Moralising supernatural punishment and cooperation in 'great' versus 'little' religious traditions: A historical sketch

Abstract

Doctrinal religions have frequently been argued to underpin large-scale cooperation. Throughout their history, they have been accompanied by so-called ‘little traditions’: unorthodox religious practices and beliefs at best ignored by orthodoxy, and at worst derided as backward ‘superstitions’. Doctrine frequently claims that in contrast to orthodox ‘great traditions’, such little traditions are amoral, concerned only with the self-interested pursuit of material aims such as curing disease. This paper draws on historical sources to argue the contrary. Not only do little traditions typically carry moral concerns; they engender forms of moralising supernatural punishment (MSP) distinct from those of great traditions. Great traditions tend to propagate MSP beliefs that encourage contributions toward the extended ingroup of coreligionists. Little traditions tend to propagate beliefs enabling cooperation at a smaller scale. Having surveyed the historical evidence, the paper concludes by sketching a theoretical model of how religious traditions might coevolve by virtue of their ability to support cooperation at complementary scales.