and it was The Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press , Religious News Service [Laughs.] wanting a comment on this video.

( Indistinct audio from the movie plays for a moment. )

Reed: And I thought—well, it was a really great movie—so I thought, Well, I really don’t want to get up and leave in the middle of this movie.

Green: He’s like, Okay. What could this video be?

Reed : So I—I hit the video on the Washington Post website, and I leaned in real close so I could hear the audio.

Donald Trump: (From the Access Hollywood tapes, over the sounds of camera shutters.) I gotta use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her …

Green: You can probably guess. This was the Access Hollywood tape where [ Inhales. ] there was footage from many, many years ago.

Trump: (From the tapes.) And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything …

Green: Where Donald Trump made lewd comments about grabbing women by the—I don’t know if I can say that on the radio.

Longoria: Let’s skip it. ( Laughs awkwardly. )

Reed : And so that I could be sure that I got it, I watched it and listened to it twice.

( Light, atmospheric electronic music plays. )

Green : He had this decision to make. He hadn’t talked to anybody. He was literally in a black box. He had to decide what evangelicals were going to do now that they’d heard this tape of their presidential candidate—their preferred candidate—saying some really offensive stuff.

Reed : Does this mean that we should either repudiate Donald Trump, stay home, cast a protest vote, vote for Hillary? As civic and political actors, what is our responsibility?

Green: In that moment, Reed was being asked what evangelicals thought—but he was also telling them what to think. When they opened up their newspaper the next morning and saw that quote from Reed, it would be a signal.

Reed : And I then tapped out a statement that I then sent to every news organization that had contacted me. And I have to tell ya, I didn’t necessarily think I was right.

Green: What he wrote in that statement? That’s what this story is about.

( The music shifts to introduce a mechanical-sounding melodic line from a piano. )

Green: There are so many things we believe we know about religion and politics—that white evangelicals have always been Republicans, or that Republicans have always been pro-life. We think we know, we think it’s obvious, why evangelicals supported Trump and what the consequences have been.

But actually , this is a story that could have gone a lot of different ways. And I think the reason why Ralph Reed is so interesting is that he was the guy behind the scenes who directed the course of history in a big way.

( The sound of an airplane flying overhead overwhelms the music, bringing silence in its wake. Then bouncy, clanky percussion sets up a slow harmony over jungle ambience. )

Longoria: Over the next two weeks, Emma Green brings us the story of a behind-the-scenes project. It’s the story of how one man took a disparate, disorganized group of believers and turned them into one of our country’s most formidable political machines—and the story of what was sacrificed along the way.

I’m Julia Longoria. This is The Experiment , a show about our unfinished country.

( A moment of music, then quiet. )

Green : The story of Ralph Reed’s political career starts back in the early 1980s, when the religious right as we know it today was still in its infancy.

Reed: I was kind of a work-hard, party-hard kind of guy, and that was the culture in Washington.

Green : He was 22, working as the executive director of the College Republicans, organizing for Ronald Reagan. He was already a rising star in conservative politics. But the Republican party hadn’t yet become synonymous with the religious right.

Oscar Brand: (Singing “Why Not the Best?,” Jimmy Carter’s campaign song.) He spoke straight and simple, and I began to understand … (Fades under.)

Green: In fact, the guy who first got everyone talking about evangelicals in politics around this time was a Democrat.

Brand: (Singing more of “Why Not the Best?”) We need Jimmy Carter! Why settle for less, America? (Fades under.)

Green: Jimmy Carter was very publicly born-again. He was an evangelical. At this time, evangelicals had a different image than what most people might think of today. It was a little bit hippie-dippie. It was people out there on buses trying to win over hearts for Jesus. It was this countercultural movement that a lot of elites in Washington didn’t take seriously.

Reed: I had grown up in the church, but I had never really wanted to be viewed as, quote, “one of them,” you know? I didn’t want to be seen as crazy; I didn’t want to be seen as a nut.

Green: But as Reed was going around trying to organize the “Reagan Revolution,” he started to feel like something was missing in his life.

Reed: I was working with a lot of people that, on some instinctive level, I came to see were not happy. And one of those people was me. And yet, in the process of this, I was encountering a lot of young Christians, and they were happy, and they were, you know, effervescent, and they had something that I wanted.

Green: The answer to his emptiness came to him one night in September of 1983, when Reed was out at a bar with some of his colleagues.

Reed: I was at a watering hole on Capitol Hill called Bull Feathers—you know, kind of a bar and tavern. And we were just doing what we would normally do on a Saturday night, having dinner and drinking. And I really don’t know to this day why the idea occurred to me, other than the fact that I was feeling a spiritual yearning and feeling an emptiness. And, um, I just decided, you know, “I think I’ll go to church tomorrow.” And I walked out to a phone booth.

( Soft electric-guitar music gives a kind of solemnly mystical energy to the moment. )

Green: When he got there, he ran his finger down the page of a phone book.

Reed: I went to Churches , and then I went to Evangelical , and I found a church just outside Washington, and I went there the next morning and sat in the service. And at the end of the service, the preacher did an altar call.

He said, “I don’t know who you are. I don’t know how you got here today. But I want you to understand, whoever you are and however you got here, that this is not an invitation; this is a command.”

Green: Wow.

Reed: And those words changed my life.

Green: This is what it means to be born again. There are tons and tons of different kinds of evangelical churches, and they don’t all have the same theology or even sound and look the same. But generally, evangelicals all share the kind of experience Reed had—a moment of conversion where they become a Christian. There’s this idea of being a fool for Christ , standing unashamed of your faith, even when other people question you. Not long after his conversion, Reed was back in the office with the Reagan Revolution crew, and he faced the first test of his new faith.

Reed: You know, it was just just young people sitting around the office, and somebody was ridiculing anybody who believed in creationism.

Green: Hmm.

Reed: And I just remember I was [Laughs a little.] sitting at my desk, and I had literally probably been a Christian for about, you know, two or three weeks, and I looked up from my desk, and I said, “I believe it.” And I just remember them all looking at me with shocked [Laughs.] expressions on their faces. And they say, “You really do?” And I said, “Yeah! I believe it!”

Reed: And so, yeah, I think it was something that I wrestled with—something that I’ve always wrestled with—of how do you deal with that kind of reaction: “You really believe that? You believe there’s a hell? You believe there’s a devil? You know, does he—does he have horns? Does he have a tail? Boy, you’re a weirdo.” Nobody wants to be viewed that way, you know, if we’re honest.

Green : Ralph Reed’s conversion was happening at roughly the same moment that the Republican party was going through a conversion of its own.

Jerry Falwell: We began, in this country, a move away from the value system on which this nation under God was founded …

Green : A group of religious leaders began to talk about how the country had drifted away from God. They saw a nation overtaken by secularism, abandoning the Bible’s teachings. And they started to strategize about harnessing the power of conservative Christians in politics.

The public faces of this movement were men like Jerry Falwell, who founded Liberty University, which trained up young warriors for Christ.

Pat Robertson: And we said, “We know that our nation is in trouble …” (Fades under.)

Green: And Pat Robertson, the godfather of televangelism, whose image was beamed to Christians across America on The 700 Club .

Pat Robertson: We want to come back to the Bible and back to God. And if we don’t turn, we face crisis and chaos, and that was the message. (Fades out.)

Green : Most of these men were white and had deep roots in the South. They wanted to build influence for people like them: largely white Christians from very conservative Protestant churches who felt like they were getting pushed out of public life.

They focused on a list of issues, like bringing prayer back to public schools and stopping the spread of pornography. They were angry about what they saw as government overreach, including regulations that denied tax-exempt status to racially segregated private schools.

This was Reed’s training ground, both as a political operative and as a young Christian coming up in the religious right. And in 1989, he went to a conference filled with the heavy hitters of the conservative movement.

Reed : And I happened to be seated next to Pat Robertson, who had just run for president. I figured I’d never meet him again, and so I proceeded during this dinner to tell him everything I thought he had done wrong when he ran for president.

Green: After the dinner, Pat pulled him aside.

Reed: And he said, “Follow me.” And we walked into the kitchen—the banquet kitchen—and there were all these plates and pans clattering, and they were clearing all the plates off the tables, and the waiters were running in and out, and he and I are standing [Laughs.] in this kitchen, and he said, “Listen, I’d like for you for you to come and work for me.”

Green: Robertson explained that he was going to start a new organization that was going to carry the torch of the religious right. He asked Reed if he wanted in. And eventually, Reed said, “Yeah!” Robertson laid out his vision for what he wanted Reed to do.

Reed: And he said, “I want you to take notes.” And he said, “This is our goal …”

( Gentle piano music plays. )

Reed: “Operational control of at least one of the two major political parties. Elect a committed Christian as president of the United States, take a majority in Congress and the U.S. Senate, elect a thousand committed Christians—devout Christians at every level of government. This isn’t just going to be some Christian civic group. This is going to be the most effective public-policy organization in the country. And at the end of 10 years, American politics is going to look totally different.”

And I’m sitting here [Laughs.]—I’m sitting here taking notes, and I’m about to pass out.

Green: So was this daunting? Did you look at this and say, “Holy moly, I just volunteered myself to try to build the biggest grassroots network of evangelicals in American history”?

Reed: Well, you know, Pat had a sign in his dressing room, in the studio where he did The 700 Club , and it said Attempt something so big that, unless God intervenes, it’s destined to fail.

Green : Hmm.

( The music plays one final note. )

Green : In 1989, the idea of organizing Christian voters into a political force wasn’t exactly new. The Black church was hugely influential in the ’50s and ’60s in securing the wins of the civil-rights movement. And before that, churches were central in things like the temperance movement, women’s suffrage, and even the abolition of slavery.

Reed : But among the theologically conservative churches—for lack of a better term, the fundamentalist and the evangelical churches—that was not the case. From the time of the Scopes trial, in 1925, when they suffered the humiliation of being seen largely as boobs and hayseeds and Neanderthals and anti-intellectual and anti-modernist, until—really—the late ’70s and early ’80s, those fundamentalists, Southern Baptists, and evangelical Christians largely had their noses pressed against the glass of the political culture.

Green: Reed’s mission was to tap this untapped resource. And so he built a political platform that would appeal to those groups. It was pro-life, focused on traditional family and bold expressions of faith in public life. Reed packaged this as the “pro-family agenda.” Then he went out to recruit believers.

( Persistent, up-tempo synthesizer music begins to play. )

Reed : We started with the idea that there were roughly 200,000 Bible-believing or evangelical churches in the country—that there was somewhere between 40 and 50 million people who were members of those churches or affiliated with those churches.

Green : But to get those people organized, Reed had to start from scratch. He began by gathering up church directories with lists of names and phone numbers.

Reed : And anybody who was a member of an evangelical church who wasn’t registered to vote, we called them, and we showed up at their house, and we got them registered to vote.

( Music becomes clearer, less distorted, and louder. )

Green: He didn’t just want a list of names, though. He wanted to build a group of people who knew how to do politics.

Green: We taught people how to build a precinct organization; how to do a voter registration drive in your church; how to make sure you were educating voters in a way that didn’t violate the tax-exempt status of the church; how to do a get-out-the-vote effort; how to write a news release. I mean, this sounds very basic, but for evangelical Christians who had never done anything politically in decades other than go to a rally at a church, this was all new.

Green: Many of the people Reed was targeting were allergic to the idea that God and politics had anything to do with each other. And so his pitch went something like this:

( Music fades out. )

Reed: The truth is that for people of faith in any society, in any civilization—but especially in a democracy—civic engagement is not something that will avoid you. If you choose to disengage, it will show up on your doorstep in public policies that will undermine and assault your beliefs, and elected officials who don’t share your values. So I think many of them felt that it was almost a defensive action.

