Belief in watchful gods and ritual belonging function as one integrated system

Evidence

I argue instead for a third way, which nevertheless retains key insights of these distinct views. Belief in certain kinds of supernatural watchers—Big Gods—is an essential ingredient that, along with rituals and other interlocking sets of social commitment devices, glued together total strangers into ever-larger moral communities as cultural evolution gained pace in the past twelve millennia. Thus, we do not have to choose between Hume and Durkheim. On the contrary, believing and belonging come together in religion as an integrated whole. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 49

Categorization

• XREF: Central to how the reader wants to frame Father Rodrigues’s situation: the watched-god belief and ritual belonging are presented as one mechanism, so a public apostasy ritual (fumi-e) strikes at both simultaneously.
• DEFINE: The Big Gods thesis defined precisely: supernatural watchers, commitment devices, and integration of cognition with social function.