The Neutralization of Religious Dissonance

This paper deals with the creation and resolution of dissonance within a religious community. The purpose is to explore dissonance reduction by means of the techniques of neutralization developed by Sykes and Matza in an attempt to explain Sunday shopping by people who accept such activity as violation of "divine law." Analysis suggests that two of the techniques are rather extensively utilized to justify Sunday shopping activity. They are the "denial of responsibility" and the "appeal to higher loyalties." In this study these techniques relate to an ancient Christian value which suggests that the law of the Sabbath is superseded under certain circumstances. This value allows committed church members, on the one hand, to accept unequivocally the admonitions of their leaders against Sunday shopping, and, on the other hand, to engage in the sanctioned activity. In his theory of Cognitive Dissonance, Leon Festinger (1957) suggested that people holding conflicting cognitions feel psychologically uncomfortable and are consequently motivated to attempt dissonance reduction. He emphasized the significance of this motivation in asserting that cognitive dissonance leads to activity much like that oriented toward hunger reduction. Gresham M. Sykes and David Matza (1957) developed an issue earlier proposed by Edward H. Sutherland (1955: 77-80) relative to dissonance resolution. Sutherland maintained that not only is criminal behavior learned in interaction with others participating in criminal activity, but rationalizations for that behavior are also learned in the interactive process. Sykes and Matza explained deviance in terms of such rationalizations. They suggested that juveniles often experience guilt and shame (dissonance) when they violate the legal normative order because they are socialized into the dominant social order to, some extent (Sykes