President George W. Bush: Faith teaches humility. As Laura would say, I could use a dose occasionally. (Audience laughs.)

Green: All of the work that Ralph Reed did? It worked. In 2000, George W. Bush was elected to office with the support of evangelicals who he reached with his notion of a compassionate conservatism—this idea that promoting small government and helping people were not incompatible values. Bush was one of their own.

Bush: Throughout our history, in danger and division, we have always turned to prayer. And our country has been delivered from many serious evils and wrongs because of that prayer. (Fades under.)

Reed: I remember, uh, you know, the horror of September 11, and when President Bush proclaimed a National Day of Prayer. And I remember he said that we were meeting in the middle hour of our grief.

Green: Reed started running through the names of the people who would have been around Bush in this huge historical moment. The president’s head of speechwriting was an evangelical. The attorney general was an evangelical.

( A persistent beat enters, layered with sporadic electric strings. )

Reed: And that was when it really hit me. I knew at that moment that we were no longer the redheaded stepchild of American politics, that we had graduated to full-fledged participation. We were in the room where it happened.

Green: The Bush years were a sign of Reed’s triumph. He had left the Christian Coalition and started his own political consultancy. But all those old allies of his from the Christian right? They were now some of the most powerful people in the government. This included a guy named Jack Abramoff, who Reed knew from his College Republican days. Abramoff was one of the most powerful lobbyists in all of Washington—he even worked on the Bush transition. Abramoff brought Reed in on some of his projects, which got Reed into some trouble.

The most significant of these scandals had to do with casinos. Abramoff represented a number of tribes who ran gambling outfits. Those tribes faced competition from other casinos and other kinds of gaming in the area. So Abramoff asked Reed to create problems for the tribe’s competitors. Reed’s job was to build opposition on the grounds that gambling is un-Christian, meaning that Reed was rallying religious opposition to gambling while being paid indirectly by tribes who ran casinos.

Later, Reed said that he didn’t know his payments were coming out of casino profits. Here’s what he said at the time: “Had I known then what I know now, I would not have undertaken that work.”

Reed never got charged with any crimes, but his name got dragged through the mud at some high-profile congressional hearings. When Reed ran for lieutenant governor in Georgia a few years later, he tanked—probably because of his association with Abramoff. It was a low point in Reed’s career.

By the time Obama got elected, Reed and the mostly white evangelicals he represented were back out in the cold again. They saw the president as hostile to their beliefs and their way of life.

But then, after all those years of scandals and political exile, when it seemed like Ralph Reed’s chapter in American history was over, he met a man who he thought just might put evangelicals—and his career—back in the game.

( A moment of stillness in the music—a tension. )

Reed : I said, “Donald,” I said, “I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, but if you’re serious about this—” and he said, “Let me stop you right there. I am dead serious about this.”

Green: That’s after the break.

( Music out. )

Green: Ralph Reed spent the Obama years in political exile. But one day in 2011, he met someone who he thought could potentially be a ticket back to the White House.

Reed: I had gotten a call from a reporter who said, “I have been fishing around a little bit, and I think Donald Trump is serious about running for president.”

And this reporter said, “What do you think of that?” And I said, “Well, if he runs as pro-life—which is my understanding of what he plans to do—given the power of his celebrity, his money, his ability to finance his own campaign, and his name ID, which most candidates spend tens of millions of dollars buying, and he will have on day one, I think he will get a fair hearing from evangelical voters. And I think he could surprise a lot of people.” And the guy said, “Do you mind if I quote you?” and I said, “No, I don’t mind.”

And about two hours later, my phone rang. And it was Donald Trump. And, I mean, I couldn’t believe it, but apparently the guy gets Google alerts anytime his name is mentioned in the media—or at least he did then. And he was like, “Ralph,” he goes, “I just called to say thank you for what you said.”

Green : Uh-huh.

Reed : And I said, “Well,” I said, “Donald,” I said, “I don’t know you, and you don’t know me.” I said, “But if you’re serious about this—” and he said, “Let me stop you right there.” He said, “This is not a game. Don’t believe what you read in the media. I am dead serious about this. Do you understand what I’m saying? Dead serious.” And I said, “Okay,” I said, “if this isn’t just a way to get press or build the ratings for your show—if you’re really serious—then you need to get to know the evangelicals, ’cause they’re half the Republican vote.” And he said, “Well, I’d like to do that.” And I said, “Well, I’ll help you.”

Green: Did you think he was personally a Christian?

Reed: Well, I didn’t know that, and that’s not the nature of my relationship with him today. I’m not a pastor. I’m not a minister. I’m not a spiritual adviser. I’m a political operative. But I had a lot of conversations with him about where he stood on the issues, and there was no doubt in my mind that he was genuinely pro-life, that he supported religious freedom, that he was serious about appointing conservative and pro-life judges. He understood that the evangelicals were a key—if he was going to be successful, that he had to connect with them.

Green: So did you help him because you thought that he was going to be a really serious contender, and you wanted to make sure that your people had his ear? Or was it that you felt that he was going to be a great candidate—or a great president—for evangelicals, so you wanted to make sure that he won?

Reed: My thinking at the time—honestly, just boiling it down to honest, brass-tacks politics—I thought, In my career, there’s never been anybody like this guy. I mean, he’s got the money to run for president and write a check and pay for the whole thing. He’s one of the most famous people not only in the United States but in the world. He’s a natural and gifted performer. And I thought that if he got into this thing, it wasn’t going to be a big fish in a small pond. This was going to be a whale jumping in a bathtub.

And if I was right, then this was gonna happen, whether people wanted it to happen or not. If he had a chance of being president, it was very important—in my view—for him to have a good and mutually productive and beneficial relationship with the faith community based on trust. And it was equally important for the evangelicals to have a relationship with him.

Green: To Reed, it was obvious that evangelicals should take Trump seriously. But to other evangelicals, well, not so much.

Reed: They didn’t trust him at the beginning. You know, they viewed him as, you know, he’s given money to Democrats, he’s formerly pro-choice, he’s only been pro-life fairly recently, he lives in Manhattan. You know, that’s not exactly a deep-red precinct.

Green: Uh-huh. (Both laugh.)

Reed: He hasn’t really moved in our circles. You know, his life hasn’t exemplified our faith. The vast majority of evangelicals did not support Donald Trump—either when he got in or during the Republican primaries.

Green : If Reed was going to get anyone even remotely sympathetic to his goals elected to office, he had to bring conservative Christians along. Roughly a quarter of the country identifies as evangelical, and, at least among those who are white, they’re a bloc. They vote, and they vote Republican.

Reed needed to convince evangelicals that Trump could be their guy—that sometimes it’s worth setting aside your moral sensibilities if you can guarantee that someone will represent you well in Washington. Reed needed them to get on board with the idea that your political candidate doesn’t need to be your Sunday-school teacher.

Reed : I said, “Look. You’ve got to think the way the Black community thinks, and you’ve got to think the way the Jewish community and the pro-Israel community thinks. They don’t think, How do we make sure our guy wins? They think more wisely and strategically: How do we make sure that there’s somebody within our community, close to every one of these candidates, so that when one of them wins, one of our people is in the room? ”

Green: So how did you overcome that trust problem and get people to be willing to take a flyer on Trump?

Reed: Well, I think there were three moments that really mattered.

One was the Scalia vacancy. There was a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, and either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump was going to fill it. You had to figure you had a 50–50 chance of getting it right with Trump. And you had to figure you had a zero percent chance of getting somebody who was pro-life with Hillary. So that was a critical inflection point.

I think the second was when he selected Mike Pence.

And then I think the third moment was Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment, which was the line that really, really resonated in the evangelical world—which was “irredeemable .”

She said, “They are irredeemable.” And I think, at that point, I think a lot of even the last remaining evangelical Christians who had a lot of reticence and resistance to Trump went, “Well, gosh. I mean, if that’s where she’s coming from, I’m gonna vote for Trump.”

( Softly flowing sound washes over synthesizers and all, before ducking under the narration. )

Green : Which brings us back to the Access Hollywood tape. Reed had convinced people to get on board. He had sold them on the idea that Trump was the best hope they had. But that video! Wow. It just highlighted all of the things about Trump that a lot of Christians might have felt uncomfortable with.

Reed had to decide what to do. He hadn’t talked to anyone. But he made the political calculation in his head—fast.

Reed : I basically said, “You know, listen. I certainly don’t approve of the language that he used. It was highly inappropriate. But, in the hierarchy of voter concerns—including but not limited to the right to life, the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, the Iran nuclear deal, support for the state of Israel, religious freedom, et cetera—I honestly think that this video, though it’s embarrassing and inappropriate, is going to rank very low on voter concerns.

But I have to tell you, that weekend, all indications were that his candidacy was over.

( The music fades out. )

Green : It’s not like every American evangelical was waiting for Ralph Reed to tell them what to do—most of them have probably never even heard of him. But Reed had the ear of major pastors and giants of the evangelical world. Christians around the country were listening to them to understand how to think about this.

Reed : I mean, I got a call from one of the top evangelical leaders in the country, who was a friend of Donald Trump’s, who told me they believed that it was over and wondered whether or not we should publicly say so.

Green: And so Reed intervened. Again.

Reed: I was on a call with the faith advisory group of the campaign, you know, which was major evangelical leaders. And there were people on that call that were wanting to issue a statement calling on the president to drop out of the race and be replaced by Mike Pence. And I guess it fell to me because I—you know—was more involved politically than some of the pastors and the preachers. And I explained to them he was going to be on the ballot, whether we voted for him or not. In several states people were already voting! And if we repudiate Trump and ask him to step aside and be replaced by Mike Pence, they’ll be a million votes thrown out. Florida’s gone. And if Florida is gone, the election’s gone. And—and that kind of ended some of that talk.

( Heavy, somber music starts to play. )

Green: Many remember this moment as hypocrisy. But this moment was actually a culmination of a movement that had been building for decades. Reed and others in the Christian right had spent years convincing evangelicals to participate in the political process despite their misgivings—teaching them to calculate trade-offs, making them comfortable with the idea that to get what you want, you sometimes have to play a dirty game.

Green: You know, I think this moment matters because it speaks to one of the core questions that has been asked about evangelicals and Trump. You know, you and I could both recite from memory the lede to every article about evangelicals and Trump: “He’s the thrice-married casino owner. He splashed his affairs across the front pages of the New York tabloids,” you know, “How can evangelicals support a man like this?” So I guess, um, why do you disagree when people say, “Aren’t these evangelicals just a bunch of hypocrites?”

Reed: My argument is “Which vote results in the greatest good and redounds to promoting the greatest amount of social justice? And which one advances grave moral evils? And which one will least advance the common good?”

And for me, I speak only for myself. I don’t claim to speak for every evangelical. I wouldn’t be that, um, presumptuous. But for me, the fact that Donald Trump was imperfect—the fact that he had led a less-than-perfect life—was something that I already knew. But when it came to the issues that I believe were moral issues—religious freedom, the right to life, the protection of innocent human life in the womb, the appointment of judges that would respect that life, the defense of the state of Israel and the Jewish state against its many enemies that seek to wipe it off the face of the earth—these are not just policy issues to me. These are issues of right and wrong. On every one of those issues, he pledged to, and kept his word to, advance every one of those moral goods, and Hillary would have done the opposite. And that was why I supported him, and I think it’s why the overwhelming majority of evangelicals supported him.

Green : Arguably, Trump kept his promises to the evangelicals. He nominated three pro-life Supreme Court justices, and dozens more on the lower courts. He showed up at the March for Life. He moved the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem—something presidents had long said they’d do, but never actually did.

