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In this episode Joel and Antonia talk about personality types and religion and unpack which personalities are more likely to leave or stay with religion.
In this podcast you’ll find:
- What’s the relationship between personality types and joining religious movements? Are there some that aren’t compatible with religion? Do certain types leave their religion?
- What personality types have the tendency to gravitate to certain religions?
- Externally structured– are surrounded with organization and various methodologies (for example: actual buildings that you worship and certain sacraments that you follow).
- Internally experienced – some people have much more comfort in expressing their religion internally. These people are not interested in external markers and have that sense of private worshipping processes of expressing their faith.
- Baptists
- Have the tendency to be individual expression-oriented in the religious faith. Personal salvation is big. If they don’t like what the pastor or minister is saying, they’ll simply just move to the next church and they’ll look for someone who’s more in alignment with how they feel.
- Attract a lot of feeler-perceivers because it’s about your personal faith expression and personal salvation.
- Presbyterians
- A lot more organized as a collective and structure-oriented. The congregation’s a lot systematized.
- Attract a lot of feeler-judgers and thinker-judgers.
- Accuracy people (TPs) have the highest likelihood of leaving religion in general. Oftentimes they leave early (teen years). If there is something they can convert/move on with, it usually is Buddhism. Why Buddhism? Because it does not require them much faith or submission to established systems. Buddhism is more inclined on practices, meditations and exercises.
- Intuitives V Sensors
- Intuitives do speculative thinking – things that can’t be proven by reality.
- Sensors – more interested on what can be verified
- Intuitives tend to be the one’s leaving religion at some point.
- Intuitives are the ones who are comfortable with redefining.
- Understand that no group is entirely representative of those who do or don’t describe themselves as religious.
- Whatever is your dominant cognitive function (driver process), if you are in a religion that doesn’t honor it or allow full expression, eventually you will leave that religion.
- If your driver process has full expression of your religious belief, you’re probably stay in the religion for a long time.
- Ask yourself:
- Is this truly serving me or just leading me to unhappiness?
- How can we make sure that we haven’t outsourced our belief system?
- What tools and models can we gather in order to take a deeper look at the structure of what we think and believe?
- Let’s celebrate each other’s differences and cultural backgrounds.
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28 comments
Thank you for this particular podcast. I thoroughly connect with Antonia’s feeling “friendly toward religion,” and wholeheartedly concur with Joel’s observation about the counter-intuitive draw of religion for Sensors. After all, “religion” itself comes from word origins meaning, “to bind together again,” i.e. “re” and “ligere.” Personally, I wonder if the Intuitives who end up leaving religions do so because they’ve lost sight of the fact that religion is about a FORM of practice, while spirituality is the essence from which that form emanates. We have a tendency to conflate form and substance or essence, e.g. “idolatory,” fixation of symbols, etc. As an an Authenticity/Exploration “Genius Type” (INFP), Catholic practice fits my Stoic-Buddhist-Taoist-Advaita affinities by giving me certain FORMS of ritual that I am able to experience at a deep level, because I am not mistaking the map for the territory (Korbyski, Hiyakawa). Of course, I don’t agree with everything the Catholic Church says and does – and I remain confident in the Church returning the favor – particularly as to me! As you might well imagine, given my “type,” I still favor chewing my own food, and recommend the same to others.
I am a Catholic missionary and an INTJ. Apparently INTJs tend not to believe in God. However to me, after following the lodgic and available evidence, I have concluded that God exists. I have also had some emotional experiences of God wich I find very fascinating. I am also preparing to go to become a priest.
I have found quite a few INTJ Catholic including allot of femail INTJs.
Would this be a common trend?
What are your thoughts on INTJs and religion and particularly Christianity and Catholicism?
Thanks for the comment Arabella! I’m glad you have been able to find something positive to believe in. As a believer in the New Age/Spiritualism movement myself, I have noticed a lot of Intuitives with a large percentage of INFJs. As an INFJ, I don’t run in large circles, but this is something I have noticed from online communities and fellow dabblers. I say “dabbler” because most people like the freedom that comes with the New Age system, and I think that it draws Intuitives that still feel a spiritual need. There are no churches or dogmatic rules. You can hold your own service out in a beautiful park or under a tree and still feel a spiritual connection. I think that kind of freedom of expression, without the need to assimilate to a group collective, is appealing to Intuitives overall. But that is just my observation….
Thanks again, guys, for a thought-provoking podcast. I grew up in a free church within the Christian tradition but as it really did not gel at all with my core values (I’m an INFP) of tolerance and inclusion, I made a conscious decision to leave at the age of 11. Was a fairly hardcore atheist for a number of years, probably influenced by my father and the injustice and hypocrisy I had witnessed while active in the church I was born into. I then took a short detour in my youth through spiritualism and New Age (mainly influenced by my mother – I was still sceptical) and after extracting myself from my family, I dived back into atheism. And there I stayed. But then I discovered naturalistic/scientific pantheism and finally felt properly at home for the first time! It combines everything that I truly gel with (scientific principles, respect for all beings, respect for the environment – and all in the here and now because pantheists believe that there is no afterlife) without the negativity that is sometimes evident in atheism, defined as it is through non-belief. I know it’s really just a question of terminology but I feel much happier about saying “I see the entire universe as ‘god’” rather than saying “I don’t believe in God”!
Would be interesting to know whether you’ve noticed any trends in personality types when it comes to a) spiritualism/New Age and b) pantheism. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say SFPs are mostly likely to lean towards the former and maybe NPs towards the latter?
Thanks Danny for sharing. It’s something that both of us have had to deal with and I’m happy it resonated with you.