ABSTRACT
For the past decade, Whitehouse (e.g., 1995, 2000, 2004) has advanced a cognitive theory of religion, which he has termed modes of religiosity. The modes of religiosity theory is an account of ritual transmission. This account not only describes the existence of two distinct types of ritual traditions (as has been noted historically throughout literature in anthropology and religious studies), but also goes a step deeper by attempting to explain this dichotomy, and its related social morphologies, in terms of cognitive science. Whitehouse has argued that participation in ritual, and the resulting activation of specific cognitive processes, is instrumental in defining both individual religious experience as well as the distinct forms of religious communities that accompany different ritual traditions. Surrounding the advancement of this theory have been numerous conferences funded by the British Academy, edited volumes (Whitehouse and Laidlaw 2004; Whitehouse and Martin 2004; Whitehouse and McCauley 2005), and journal special issues (Martin and Whitehouse 2004; Martin and Whitehouse 2005; Whitehouse and McCauley 2004) evaluating the validity of the modes of religiosity theory from the perspectives of a variety of fields, including anthropology, history of religion, psychology, and cognitive science.
