ABSTRACT
The scholarly literature offers thousands of case studies which demonstrate the connection between deprivation of all kinds and increasing religiosity and the appearance of new religious movements and the readiness to join such movements. Sociologists have proposed a distinction between sect and church, and between sect-religiosity and church-religiosity. Kaplan described sect-type religiosity among the lower class as "religious escapism". A similar survey using data from 114 countries showed that lower rates of employment in agriculture, together with growing income security and equality, led to a decline in religiosity. Self-transcendence (ST) is a measure of religiosity and support for occultism. Previc suggested that hyperreligiosity is a major feature of mania, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), schizophrenia, and temporal-lobe epilepsy (TLE), caused by highly activated dopaminergic systems. The results showed a higher level of religiosity compared to academics in the United States, but a degree of secularity significantly higher than that of the Indian general population.