But, ultimately, the Trump presidency was defined in the minds of many Americans, including a lot of Christians, by his cruelties: separating families at the border, turning away thousands of refugees, constantly trashing his enemies on Twitter.

Green: Did you ever have doubts during his presidency, either about supporting him or specific policies that he championed? And did you see a benefit to having his trust when those moments occurred?

Reed: Uh, I think the—you know, what I would say is, during Trump’s presidency, as with every other presidency that I have been involved in helping to elect that president, there were disappointments. But, to quote Ronald Reagan, an 80 percent friend is not a 20 percent enemy.

So if you want to be involved in politics without ever having to compromise, then you want something that has never existed and never will.

( Soft, smooth, and sad, a bed of strings begins to play. )

Green : But in every compromise, there’s a cost. And in this case, the cost might have been really, really high—a loss that could undermine the entire project Ralph Reed helped to build.

Lecrae : Yeah, absolutely wrecked my faith. It drove my faith into the ground.

Green: That’s Part 2 of this story, next week.

( The music picks up, incorporating a driving guitar line over keyboard. )

Tracie Hunte: This episode was produced by Katherine Wells and Alvin Melathe, with reporting by Emma Green. Editing by Julia Longoria, Tracie Hunte, and Emily Botein. Fact-check by William Brennan. Sound design by David Herman. Music by Tasty Morsels.

Our team also includes Natalia Ramirez and Gabrielle Berbey.

If you enjoyed this week’s episode, please be sure to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listened to this episode.

The Experiment is a co-production of The Atlantic and WNYC Studios. Thanks for listening.

( The music, and the episode, ends. )

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The Real-Life Science Mystery That Could Make You Believe in God

Eternal Real Estate? A Church in Mexico Is Selling Plots of Land in Heaven

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There’s a mystery in science that has confounded some of the world’s brightest minds for years.

It seems to undermine everything we think we know about how the universe works, and calls into question the very nature of reality itself. And, if science is your basis for not believing in God, understanding the implications of this single experiment might cause you to reconsider just how “knowable” the rules of the universe really are.

If you have a few minutes, check out the two videos below (or, at least one of them) for a clear understanding of the double-slit experiment.

If you don’t have time to watch the demonstrations, here’s a brief (extremely simplistic) explanation of why it is so strange: The simple act of observing a photon seems to change the way it behaves.

Depending on whether or not scientists are observing a photon (using extremely delicate equipment), it either acts like a particle or both a particle and a wave at the same time. And, no one knows with absolute certainty why. The only way anyone has ever captured a glimpse of the dual behavior was by essentially “tricking” the particles .

‘Spooky’ Science

The more you learn about quantum mechanics, the field that tries to understand baffling things like wave-duality, the more you realize that aspects of how the universe operates are still far beyond our understanding.

Erwin Schrödinger was one of the greatest minds the world of math and science has ever known. The famous thought experiment that now bares his name—“Schrödinger’s Cat”—is a testament just how absurdly counterintuitive the universe can really be.

The hypothetical scenario demonstrates how strange the quantum physics idea of “superposition” really is, and why it’s so strange that the act of measuring and observing the universe can actually determine the reality around us.

The thought experiment (for obvious reasons, he never actually conducted the experiment) goes like this (again, this is an extremely simplified version):

A cat is placed inside of a box along with a device that may or may not randomly release poison gas that will kill the cat. According to the illustration, because one of two outcomes will happen (but are unknown to anyone just looking at the outside of the box), the cat is both alive and dead at the same time until someone opens it up and looks inside.

In other words, until we observe reality, the two realities exist at once.

Why would he propose something so (seemingly) insane? According to some quantum theories, that’s how the universe seems to work: Until it is observed, matter exists in various states at the same time. (By the way, even though Schrödinger questioned if it was real, many scientist think the illustration is a relatively accurate way to describe quantum mechanics).

Chen Wang, postdoctoral associate in Yale’s department of applied physics and physics and the author of a new study on the topic, told HowStuffWorks , “Not only does the [Schrödinger’s] cat ‘paradox’ no longer feel absurd conceptually to physicists [but] even more exotic quantum states are becoming commonplace and attainable.”

Einstein himself was disturbed by areas of quantum physics. He was particularly baffled by something we know as quantum entanglement—which again, when you hear the details, sound like the stuff of science fiction.

Two particles, which can exists completely independent of each other across the entire universe, can dictate each others’ behavior. In other words, if two particles are “entangled” on a quantum level, they somehow seem to share the same existence . It’s like the same particle exists in two places at once. When one moves, so does the other, even though they are physically separated by galaxies.

Unsettled? So was Einstein. He called it, “ spooky action at a distance .”

What It Means About God

Quantum physics don’t prove the existence of God.

God can’t be seen, measured or observed in the scientific sense of the word. But “proving.” His existence with science is beyond the point.

Faith, by its very nature, requires some degree of uncertainty. Otherwise, belief in God wouldn’t require faith at all.

But even though science gives us answers about our universe, the more we know, the more we realize that there are things we don’t know. Science is about observation and certainty, but also realizing that some things are still uncertain.

The more we understand, the more there is a possibility that something we don’t understand is also operating in the universe.

Science isn’t about looking for evidence of God. It’s about what we can observe and predict. But, that also might lead us to finding proof that there are still mysteries that we don’t understand, and new possibilities that we must be open to.

Religion and science aren’t at odds. They’re actually looking for the same thing: truth. And, this why quantum mechanics may make you believe in God, because, even though it doesn’t prove His existence, it leaves open the possibility that He (or something else beyond our current understanding) could exist. Because, at their most fundamental level, quantum physics tells us we might not know as much as we think we do.

As Einstein wrote , “Even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies … The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

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Frankenstein: the real experiments that inspired the fictional science

Professor of History, Aberystwyth University

Disclosure statement

Iwan Morus receives funding from the AHRC as part of the Unsettling Scientific Stories project.

Aberystwyth University provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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On January 17 1803, a young man named George Forster was hanged for murder at Newgate prison in London. After his execution, as often happened, his body was carried ceremoniously across the city to the Royal College of Surgeons, where it would be publicly dissected. What actually happened was rather more shocking than simple dissection though. Forster was going to be electrified.

The experiments were to be carried out by the Italian natural philosopher Giovanni Aldini, the nephew of Luigi Galvani, who discovered “ animal electricity ” in 1780, and for whom the field of galvanism is named. With Forster on the slab before him, Aldini and his assistants started to experiment. The Times newspaper reported:

On the first application of the process to the face, the jaw of the deceased criminal began to quiver, the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye was actually opened. In the subsequent part of the process, the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs were set in motion.

It looked to some spectators “as if the wretched man was on the eve of being restored to life.”

By the time Aldini was experimenting on Forster the idea that there was some peculiarly intimate relationship between electricity and the processes of life was at least a century old. Isaac Newton speculated along such lines in the early 1700s. In 1730, the English astronomer and dyer Stephen Gray demonstrated the principle of electrical conductivity. Gray suspended an orphan boy on silk cords in mid air , and placed a positively charged tube near the boy’s feet, creating a negative charge in them. Due to his electrical isolation, this created a positive charge in the child’s other extremities, causing a nearby dish of gold leaf to be attracted to his fingers.

In France in 1746 Jean Antoine Nollet entertained the court at Versailles by causing a company of 180 royal guardsmen to jump simultaneously when the charge from a Leyden jar (an electrical storage device) passed through their bodies.

It was to defend his uncle’s theories against the attacks of opponents such as Alessandro Volta that Aldini carried out his experiments on Forster. Volta claimed that “animal” electricity was produced by the contact of metals rather than being a property of living tissue, but there were several other natural philosophers who took up Galvani’s ideas with enthusiasm. Alexander von Humboldt experimented with batteries made entirely from animal tissue. Johannes Ritter even carried out electrical experiments on himself to explore how electricity affected the sensations.

The idea that electricity really was the stuff of life and that it might be used to bring back the dead was certainly a familiar one in the kinds of circles in which the young Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley – the author of Frankenstein – moved. The English poet, and family friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge was fascinated by the connections between electricity and life. Writing to his friend the chemist Humphry Davy after hearing that he was giving lectures at the Royal Institution in London, he told him how his “motive muscles tingled and contracted at the news, as if you had bared them and were zincifying the life-mocking fibres”. Percy Bysshe Shelley himself – who would become Wollstonecraft’s husband in 1816 – was another enthusiast for galvanic experimentation .

Vital knowledge

Aldini’s experiments with the dead attracted considerable attention. Some commentators poked fun at the idea that electricity could restore life, laughing at the thought that Aldini could “ make dead people cut droll capers ”. Others took the idea very seriously. Lecturer Charles Wilkinson, who assisted Aldini in his experiments, argued that galvanism was “an energising principle, which forms the line of distinction between matter and spirit, constituting in the great chain of the creation, the intervening link between corporeal substance and the essence of vitality”.

In 1814 the English surgeon John Abernethy made much the same sort of claim in the annual Hunterian lecture at the Royal College of Surgeons. His lecture sparked a violent debate with fellow surgeon William Lawrence. Abernethy claimed that electricity was (or was like) the vital force while Lawrence denied that there was any need to invoke a vital force at all to explain the processes of life. Both Mary and Percy Shelley certainly knew about this debate – Lawrence was their doctor.

By the time Frankenstein was published in 1818, its readers would have been familiar with the notion that life could be created or restored with electricity. Just a few months after the book appeared, the Scottish chemist Andrew Ure carried out his own electrical experiments on the body of Matthew Clydesdale, who had been executed for murder. When the dead man was electrified , Ure wrote, “every muscle in his countenance was simultaneously thrown into fearful action; rage, horror, despair, anguish, and ghastly smiles, united their hideous expression in the murderer’s face”.

Ure reported that the experiments were so gruesome that “several of the spectators were forced to leave the apartment, and one gentleman fainted”. It is tempting to speculate about the degree to which Ure had Mary Shelley’s recent novel in mind as he carried out his experiments. His own account of them was certainly quite deliberately written to highlight their more lurid elements.

Frankenstein might look like fantasy to modern eyes, but to its author and original readers there was nothing fantastic about it. Just as everyone knows about artificial intelligence now, so Shelley’s readers knew about the possibilities of electrical life. And just as artificial intelligence (AI) invokes a range of responses and arguments now, so did the prospect of electrical life – and Shelley’s novel – then.

The science behind Frankenstein reminds us that current debates have a long history – and that in many ways the terms of our debates now are determined by it. It was during the 19th century that people started thinking about the future as a different country, made out of science and technology. Novels such as Frankenstein, in which authors made their future out of the ingredients of their present, were an important element in that new way of thinking about tomorrow.

Thinking about the science that made Frankenstein seem so real in 1818 might help us consider more carefully the ways we think now about the possibilities – and the dangers – of our present futures.

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An Experiment That’s Never Been Tried: Morality Without Religion

A long tradition of thinking tells us that due to man’s animal nature we need to have order imposed from above, in the form of religion. Without religion, we could not live together, and that is why all human societies believe in the supernatural and have developed one religion or another.

This view, which the biologist and primatologist Frans de Waal calls Veneer Theory , is an essentially pessimistic view “ that morality is a thin veneer over a nasty human nature.”

In his new book, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates , de Waal challenges this theory, arguing that human morality is older than religion, and indeed an innate quality. In other words, religion did not give us morality. Religion built onto a pre-existing moral system that governed how our species behaved.

de Waal’s argument, which he has been making for years, is strengthened by the fact that recent research is starting to paint a better picture of the kind of cognitive processing that empathy requires. It turns out that empathy is not as complex as we had imagined, and that is why other animals are capable of it as well as humans.

