When Healing Fails: Cognitive dissonance and resilience factors in failed religious healing. A comparative study of three local Christianities

• Applicants: Dr. Bernadett Bigalke; Professor Dr. Sebastian Schüler, since 7/2022
• Subject Area: Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
• Term: from 2019 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 419883561

The proposed research project addresses the question of how Christian believers deal with the lack of religious healing and miracles. On the one hand, the starting point of the question is the observation that healing is experiencing a significant boom not only in the esoteric market, but also in the context of Christian movements and churches from Pentecostal-charismatic free churches to Catholicism. On the other hand, the focus of various research on healing and religion has so far been little on the aspect of non-healing, although the results were extremely instructive in exploring the power of religious communication in general and resilience of religious communities in particular.The research project uses the theory of cognitive dissonance according to Leon Festinger as a starting point. Cognitive dissonances initially describe, quite generally, a state in which actors perceive an imbalance between their desires, hopes and ideals on the one hand, and experienced reality on the other. The absence of (religious) expectation creates cognitive dissonance that causes certain reactions in behavior and communication to make the situation plausible. Experiences of religious actors not to be liberated from their physical or mental suffering by the influence of higher powers constitute a reality of religious actors, which hitherto received little attention in research. While cognitive dissonances describe a starting point for the proposed research (a dilemma), we will ask with which communicative means this perceived problem is countered and whether these means lead to a permanent dissolution of the dissonance. A central question is therefore: Can religious communities permanently immunize against experienced contingencies? The theory of cognitive dissonance is therefore expanded to include more recent findings in sociological resilience research in order to more specifically ask about the given communicative resources. The planned research should thus not only pioneer in the development of this desideratum, but above all by the reconstruction of religious performances and narrations to look at the concrete ways of communicating and behaving, in order to explore and discuss the possibilities of a religious studies approach to resilience. In terms of research strategy and methodology, the project aims to compare three local Christian denominations. The aim is to develop an overall typology on the communicative factors of resilience. One of the central aims of the project is therefore to put comparative research as a core competency of religious studies at the center of attention.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Ehemalige Antragstellerin: Dr. Sabrina Weiß, until 6/2022