So if being moral is so easy, can we dispatch with religion altogether?

That is an experiment that no one has tried, and which de Waal finds intriguing. The problem, as de Waal points out in the video below, is that we need someone to be keeping watch in large-scale societies in which “we cannot all keep an eye on each other.”

Watch the video here:

Image courtesy of Shutterstock .

A red hourglass sits against a background of swirling purple patterns.

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The Truman Show religion experiment.

Let's presume a generation of parents agree to raise their newborn children in a Truman Show like fake-world bubble with no religion. Let's also presume that for this experiment they stay true to the premise and do not talk about any religion in this controlled world but do not stamp out any conversation about the possibilities of deities if the children start the discussion. They simply respond with neutral phrases.

All media and entertainment for the children is made strictly for the experiment and is also religion-free.

The outside world watches as the parents live out their natural lives without revealing the experiment to their children. Eventually no one born in the outside world is left. The bubble children are now the leaders inside and have no access to any teaching of current religions nor any such thought about real world beliefs have ever entered their minds.

Left to itself in perfectly controlled conditions generation after generation I believe the experiment will obviously result in an atheist majority, but, an occasional cult or actual religious movement will pop up now and again. Of course they will have nothing to do with actual religions and will have been made up from scratch. Though there could be similar tropes like resurrection, etc.

So, assuming religion in the real world keeps on chugging along, will this experiment have any effect on the perception of religion? Shouldn't a true believer expect their religion to find it's way miraculously into the bubble?

Sadly I say no one would denounce their religion even with access to all the results of this experiment. Surely this would prove that religion spreads through indoctrination and not through it's own momentum.

Even with the existence of other religions in the World, no one wavers in their own belief. Only this Truman Show experiment, run on a world wide level, would ever wipe religion from the face of the Earth. And who knows if what came next would be any better.

Time to start writing that dystopian novel.

That “Five Monkeys Experiment” Never Happened

You may have seen this story about the Five Monkeys Experiment recently:

Apparently it is supposed to describe a real scientific experiment that was performed on a group of monkeys, and it is supposed to raise profound questions about our tendency to unquestioningly follow the herd. Unfortunately it is complete and utter nonsense, because no such experiment ever happened.

Ironically, so many people are sharing this unverified pseudoscientific gibberish that it really does reveal our tendency to unthinkingly follow the herd; after all, why would you bother verifying an article about monkeys that literally has the tag line “think before you follow”?

This story has been doing the rounds since 1996, and it has never been verified. It seems to have first appeared in a book called Competing For The Future by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad, and by “appeared” I mean it was just made up. The authors never provided a source. None of the authors who have referred to the experiment in the past eighteen years have provided a source either. None of the appealing memes or infographics that describe the story now provide a source. Suffice to say, there is no source, because the experiment never happened.

(I got some of this information from an internet chatroom, posted by a guy called BlueRaja. If you would like to check up on what I have said, you can do that.)

The article has gained popularity recently because it appeared in a TED Talk by some guy called Eddie Obeng,* showing once again that TED Talks are responsible for the spread of intellectual garbage and superficially appealing, hyperbolic misinformation. A blogger by the name of John Stepper writes about how amazing the Talk was and how Eddie was able to bring this untrue story to life. He then asks if it really happened, and says:

“A quick search reveals it did happen though the details are quite different.”

This is perfectly true, if by “quite different” he really means “not the same at all, in any way.”

Stepper’s “proof” that it happened “a little differently” is an article by G.R. Stephenson called Cultural Acquisition Of A Specific Learned Response Among Rhesus Monkeys (1966). The very existence of a scientific-sounding source seems to be enough to lend this ‘experiment’ some credibility (it’s got a big name and a date and everything) but all you need to do is read the experiment yourself to see that it has absolutely nothing to do with this ‘fable’ at all. They may as well have provided this as a source:

Did Stephenson put five monkeys in a room and spray them with water if they climbed up a ladder to reach a banana? Of course not.

As you can see, the experiment is different in just a couple of minor ways:

Stephenson wanted to know if a learned behaviour in one monkey could induce a lasting effect on a second monkey. He was not making a study of group dynamics or herd behaviour at all.
He examined four sets of unisexual monkey pairs, not five random monkeys in a group.
The objects he used were plastic kitchen utensils, not a banana.
The type of punishment was an air blast, not a water blast.
There was no ladder- the object was just placed at one end of a controlled area.

To summarise, nothing about this real experiment is the same as the story. Nothing at all.

And what were the actual results of this barely relevant, totally different experiment?

Oops…

So in some pairs the new ‘naive’ monkey did learn to fear the object after seeing how the conditioned monkey was afraid of it. However, in other pairs, the fearless behaviour of the naive monkey ended up teaching the conditioned one not to fear the object anymore. Note that this is exactly the wrong type of evidence for a charming story about “following the herd”.

Curiously, the results were gender-specific: in three male-paired cases the learned behaviour was transferred, in three female-paired cases it was not, and in two it was inconclusive. The female monkeys seemed to learn behaviours simply by observation (including cases in which the punished monkey learned that there would be no more air blasts by watching the new monkey play with the object). The male pairs behaved differently, tending to teach a behaviour physically. The punished monkey actively admonished the newer one by pulling them away from the object.

The sample size is small and no bullshit should be inferred.

Unfortunately, a few decades after this study was published some moronic self-help author read it and thought “it’s almost good, but if I make it much more sensational and implausible, I will sell a lot of books! Though I don’t have any real truths, I can help people by showing them essential truths I’ve just made up!” And then you read it on Facebook, and thousands of people shared it, believing it to be true.

It’s one thing to share a meme because it sounds cool. We have all done it, myself included, even though it is a truly terrible misuse of our intelligence and most of us would not want our children to be mindlessly repeating hearsay and gossip because it sounds cool.

However, I can’t help but wonder how a blogger like John Stepper can be so smitten by the power of rhetoric that after hearing this implausible story about five monkeys he tries to validate it by referring to an unrelated study, and decides that “the details are a bit different.” No John, the details are not a bit different, they are so different that it makes your “evidence” irrelevant. Without evidence, you are just helping to spread misinformation. Please, please use your brain.

In fact, everybody, please stop sharing articles like this. It doesn’t take long to find out if something is true. This is one of the things our years of secondary (and perhaps tertiary) education were supposed to teach us: think before you follow!

Now, if only there was a cool story about some scientific-sounding thing I could quote to give my rant a bit more substance…

*UPDATE: As Eddie Obeng points out in the comments below, I was incorrect in saying that he delivered this story at a TED Talk. He definitely did not use cutesy projected graphics to relay uplifting platitudes to an audience of gullible twats at a TED event- he did it at JiveWorld instead, which is probably completely different.

He also insists it is a fable, not a story about a real experiment. This is probably why he introduces it as “an experiment I came across; apparently a group of researchers were looking at behaviour. What they did was, they got five monkeys…”

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77 thoughts on “ That “Five Monkeys Experiment” Never Happened ”

Ironic that the circulating “experiment” is about thinking and not just following the herd and yet people follow the herd in sharing it without checking its validity.

Maybe that was the point.

If you really want to scream, when I just googled “monkey banana ladder,” the first three hits were claims that the experiment actually took place, including this answer:

http://www.answers.com/Q/Did_the_monkey_banana_and_water_spray_experiment_ever_take_place

which only a the end says, “Well, it seems to be true; not in the exact shape that it took here, but close enough.”

It was only beginning with the fourth result in my Google search, an article from Psychology Today , that the debunking of the fiction seemed to begin.

Close enough!? Honestly, what happens in peoples minds when they read these things? I hope my article does something to combat this.

I couldn’t help myself, Virgil. I signed up to Answers.com just so I could edit that page. I wonder how long it will be before someone changes it again?

You’re a hero for truth and science, Chad.

And, who knows, maybe if you stick with that Answers.com account, you can get to be one of those Experts you should follow I see on the right-hand side of the page. They could probably use some new expertise on ties. 😉

Virgil! What happened to your Twitter account?

i suppose its time to do the experiment

Shame you didn’t check your facts. There is no reference to the 5 monkeys in any of my TED talks. Plus anyone with any brains knows a fable from researched material. When Aesop wrote about a fox jumping for grapes only an idiot would believe the fox spoke… I bet you won’t publish this comment

I believe you are correct. John Stepper describes the speech you gave at Jiveworld, not TED. I can’t argue with a fact!

Sadly, many people have not responded to this story as if it is a fable. My frustration is partly because I also expect them to do so. I have edited the Answers.com page about this experiment several times because someone kept changing my answer back to “the experiment was real but slightly different.” Do a quick google search and you will see that almost every reference to this assumes that it really happened.

Also, is it not slightly disingenuous to say that everyone everyone will know this story is a fable when it begins with “scientists did this experiment…” I don’t know how you tell the story, but I doubt you begin with “this isn’t true in any way, in fact there is real evidence that contradicts it completely, but it’s a great story anyway.”

The best part of Eddie’s vitriolic rebuttal is that a simple google search of ‘eddie obeng’ and ‘5 monkeys’ gives me a youtube video where he makes an impassioned 2 minute account of the story.

There is an assumption that, when you tell an anecdote, it has at least some basis in reality. Parroting unsupported statements without fact checking them first is commonly referred to as ‘spreading bull****’ around here.

Defending a tenous position with an aggressive rant certainly doesn’t help your image either. The comparison to Aesop’s fable is outright disingenuous and misleading – as throwcase also mentions!

All matter is a mirror that reflects light and creates images of that light. I’m glad to hear your response Eddie Obeng. Many teachers use analogy and fable to present relationships between the immeasurable (mystery) and the measurable (science). Our current culture is dominated by the “religion” of science and such paradigms prevent many from feeling the truth of messages delivered. Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo were ridiculed and claimed as heretics by the religions of the time. Similar actions are happening in this day and age. What was the driving force behind trying to prove or disprove the existence of a story with a beautiful message? The story of the monkeys in a cage shows what happens when minds listen to what they think they know and teach others lies of how to be in the world. Can others see what is shown in the story about the story of the monkeys? Can we see the mirrors of life showing us our mind being reflected to us? Thank you Eddie Obeng for sharing your wonderful story. Thank you all for showing us how the teaching of the story plays out in our world.

Interesting that you bring up Kepler, Copernicus, and Galileo; these three men were not content with the “beautiful stories” of their time, because they could see evidence that suggested otherwise.

What are you praising them for if you don’t like the spirit of evidence-based, truth-seeking scientific inquiry?

Also, is it not odd to criticise the “paradigm” generated by a scientific “religion” if you then fervently believe in a story that claims to be based on a scientific experiment?

This is a good example of anti-intellecutualism thats persisted since we could rationalise.

Great piece and comment arguments! I’m SO glad I found it before I wrote about that story on my blog! Part of the problem is, it really does sound like it is true, because those of us who attempt to dispel the myth makers experience these “beatings” more often than not.

I know what you mean! Glad you liked it

Makes you sort of wonder why, after all this, someone hasn’t actually run the experiment then. it’s not so difficult, right?

Indeed I would love to see it

If it hasn’t happened so far, it certainly won’t be happening today, at least not officially. Ethics is the ”problem”.

Slavoj Zizek in his article named psychologist Harry Harlow as a conducter of this experiment. I don’t think that a guy like Zizek would write something without checking it first, let alone make the whole thing up.

So where is the proof? You can believe hearsay, I will believe proof. I have heard people making the Harlow claim before- I checked through all of his published papers and not one sounds remotely like this experiment. If you can find it, I will happily eat my words.

Also, what Zizek article do you refer to? I have done a quick search and can’t find it. Do you have a link?

Well, of course, if it cant be proven with Google, it doesnt exist. Coz they didnt actually record all of their experiments on tape, and if they dont have PROOF other than their own credentials as professionals and doctors… I wonder, do you require such physical, recordable proof for all the beliefs of science you hold dear? I have no proof of any of Freud’s work, so perhaps I should discredit him. I have no proof of Darwins actual research, perhaps he made it all up. If you desire such proof from experiments that were made when we didnt have such a plethora of physical records and recording devices, then most of the knowledge we function on should be discredited.

To your questions I answer an absolutely unequivocal yes. I, much like the entire scientific profession, do require proof in order to believe a scientific claim.

It is incredible that you mention Freud, because a century of scientific research has in fact discredited much of what he wrote and theorised. So that is an excellent point for my argument. Thanks.

Also with Darwin, all his evidence was catalogued and subsequently researched further, which would not have been possible if it had simply been made up. In fact, Origin Of the Species is a very boring book, because it is so relentlessly factual and evidence based. So again you make an excellent point for the value of scientific proof.

In the absence of a physical or written record or experiment one should at least be able to repeat the experiment and get the same result. This has never been done for this so called monkey “experiment” and if it were to be done I am certain the result would not be the one claimed here.

I appreciate your interest for science and the tenacity you provide in defending the idea of “no proof – didn’t happen”. I also appreciate you are indeed educated and you do your homework before posting about a subject. However, I despise the lack of respect you show to people that have a different opinion. You can make your point without being sarcastic. Now, in regard to your beliefs, I think that someone once said that only a fool is absolutely sure about something. So, you are absolutely sure about this experiment, never actually took place? Just because there is no record of any kind of it? Well, sir, please tell me how do you know that the shape of our galaxy pictured everywhere, is the real one? Do we have a probe, o space ship of any form, outside our galaxy, far enough to actually take that picture? If not, do we have enough data to map our entire galaxy precisely? It’s just one example that comes to mind… In regard to the monkeys, you may be right: the experiment may have never took place. But the absence of proof, does not necessary implies the absence of the event itself… Probable cause? Animal cruelty. This would not have been an experiment that gives results that benefits humans to justify beating up the monkeys. So, if I did it anyway, why should I publicly admit to it? It would have been a pure psychological experiment. So, why record it? Just sayin’… Thank you for taking the time to read this!

“So, you are absolutely sure about this experiment, never actually took place? Just because there is no record of any kind of it? ”

Yes. The bare minimum required of a scientific proof is that it can be demonstrated. Existing is indeed a great demonstration.

“Well, sir, please tell me how do you know that the shape of our galaxy pictured everywhere, is the real one? ”

I don’t. I never said I did. I presume, like all lasting scientific models and theories, that it is the best guess we have based on the observable evidence.

“But the absence of proof, does not necessary implies the absence of the event itself… ”

That is exactly what it implies. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. Without proof, it is just a claim, no more. Your theory about animal cruelty is logical, but unnecessary. We do not need to multiply explanations as to why there is no record of this experiment- there is no record because it never happened.

Also, there were very many experiments done in the 20th century that were avidly cruel and unashamedly so. For example, the work of Harlow and his “rape rack.” So even if your explanation was needed, it would be unconvincing anyway.

B.F. Skinner mentions something almost identical in Walden Two, his utopian novel: a herd of sheep that never approach a fence even after it has ceased to be electrified. I think the relevance of that episode to the rest of the book is that structures taken for granted might simply be ingrained, and not necessarily useful (kind of a prerequisite for any utopia, it appears near the beginning and I guess it sets the scene), but I’m not sure what its scientific basis is, if any. Skinner has not been wholly innocent of purveying dodgy ideas. Maybe that’s where they got it from.

Fascinating! Thanks for this comment. I had no idea B.F Skinner wrote a novel at all, and the little I have just read about it has piqued my interest greatly. It is entirely possible that this is indeed where others got the idea from.

Love your blog – entertaining and informative! One of my earlier gigs was playing in a circus band, the kind with elephants and other animals. Once in Thunder Bay, ON we had the elephants inside of the building overnight (a curling rink) in the same area as the trailers where people were staying. it was April and too cold to stay outside. In between them and the people was a single shoestring thick cord wrapped around the support beams making an impromptu corral. I inquired and was reassured that since they had previously been in such enclosures with electrified barrier cords, they never bothered to test their limits and go beyond them. On the second night we were there, our MD felt his trailer (a tiny two-toned brown Boler we called the hamburger) start to shake. Our MD Ross opened his window curtain and saw this big elephant eye blinking at him, just like the scene from Jurassic Park. But I guess these elephants didn’t about read the monkey experiment or B.F. Skinner.

Brilliant! That’s possibly my favourite comment ever

Well I hate to be that dumb monkey to say this, but the experiment isn’t about 5 monkeys is it? Isn’t it about a planet filled with monkeys? The story about the 5 monkeys looks more like a banana to me.. And we can pretend for the arguments sake that you are the coldshower Throwcase 😀

Just for the arguments sake! It is after all “a mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” –

To test theories it’s almost always better to use unknowing subjects. Much more of a natural atmosphere. But also, if you tell a human being that he’s a monkey, he will more likely then not, take it as an insult. The monkey get’s pissed and walks away, and you have a monkey experiment with no monkeys. Better is to use yourself as the monkey/banana to play dumb and let smarter monkeys do the hard work. All you have to do is to rattle the cage. Depending mainly on how much frustration the dumb monkey is presenting to the others, determines if the experiment is a success or not. low amount of frustration = nobody cares. high amount of frustration = Many cares. Rattle to much and people will want to kill you. Proof? Mention the name Beiber on your social media and you’ll go: “Oh I see what you’re talking about. LOL!”

This Tactic is used a lot in corporate espionage and journalism to gather information and secrets.

“You’ve got to play fool to catch wise sometimes” – Old Jamaican proverb

Have a great day Throwcase, was really fun and interesting to read your Aristotle! And thanks for turning me from a dumb monkey into a sneaky Elephant 😉

Cheerio friend!

But even if it were true, doesn’t it show the exact opposite of what it should?

If every time a monkey goes up the ladder, something bad happens to all the monkeys, then it makes sense to stop monkeys from going up the ladder.

And after all the monkeys have ben replaced, how are they supposed to know that the bad thing won’t continue to happen if one of them goes up the ladder?

So stopping the new monkeys form going up the ladder, far from being stupid like the story presents it as, is actually absolutely sensible.

It’s only because we know that the experimenters won’t give the cold shower that it looks stupid to us, looking on from outside. But how are the monkeys supposed to know that? From their point of view it’s totally sensible to stop monkeys climbing the ladder.

It looks to me like a prime example of Chesterton’s fence.

Excellent point, and I am glad to be introduced to the idea of Chesterton’s fence- thanks!

@Q I am not sure when you say that the experiment, if true, would prove the opposite? What do you mean “opposite”. I think if it were true, it would indeed prove the existence of herd behavior. It’s just that it would also show, that in some cases, herd behavior actually makes sense. At least to the participants! But indeed there are many cases where herd behavior demonstrably works. I think you will find that the reasoning “lots of people are doing it, so it must work to some degree”, considerably more than 50% of the time, is a very valid assumption.

stumbled across this “experiment” a few years ago… tried to find sources but turned up short. So frustrating! Great to finally categorize the story as allegorical rather than having scientific merit. Thanks for easing my mind. ciao.

Glad to help!

You made one major mistake. You didnt get that its not a scientific claim that is about the monkeys behavior. Its a metaphorical story.

If it is only metaphorical, why does it need to have scientists in the story at all? Why do so many people believe that it is a real experiment? Why does it have an accompanying scientific source that is supposed to lend credence to the whole experiment but actually disproves it? Why not come up with a better metaphor, one that doesn’t begin with “a group of scientists ran an experiment…”

This is a scientific experiment. This can be used to check human beings how well they respond to social compliance. Derren Brown shows this in his experiment The Push on Youtube. As that Mr.Nobody guy said earlier in a strange way. Switch the word monkies with humans, switch the word cage with society/culture/religion.

Forget the “monkey” experiment and try to see the bigger picture. This “story” is not about monkies. You’re all right when you say it didn’t happen. Unless you believe in evolution and view human beings as a primate and thus, a sort of a monkey. It just goes to show that even we science people can be fooled. Mainly because we are very keen to take experiments literal.

It’s pretty long the experiment he did. But the main purpose about his experiment was to find out if we can use social compliance to push someone off a building and commit murder. So yea. Pretty interesting. He uses this “monkey in the cage” tactic to sort out the people who didn’t respond to social compliance from the ones who did. Whoever wrote this story is talking about social compliance using metaphors it would seem. That’s why we can’t see the science in it.

So seemed that Mr.Nobody guy be doing as well btw. Speaking in Metaphors that is.

It wasn’t a scientific experiment. It didn’t happen.

I get the metaphor. I might have liked the metaphor, if it was presented as a metaphor. It is not. It is presented as a scientific experiment.

It may illustrate a truth, of course, but that is a different thing. In that case, the opening of the story should read “This didn’t happen, but it illustrates a truth.” Dale Carnegie wrote exactly that sort of line in his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. He says “I have among my clippings a story I know never happened, but it illustrates a truth, so I’ll repeat it.” Why is that too hard for so many others to do?

You are right in that it literally didn’t happen. But if you navigate through the world and take everything literal, then doesn’t that make you pretty blind? When in today’s world lies and manipulation is far more effective and widely used then logic and scientific facts? After all. You where about to disregard this entire “experiment” But then others come along and tell you it’s more to it. Quite important the entire topic of social compliance it turns out.

That’s true: I am right.

I like the article – the author of it, however, is ‘obviously’ a complete arrogant, pompous, pretentious, prick. The article “obviously” didn’t need to be written in a way that makes it sound that …”well since you read it on the internet ‘obviously’ it must ‘obviously’ NOT be true.” Perhaps in the future this author can spend more time sharing knowledge in a constructive way…but I doubt that since…the likelihood of someone, like this author, who ‘obviously’ knows it all, of putting his feet on the ground and actually being at our level…is quite low.

Good point. I think the use of ‘obviously’ does indeed convey a less than ideal attitude, though I allowed myself to use it in the hopes that more people would click on the link.

And yet: https://www.facebook.com/TheRealMatrix777/videos/1741507356120817/?pnref=story

Haha- excellent. Thanks for sharing!

I have my doubts about how staged that clip might be. Let’s assume it is true and none of those people were actors, at least it was filmed and there is solid proof about what these people did. That has always been my complaint about the five monkeys story: it claims to be from a scientific experiment that never happened.

“That has always been my complaint about the five monkeys story: it claims to be from a scientific experiment that never happened.”

But if we assume that the clip is true, then there is nothing to discuss. You were right from the beginning that the five monkey experiment is just a made story which explains a true phenomena in a more fancy way (again, if the clip is true or if the conclusion of the original paper is correct).

My complaint is the way you handle this subject: – I already explained my point about “inferring bs” in my other comment

– The following are really irrelevant, it looks like you are just trying to use the proof by example fallacy. The objects he used were plastic kitchen utensils, not a banana. The type of punishment was an air blast, not a water blast. There was no ladder- the object was just placed at one end of a controlled area.

– Stephenson wanted to know if a learned behaviour in one monkey could induce a lasting effect on a second monkey. He was not making a study of group dynamics or herd behaviour at all. Only this difference is somewhat valid in my opinion but they are still related to each other. That is, the failure of the first experiment wouldn’t invalidate the point of the second hypothetical experiment (because of peer pressure) but its success would increase the success probability of the hypothetical experiment.

The point being that this is really how primates behave, including people of course.

Is that your belief? Or is there actual proof for it? Sure, I see some herd behaviour around me too, when I’m in a cynical mood. The point is: herd behaviour may not be as strong as we believe it to be, we might just be seeing it everywhere because we WANT to see it, or because we assume it exists. The real point is that there is no scientific proof that primates or even humans really behave this way, and to such a strong degree. Not until there is an ACTUAL experiment with ACTUAL proof that we can see/read. Sure, I readily believe there is some herd behaviour in apes and people. It’s just there is also curiosity, inventiveness, learning skills and the capability of independent thought, that will “temper” the effect of herd behaviour in people. That’s why we don’t ALWAYS do what other people are doing. You might even say that our wariness of behaving like a herd-animal keeps it somewhat in check, most of the time.

Like Throwcase said elsewhere: there are videos with people repeating stupid behaviour on YouTube for instance. But… where those experiments real? Were there any staged events with actors? And even if they weren’t, were the experiments scientifically valid? Are they documented and peer-reviewed? And can we, or at least other scientists, see that documentation somewhere? Or were they just made by some TV-show with a half decent understanding of how to do a proper scientific experiment.

http://www.wisdompills.com/2014/05/28/the-famous-social-experiment-5-monkeys-a-ladder/ This give some souece of experiment.

No it didn’t

I’m surprised nobody has tried to recreate this experiment, although there is stuff like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AegLdB7UI4U

Yes I was fascinated to see that clip! I wonder how staged it is, though… I would be keen to see more.

Have you considered that the fact that the study never happened and yet the fiction was so easily propagated as fact supports the central point of the ficitonalized “study”?

There being something to debunk that you considered worth the effort of this article in effect *emphasizes* that the phenomenon occurs and is robust enough to warrant this kind of attention.

This just raises the question why you were interested in debunking details of factual inaccuracy when the fact that they were inaccurate just exemplifies the potency of uncritical, self-reinforcing credulity induced by social influence, which is precisely the point of the five monkeys study-cum-allegorical-fiction.

I think you just demonstrated the opposite of your implicit intent. Correct me if I’m wrong.

You have pointed out the central irony that makes the success of this meme so frustrating; yes, it was easily propagated because people just presumed it was true, but no, that popularity does not make the story true. Facts are always worth declaring, especially in the face of mounting untruths. The fact that the meme literally says “think before you follow” and people were willing to share this without actually thinking about it, is absurd. Though it might “exemplify the potency of uncritical, self-reinforcing credulity”, it does so in the name of going against the herd and thinking for yourself. The irony is endless.

Note I didn’t claim that popularity makes the story true, lol.

There are two pieces to this: the story’s facticity and the truth of the point made by what we agree was a fiction. I’m just pointing out that you chose to deal with the lesser issue, and that getting taken for true even though it’s not exemplifies the story’s point and serves as evidence for the truth of its point.

In other words, the story is a metaphor, not a rendition of fact; but like all metaphors, the truth it communicates doesn’t suffer merely because fiction was used to impart it. My point was that your debunk of the story’s facticity doesn’t detract from the truth of the story’s point and only shows how powerful metaphors are.

From a logical standpoint, showing the story to be fiction has no bearing on the truth of the point it makes about a phenomenon that is quite real and prevalent.

So the investment you made in disproving the facticity of the story only confirms that metaphors are powerful, even when presented as fact, and thus demonstrates the truth of the story’s point: it’s easy to form beliefs without facts. Given that your article seems to overlook that baby in your attention to its bathwater, I found that ironic.

I guess another way to look at this is that you seem to be confusing two different claims. One is that the experiment proves it’s possible to create beliefs without awareness of any factual basis for the belief. Debunking the experiment as a hoax would impact that claim. The other claim is that this fictional experiment nicely highlights the unreasonableness of a phenomenon that’s common and recognizable and — as anyone who has worked in any kind of long-running governance structure can tell you, whether it’s in business, government, or religion — happens all the time. You addressed the first claim, not the second. What’s more, the rhetorical implication of the article (by omission, so it’s easy to let it slip in,) is that dealing with the first claim has a bearing on the second one. But of course, that’s just poppycock. 😀

I do not see “the truth” as the lesser issue. The truth is always the more important issue. The fact that people believe this myth because it “seems” to be true still does not prove that the story is true. If anything, it proves that the meme is useless and self-contradictory, because it supposed to be an injunction NOT to believe things for superficial, and unexamined reasons.

I agree with you that truth is the most important part.

One way of simplifying and shortening down hard-to-grasp lessons and truths, are to break it down into easy to understand concepts. It’s called pedagogy. It’s not in general targeted towards very intelligent people like yourself. Or people who already understands the psychology behind it.

If we go back in our minds to when we we’re kids, we know that to be true. We didn’t start learning by counting hard-to-grasp mathematics. We started by counting apples and things like that.

I think the major problem we’re having here is the collision with different fields of experiences. To understand the underlying reason to why this is a great metaphorical lesson, one needs quite a lot of knowledge about psychology, neurology and overall history. To understand human behaviour overall.

I will say it again. You’re right about the truth is the most important part to understand. So pointing out that this experiment concerning monkeys in a cage never happen is correct.

But it’s also true that the psychological phenomenon of which this story is based upon is also true. So it’s not a “myth” either.

Derren Brown is nothing short of being an expert at these things. None of us here knows more about manipulating people’s behaviour and thoughts then he can. He puts this into practice in “The Game show – experiment”

I just think he explains the inner working of how this works in practice in a very interesting way by making fun and dramatic ways to watch it. Targeted towards people who learn faster by watching rather then reading.

That was the reason to why I mentioned him instead of a scientifical paper to read. If you like to read about it instead, I could find a real scientifical paper where this is being confirmed.

One of the most famous experiment where this happens is called “The Stanford Prison Experiment”. They took in a group of civilians and told half the group that they where prisoners and the other half was prison guards. There’s even a movie about that real experiment.

I think that movie (with the same name from 2015) would be more interesting for everyone to look at. Since it’s based on a real experiment. The 5 monkeys are not. I think the 5 monkeys was meant to explain it in a pedagogical way to children if anything.

Biggest example of when the same concept happen on a grander scale was Nazi Germany.

It’s all based in compliance.

I hope you find one or more of them interesting enough to learn more about. Since you expressed an interest when someone sent a video regarding it, but wasn’t sure if it was staged or not.

After all. Marketing agencies use the same knowledge to make the majority of people to buy stuff they don’t really need.

That’s why most of them aren’t targeting markets and people who they genuinely believe needs their products. Rather who’s more likely to buy products based on impulses.

You’re very right in pointing out the flaw in the truth of the story. Those who wrote it shouldn’t have described it using words as science and experiment. Because those are not based in metaphors. It just portrays the underlying facts which it is based on in a bad light. Specially when we come across the fact that the 5 monkey story isn’t based in a real experiment. We’ll just disregard the entire story instead since we think it’s based in fantasy rather then truth.

I thought it was real because of my knowledge about human psychology and neurology. So I thank you for pointing out that it wasn’t the case.

Have a great day Throwcase!

No one said truth is not important, so I’m not sure who you’re addressing there. Ghosts?

You conflated two things, one more important than the other, and so the truth of the one is more important than the truth of the other, but you focused on the less important issue as if it discredited the more important issue.

Question 1: Truth of the phenomenon that the metaphor portrays. This is the more important issue you don’t seem to like and failed to give it its due.

Question 2: The truth of the claim that the experiment in fact occurred.

You fail to grasp that these are independent questions, and disproving the second actually has no bearing on the truth or value of the first.

This is basic logic, dude.

I’ll give you an example. I tell you I conducted an experiment and found that if you jump off a cliff you’ll be smashed against the rocks against the bottom. In fact, I conducted no such experiment.

Your article is the equivalent of arguing that since my claim to have done an experiment is false, my conclusion is suspect or even flat out wrong. Not only would that be incorrect in the example’s case — you really will get smashed against the rocks if you jump off the cliff — the idea that disproving my claim to have performed an experiment has any bearing on the truth of the conclusion of the bogus experiment is just silly. There is no connection. It has no bearing. Just like your article.

If the phenomenon is so true why do we need to invent experiments to describe it? No one benefits from this. A scientific experiment either happened or it didn’t, and misinformation of any form should be corrected. If the phenomenon is true, let us conduct a real experiment to prove it, or invent a fictional story to describe it. There is no need to start that fictional story with the supposedly genuine claim that “a group of scientists” were involved. That is a lie.

Or, as you posted on your blog:

“If their purposes were honorable, they would be in possession of facts, of the truth of what’s really going on, and they wouldn’t need bullshit.

Resorting to bullshit proves dishonesty on a level even deeper than lying.”

Millard and Damien basically have summed up what I wanted to say, probably in a much better way than I would have been able to.

I just want to point out something, from the edit at the bottom of you rant:

“He also insists it is a fable, not a story about a real experiment. This is probably why he introduces it as “an experiment I came across; apparently a group of researchers were looking at behaviour. What they did was, they got five monkeys…””

As soon as the word “apparently” appear, I would assume this is not a scietific claim. The story of the scientists conduction this experiment is indeed like a fable, designed to explain something real in an easy to grasp way. And I guess the reason people share it so easily, is because they know it to be true from their own experience. It’s like this experiment goes on in real life, for everyone, always.

Wow, wrote a nice long response and it disappeared. Oh well.

Well, how about… https://www.facebook.com/anonews.co/videos/1313784798633076/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED

Indeed! Someone else posted that as well. If it is not faked in any way, it would be much better proof than this monkey story.

@Throwcase: I told you such an experiment has already been done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jdOoxnr7AI

This phenomenon has been studied for quite some time now. It’s being studied as we speak actually. But it’s okey. You can continue to live in denial.. However, you’re not being scientific about this. Just sayin.

Helpful Termonology:

Conformity: Is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behavior in order to fit in with a group. This change is in response to real (involving the physical presence of others) or imagined (involving the pressure of social norms / expectations) group pressure.

Source: http://www.simplypsychology.org/conformity.html

Compliance: Refers to a response—specifically, a submission—made in reaction to a request. The request may be explicit (i.e., foot-in-the-door technique) or implicit (i.e., advertising). The target may or may not recognize that he or she is being urged to act in a particular way. (In these cases presented we’re looking at the banana eater and the prisoners)

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compliance_(psychology)

Social compliance (business): Result of conformance to the rules of social accountability by the extended organization including not only the organization’s own policies and practices but also those of its supply and distribution chains. It is a continuing process in which the involved parties keep on looking for better ways to protect the health, safety, and fundamental rights of their employees, and to protect and enhance the community and environment in which they operate.

Source: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/social-compliance.html

You use the words “such an experiment has already been done”. Since you are unable to say “this experiment has already been done”, my point stands: the five monkey experiment never happened. The rest of your links are fascinating, but pointless. This article is about whether or not the five monkey experiment actually happened. (It didn’t.)

As I said. You’re not being scientific about this in order to not be in the wrong. Which we’ve already cleared you of being, regarding the five monkey experiment. So I don’t see how you can still be stuck on that. But to say that it is “pointless” to point out that the lesson behind the story is true is equally if not more important to emphasis, is quite chocking to hear to be honest.

For you to be so focused on dissproving the five monkey story is the equivelent of me going through every episode of Dexters laboratory and dissproving everything that is scientifically wrong with that show. Now that is the definition of something pointless.

To direct you to the real experiments regarding this is a civic duty since you have completely missed to cover that in your article. Which is okey. It’s your article. But it would be cool of you to write a follow up, covering the real experiments as a compliment to the facts of this phenomenon.

It’s nat true scientifically , but still useful to convince people. There are lots of fanatics around us

Eagleheart has it right. The religion of science, of the new credibility, has made us disbelieve what still cannot be disproven. The monkeys that curse and yet cause slowdowns on the roads as soon as there’s a rubber-necking opportunity are in the millions. I was in one of these festivals the other day, true celebrations of our irrational behavior. That the same shifting horde would turn around and put the imprimatur of ‘science’ on our lemming-like behavior does not negate what we see in our own unscientific reflections at the end of a long day.

Come on guys this however doubt able experiment proofs one point. If you are going to change monkeys, change all at the same time. You can use “word” politics instead of monkeys.

Glad to see someone calling out those absurd TED talks, where virtually anyone can be an expert and every talk is presented as life-changing incredible advice.

Seems like TED is popular the way “I Fucking Love Science” is popular. The people who are into that stuff are the same people clogging everyone’s social media feeds with GIF’d platitudes and articles about scientific research, not because they actually understand that stuff, but because they want people to *think* they understand and view them as intellectuals.

It’s like high school kids who shape their identities around the music they like and the clothes they wear — if you want to present yourself as an intellectual online, you retweet links to TED talks and post photographs of nature and star systems captioned as “science.” Really? A tiger is “science”? A Jovian planet is “science”?

And of course, these people don’t know shit. They don’t actually read the articles or watch the videos they’re reposting, they just want you to think they do. Cause they’re smart and stuff.

Excellent reply. Great minds think alike. 🙂

Hmmmm. Your source for this article was the internet. Your article Must be true lol you cannot verify nor deny everything. It is the way people act. Your article seems to insinuate that monkeys are smarter than people.

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Filmography
Movies & TV Shows

The Chosen Cast and Characters Guide: Their Religion and Where You Know Them From

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The Chosen has made history by becoming the most crowd-funded film (series) ever. Behind the history of the Christian-based series are the cast members who play different roles. Some of the characters are Jonathan Roumie (role of Jesus), Shahar Isaac (role of Simon), and Elizabeth Tabish (role of Mary Magdalene).

Despite centering on the life of Jesus and his ministry, The Chosen cast members belong to different religious backgrounds such as Judaism and Christianity among others. Others are deeply rooted in Catholicism, while others believe in God but do not practice any religion in particular.

As far as we know, there is so much to be told about the characters of The Chosen , their roles in the series, and their religions. Here is what you should know.

All About The Chosen Cast, Their Religion, and Other Works

Shahar isaac (simon).

Shahar Isaac brings the character of Simon Peter in The Chosen to life. His role is that of one of the 12 disciples of Jesus and this would be his first major role as an actor.

Before then, he played small roles in series such as Madam Secretary (2018), Person of Interest (2011), and Price For Freedom (2017). He has also appeared in numerous stage plays.

If you follow The Chosen , you should be aware of his accent which is not very English (in a typical American setting). This is because he is an Israeli-American. He was born in Israel before he later moved to the US and claimed fame following the release of The Chosen.

Concerning his religion, Isaac is believed to be Jewish and a possible native Hebrew. A Redditor reports watching a behind-the-scenes show where it is mentioned that the actor is Jewish.

Apart from that, it is common knowledge that Israel is a nation with over 73% Jewish people. This is followed by other religions such as Islam and Christianity.

In another aspect of his life, he is a guitarist and a passionate photographer.

Jonathan Roumie (Jesus)

Have you seen Jonathan Roumie in other movies or series before The Chosen or The Chosen was your first? Whatever your answer may be, the American actor (born to an Egyptian father and Irish mother) has been in the movie industry since the early 2000s.

Before looking at his other roles, let us see him as Jesus in The Chosen . His role is that of the Christian Messiah known as Jesus of Nazareth.

To say the least, he has the biggest role in the series since the story centers on his (Jesus) life, his ministry, and of course the word of God.

As in the case of Simon Peter in the series, Roumie as Jesus has an accent foreign to English. According to him, he incorporates an Egyptian accent (from his Egyptian father) and a Palestine accent (from his sister-in-law).

Roumie’s Jesus’ role in The Chosen is not the first time he wears Christ’s shoes. He played Jesus for the first time in Faustina: Messenger of Divine Mercy in 2019. It is a touring multi-media project about the life of St. Faustina.

Also, in 2014, he played Jesus in the short film Once We Were Slaves.

This then leads us to his other roles in other movies and series. Roumie has appeared in 2001’s Be My Brother and Prime in 2005. One of his most famous roles is John Wilkes Booth in Saving Lincoln in 2013.

In his personal and religious life, Roumie is a practicing Christian and Catholic. He serves as a ministry leader and he is on the board of Catholics in Media Associates.

Elizabeth Tabish (Mary Magdalene)

Tabish in The Chosen series is Mary Magdalene. Her role is that of a woman inflicted by demons and saved by Jesus. In the film, she is also seen as Lillith as well as a prostitute that Jesus saves.

One important thing about Tabish’s role as Magdalene is the fact that she breaks in as an important female figure. The story (even as it is in the Bible) does not have many female characters but Mary breaks that barrier and also shows the depth of Christ’s love.

Like her role in The Chosen, Tabish struggled through life. She suffered severe depression and was on the brink of quitting acting before she landed the Mary of Magdala role.

She was born and raised a Catholic but her faith withered along the line. However, she later found a place back to Jesus, following the influence of The Chosen.

Before that, she was involved mostly in commercials that could barely pay her rent and forced her to move in with her mother.

Paras Patel (Matthew)

In the crowd-funded The Chosen, Paras plays Matthew, one of the 12 disciples of Jesus. His story brings in much of the reality of the Bible while also linking it to a little bit of fiction.

Matthew is a lonely man who is also autistic and a tax collector. His job brings shame to his parents and his father disowns him. Then he finds love in Jesus and his journey toward redemption starts.

Away from his Matthew role, he is an acting coach. He has equally played roles in Nashville (2012), The DUFF (2015), Honor Council (2017), and For The People (2018).

Noah James (Andrew)

In The Chosen, Noah James’ role is that of Andrew. His role is that of one of the 12 disciples of Jesus. In the series, he is the son of Jonah, the brother of Simon, and also Philip’s friend.

Andrew is also a man of faith and a follower of John the Baptized.

In his life away from the series, he is an actor and director known for Shameless (2011) and Game Shakers (2015).

James is from a secular background and didn’t know much about Jesus Christ until he became a part of The Chosen. According to him , the series has given a better understanding of Jesus and his disciples.

Janis Dardaris (Zohara)

Dardaris is a multi-award-winning actress who played Zohara in The Chosen. She is one of the key actors in the series and the wife of Nicodemus.

In the series, Zohara does not like the new life of her husband. At first, she didn’t even know that he had found and believed in Jesus.

Janis is not only an actress in a Christian religion-related movie but is also a believer in the Christian faith. The actress attended Christian schools her whole life.

This contributes to one of the reasons that she became a part of the series. According to her, she is excited to tell a Bible story. More exciting is that the story does not just focus on Jesus but tells his story from the eyes of the people around him, including her character, Zohara.

There is more about her life away from her religion. In her career, she is known for playing Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense (1999), Grace in Cruzando (2009), and Judge Marilyn in Power (2014).

Lara Silva (Eden)

Otherwise known as Lara Covino, Silva is an actress with an extensive career in numerous movies and series. Some of her renowned roles are Luz Queen of the South (2016), Deputy Becky Dobson in Blue Ridge (2020), and Stephanie Hawkins in The Black Awakening (2021).

In The Chosen, her character is that of Eden, Simon Peter’s wife. As her husband, she also became a faithful follower of Jesus even as a Jew. Eden is a compassionate and hospitable woman.

She is also a supportive wife to her husband. She is one of the reasons that Simon met Jesus the day he did. It was with her urging that he went to the water where he met Jesus.

Upon her husband sharing with her his encounter, she is again supportive and was also eager to learn more about Jesus. Through Eden, Jesus performed some of his earliest miracles when he healed her (Eden) mother.

Concerning Lara Silva’s religion, she is a Christian. The Brazillian-born actress has the Bible verse “Pro 16:9” on her Instagram bio page .

Shaan Sharma (Shmuel)

Shaan Sharma does not identify with any particular religion as he considers humanity as an actual religion . However, he admits to believing that there is a God as spiritual energy and he prays to him every night before going to bed.

Even at that, he recites the Gayatri Mantra of Hindu religion with his children.

Looking away from that and to his career, Sharma played Shmuel in The Chosen .

Shmuel is not on Jesus’ side in the series as several other characters we have seen so far on this list. Instead, he is a pharisee who opposed Jesus in the Gospels.

His character is slightly fictitious since the actual opposition Pharisee in the Bible remains unnamed. Interestingly, his place in the series also gives more in-depth into humanity and relates it to Jesus.

For instance, Jesus met him at his lowest but rather than condemning him, Jesus showed him love and compassion.

Away from The Chosen, S haan Sharma has been a versatile actor with an extensive career in movies and series. He has been featured in Jenna Elfman, J.K. Simmons, Eli Baker, and Ava Deluca-Verley in Growing Up Fisher (2014) as Cabbie, Criminal Minds (2005) as Brian Jones, and Mr. Mercedes (2017) as Dr. Sanjay Seth.

Nick Shakoour (Zebedee)

Nick Shakoour has an interesting life as an actor and producer. He has played roles in Care Bears: Unlock the Magic (2019), Buddy Thunderstruck (2017), Dying Light: The Following – Enhanced Edition (2016), and State of Affairs (2014).

Interestingly, he has an interesting life surrounding The Chosen. Let’s start with his religion before looking at other aspects of his life in the series.

Shakoor was raised a Christian but doubted God’s existence. Then, he found himself playing Zebedee, the father of John and James. He is a man of God in the series and somehow, he found God through the role and has spoken openly about the faith .

Also, he has revealed that he has had new experiences since his encounter with God.

See Also: When And What To Expect John Wick 5: Will Keanu Reeves Return As John Wick?

George H. Xanthis (John)

Xanthis is an Australian-born actor and producer with roles in Syd2030 (2012), Open Slather (2015), and Deep Water (2016). In The Chosen, he plays John the Apostle, also known as John the Beloved.

Xanthis was raised in a Greek Orthodox home as a native Australian. According to him, he has been guilty of being culturally Christian sometimes.

Yet, The Chosen has helped him dig deeper into God, the Bible, and his faith. He has also sought advice from his family priest.

Relating to his role in The Chosen , Xanthis plays John the Beloved. John is one of the 12 Apostles of Jesus, the brother of James, and the son of Zebedee.

He has a good heart and is one of Jesus’ most loved people. Hence, he is known as the beloved.

Erick Avari (Nicodemus)

He is an Indian-American actor with roles in Stargate (1994), The Mummy (1999), and Days of Our Lives (2009).

As Nicodemus in The Chosen, he is the husband of Zohara (played by Janis Dardaris). He is a man of faith who met Jesus at night and had the famous “Born Again” conversation.

While Nicodemus’ role is minor, he is a major part of the story as his place is significant.

In his personal and religious life, Avari is not a Christian. Instead, he was born into a Parsi Zoroastrian family.

Brandon Potter (Quintus)

Unlike many other characters in The Chosen, Quintus is a fictional character . This means that his story is not in the Bible.

His character is loyal to Rome and is an antagonist of Jesus. He also had a relationship with Matthew since the Apostle (Matthew) used to report to him (Quintus) as a tax collector.

While he dislikes Jesus and often threatens to arrest him, he is intrigued by Jesus over time. Yet, he became impatient as his servant developed compassion for Jesus in Season 3.

In season 4 of the series, he seeks to have Jesus killed.

Looking into Potter’s life away from The Chosen , he is an American actor, director, and scriptwriter.

The actor has played roles in One Piece (1999), Dragon Ball Z (1990-1993), and Attack on Titan (2013-2022)

Kirk B. R. Woller (Gaius)

Kirk is a well-established actor with a career in series and films since the 1980s. Some popular films and series that have added to his fame include Prison Break, Big Momma’s House, The X-Files (1993), and The Resurrection of Gavin Stone (2017).

Whatever the case, Woller plays Gaius, a Roman soldier. He was at first Mathew’s boss and the men formed a friendship.

Later, he starts to believe in the preaching of Jesus and even tells his wife about him. His role is that of a man who takes an interest in seeking healing for his servant (also his illegitimate son).

While his role in The Chosen has turned heads towards him, it is easily believed that he is a Christian. However, this has not been ascertained.

Giavani Cairo (Thaddeus)

Giavani Cairo is Jude Thaddeus in The Chosen. He is also known as Jude the Apostle in the series and is one of the 12 men called by Jesus.

Jude had a career as a farmer before being called an apostle and was also often believed to be Jesus’ cousin.

Cairo’s character has helped him to become a better person, view people from a different light, and also deepen his faith.

Before The Chosen which is major to his fame, he appeared in Patch (2020), Perspectives (2019), Doom Patrol (2019), McCarthy (2018), and Calvari (2017).

Jordan Walker Ross (Little James)

Ross is one of the characters of The Chosen and he plays Little James. He is one of the 12 disciples of Jesus (not to be confused with James the son of Zebedee).

His character is an interesting one as his true nature is incorporated into the story. Ross has severe scoliosis and minor cerebral palsy which cause him to limp among other noticeable disabilities.

Well, when he auditioned for a role in the series, the director and creator had his character modeled to fit those features.

The good thing is, that his role in the series gives a deeper understanding of humans’ inner struggles, insecurities, and self-acceptance.

In his life away from the series, he openly speaks about his struggles and journey.

This struggle includes him not getting some roles because of his condition. Regardless, he has had roles in Tin Can Shinny (2003) and Beyond the Farthest Star (2015).

Yasmine Al-Bustami (Ramah)

Yasmine Al-Bustami is an American actress is Palestinian-Jordanian and Filipino descent. She plays Ramah in The Chosen. Even though her character is not originally in the Bible, she is a woman of faith in the series.

She follows Jesus through his ministry and is also enthusiastic about learning. Her character also strengthens the character of Thomas.

This character is one of the famous roles she interpreted but there is more to her life as an actress. She played roles such as Monique Deveraux in The Originals and as Special Agent Lucy Tara in NCIS: Hawai’i.

Concerning her religion, there have been different reports. Some sources claim that she is Muslim while others link her to Christianity. Whatever the case, her name is most popular among people who practice Islam.

Vanessa Benavente (Mary)

Actress Vanessa Benavente portrays the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. The series journeys the audience into her life and her being the mother of a savior.

The series buttresses more on her story and relationship with other people as compared to her description in the Bible. For instance, she openly speaks to some disciples about her experience as the mother of Jesus.

Well, speaking about some of these experiences has made The Chosen to be called out for blasphemy . This calling out is based on the scenes where Mary spoke about as though she had guilt (when she asked Ramah “How do you think I felt”). Also, the accusation points out that Mary questioned at a point if Jesus was indeed the son of God.

Even though that and playing the famous role of Mary, reports have it that the actress is not a Christian .

Yoshi Barrigas (Philip)

After getting his break in Hollywood in 2015, Barrigas appeared in films and series such as To the Happy Couple (2012), Criminal Minds (2018), and Six (2017).

In The Chosen, he plays the character of Philip, one of the 12 Apostles of Jesus. He was a former student of John the Baptist.

After he made a mark in the series, he announced on his Instagram page on May 4, 202 that he would be exiting the series. The reasons given were based on personal and professional reasons.

Barrigas was not exposed to the Gospel until he met Justin Beiber and the singer invited him (Barrigas) to Church. The actor spent many months of his life attending Church and later got a role in The Chosen.

At the time of this writing, he still pays attention to the Gospel.

Austin Reed Alleman (Nathanael)

Alleman is an actor and musician known as Nathanael (Nathaniel) in The Chosen. His role is that of one of the 12 Apostles.

His role in the series is minor and slightly fictionalized. While the Bible does not have a career specification for him, the series tells his story as an architect.

Before his Nathaniel role in The Chosen, Alleman had other minor roles in shorts and series. Some of these include Ars Moriendi (2019), Mr. Robot (2015), Sunder (2018), Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (2015) and The Maze Runner (2014).

Alaa Safi (Simon Z.)

Safi was born Alaa Oumouzoune in France to Morrocan parents. He is an actor, writer, and director. He has played roles in Dr. Strange (2016), The Mauritanian (2021), and Chinese Zodiac (2012).

In The Chosen, he plays Simon the Canaanean, also known as Simon the Zealot or Simon Z.

In the faith-based historical adaption of the life of Christ, Simon Z. is a minor character but one of the 12 apostles.

Luke Dimyan (Judas Iscariot)

Judas Iscariot is played by Luke Dimyan in The Chosen. He is also a minor character and of the who is also one of Jesus’ apostles.

Apart from that, he is also portrayed as a skillful businessman with a great ability to persuade. Through this career, he finds Jesus and is in awe of his teachings.

Despite his love for money, his love for Jesus’ teachings grew, thereby making him want to leave his business mentor to follow Jesus.

Judas is generally of money lover in the series and when he follows Jesus, he hopes to help with the financial aspects of the ministry.

Judas is a flawed man who unfortunately steals from the disciples’ proceeds.

Luke does not only have Judas’ role to his credit. He has had roles in Chubby Bunny (2019), Common Room (2019), Better Things (2016), Life or Death Debates (2019), The L Bomb (2018), Roomies! (2018), and Planet California (2018).

Ivan Jasso (Yussif)

Jasso is an actor known for his roles in The Boy and the Beast (2015), Echo 3 (2014), and Stacy Has a Thing for Black Guys (2019). In The Chosen, he played Yussif.

His role is that of a pharisee who serves with Shmuel.

Amber Shana Williams (Tamar)

Tamar (also in the Bible) is an Ethiopian woman who witnessed Jesus healing a leper. This would lead her to take her paralytic friend to be healed by Jesus at the house of Zebedee.

She becomes Jesus’ follower and travels with him to different places with his disciples, Mary Magdalene, and Ramah.

Her role is played by Amber Shana Williams, an actress who is also famed for her roles in Who Am I? (2018), Victim Number 8 (2018), The Old Man & the Gun (2018), Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (2018), One in Five (2018), Deadline: Crime with Tamron Hall (2013), Core (2017), Murder Made Me Famous (2015), and Run (2017).

Bunny Girl Senpai Season 2: Cast, Plot, Trailer, Everything To Know

Who is eve harlow, and what are her best films.

• Baib Ngwan is a writer at heart and she projects it into a career and day-to-day life; she believes that writing is one of the most important things that have built her since she found love in it at young age • She pays attention to little details and somehow, she falls in love with analysis, especially of things relating to culture, traditions, and metaphysical • She enjoys good stories and would pick novels over films - but when she watches mainstream films and series, she gives monumental reviews; she enjoys good fiction but would choose docufictions Experience Baib Ngwan has been writing and editing for the past 7 years. She has worked for print media and internet; and has written on a very wide range of topics. She has created over 600 articles that have reached people across the globe. Baib has written for Natifz Times, Jukebugs, Loveohlust, Richathletes, Wiredbugs, Weafrique, and Oddybugs among many others. Away from these, she shares stories on social media and creates fashion in many ways trough 28Closet. Besides these, she has taught English language and literature to young people within the ages of 12 to 20. Writing and SEO are other things that she has taught people who have become professional web content creators. Education Baib graduated with an honours in Linguistics from University of Jos. She also took courses on feature writing, SEO, and digital marketing. She is an extensive reader on a numerous topics and pays close attention to self-development and mental growth; finance, and analysis.

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Masaru Emoto (江本勝, Emoto Masaru, July 22, 1943 - October 17, 2014) was a Japanese businessman, author and pseudoscientist who claimed that human consciousness could affect the molecular structure of water.His 2004 book The Hidden Messages in Water was a New York Times best seller. His ideas had evolved over the years, and his early work revolved around pseudoscientific hypotheses that ...
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Scientific Faith Is Different From Religious Faith
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Experimentation in the Study of Religion and Politics
Summary. Experiments in religion and politics model a communication system with three elements: who (the sample) is exposed to what (the treatment) and with what potential effect (the outcome). Most experiments in religion and politics focus on one of three types of samples: clergy, the faithful within certain religious groups, or all citizens ...
11 Documentaries Profiling Cults & Controversial Religions ...
11 Documentaries Profiling Cults & Controversial Religions to Stream. We've seen countless scripted shows about cults, including The Path, The Following and the aptly-named Cult. But truth is ...
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How the Evangelical Machine Got Made
Longoria: Over the next two weeks, Emma Green brings us the story of a behind-the-scenes project. It's the story of how one man took a disparate, disorganized group of believers and turned them ...
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The Experiment TV. should reach. 5.4M Subs. around September 22nd, 2023* * rough estimate based on current trend ... Main Mobile App: Browser Extensions: Real Time App: Contact Social Blade Support . More Social Blade ... The public statistical data is sourced from YouTube, but the presentation is not controlled by them. Our use of the name ...
The Real-Life Science Mystery That Could Make You Believe in God
June 10, 2016. There's a mystery in science that has confounded some of the world's brightest minds for years. It seems to undermine everything we think we know about how the universe works, and calls into question the very nature of reality itself. And, if science is your basis for not believing in God, understanding the implications of ...
Frankenstein: the real experiments that inspired the fictional science
Forster was going to be electrified. The experiments were to be carried out by the Italian natural philosopher Giovanni Aldini, the nephew of Luigi Galvani, who discovered " animal electricity ...
An Experiment That's Never Been Tried: Morality Without Religion
A long tradition of thinking tells us that due to man's animal nature we need to have order imposed from above, in the form of religion. Without religion, we could not live together, and that is ...
On Experimental Religion
He added that just as 'that is called experimental philosophy, which brings opinions and notions to test of the fact, so it is properly called experimental religion, which brings religious affections and intentions to like test.'. John Wesley, the founding father of Methodism, likewise tried to tread a fine line between formalism and ...
The Truman Show religion experiment. : r/TrueAtheism
Let's presume a generation of parents agree to raise their newborn children in a Truman Show like fake-world bubble with no religion. Let's also presume that for this experiment they stay true to the premise and do not talk about any religion in this controlled world but do not stamp out any conversation about the possibilities of deities if the children start the discussion.
That "Five Monkeys Experiment" Never Happened
You may have seen this story about the Five Monkeys Experiment recently: Apparently it is supposed to describe a real scientific experiment that was performed on a group of monkeys, and it is supposed to raise profound questions about our tendency to unquestioningly follow the herd. Unfortunately it is complete and utter nonsense, because no such experiment ever happened.
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The Chosen Cast and Characters Guide: Their Religion and Where You Know
Behind the history of the Christian-based series are the cast members who play different roles. Some of the characters are Jonathan Roumie (role of Jesus), Shahar Isaac (role of Simon), and Elizabeth Tabish (role of Mary Magdalene). Despite centering on the life of Jesus and his ministry, The Chosen cast members belong to different religious ...
The Roblox Religion Experiment
#oofology #robloxRuben Sim journeys into the supernatural world with a group of his viewers (and practically shuts down a church).SUPPORT THE CHANNEL http:/...