God as an attachment figure

Ainsworth (1985) summarized five defining characteristics that are

widely acknowledged to distinguish attachment relationships from other
types of close relationships: (1) the attached person seeks proximity to
the caregiver, particularly when frightened or alarmed; (2) the caregiver
provides care and protection (the haven of safety function) as well as (3)
a sense of security (the secure base function); (4) the threat of separation
causes anxiety in the attached person; and (5) loss of the attachment figure
would cause grief in the attached person. In the remainder of this
chapter I test the idea that God (or other religious figures) really does
function as an attachment figure to many worshipers.pp.56

May mga ginawang batayan si Ainsworth (1985) sa paglilinaw ng pagkakaiba ng attachment

relationships sa other types of close relationship.

(1) ang Attached person ay naghahanap ng proximity sa kaniyang care giver

Thus, the question remains as to why the Christian God (and gods
of many other religions) is often attributed with omnipresence. I suggest
that it makes it possible for all believers to feel that they are in close
proximity to God simultaneously. According to most Christian faiths,
God (or Jesus) is always by your side, holding your hand and watching
over you. Believers are reminded constantly in Scripture, sermons, and
religious literature that God is always nearby and available when needed.
It would be difficult for people to logically maintain that this is true for
all believers simultaneously were God not omnipresent. Note that an alternative
is for each person to have his or her own guardian angel or
similar kind of personal deity, dedicated full-time to one individual
without being distracted by other responsibilities.pp. 58

Yet the role of the church as a place one can go to be close to God should not be underestimated.
People often visit churches spontaneously at times other than
formal services, especially when troubled, to speak with and feel the presence
of the deity. Theoretically one could do this anywhere, so why else
is the church a preferred location for this purpose?

God as a haven of safety

Hood et al. (1996) conclude that people are most

likely to turn to their gods in times of trouble and crisis, and list three
general classes of potential triggers: illness, disability, and other negative
life events that cause both mental and physical distress; the anticipated
or actual death of friends and relatives; and dealing with an adverse life
situation (pp. 386387)

Argyle and BeitHallahmi (1975) emphasized that people specifically

turn to prayer, rather than the church, in stressful circumstances.
This is a crucial insight from an attachment perspective because it suggests
that it is the relationship with God per se, and not some other aspect
of religiousnesssuch as church membership, group processes, or
cognitive meaning structuresto which people are turning under these
circumstances. pp.62

Allport (1950) conducted interviews

with a large number of World War II combat veterans about the role of
their religious beliefs while on the battlefield, and came away with the
conclusion that the individual in distress craves affection and security.
Sometimes a human bond will suffice, more often it will not (p. 57).

The no-atheists-infoxholes
maxim was literally supported by Stouffer et al. (1949), who
showed that soldiers in battle do in fact pray frequently and feel that such
prayer is beneficial. In a study of religious attributions, Pargament and
Hahn (1986) concluded that subjects appeared to turn to God more as a
source of support during stress than as a moral guide or as an antidote to
an unjust world (p. 204).

According
to Bowlby (1973) and others, the availability of a secure base is the
antidote to fear and anxiety: When an individual is confident that an
attachment figure will be available to him whenever he desires it, that person will be much less prone to
either intense or chronic fear than will
an individual who for any reason has no such confidence (p. 202).

Christian
Scripture, particularly in the Psalms (Wenegrat, 1990). Perhaps best
known is the 23rd Psalm: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the
66 ATTACHMENT, EVOLUTION, AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION
shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy
staff, they comfort me. Countless other examples from the Psalms could be
cited, in which God is described or addressed as a shield for me (3:3), my
rock, and my fortress, (18:2), and the strength of my life (27:1).

Although I am focusing mainly on Christianity in the present chapter,

it is important to note that the idea of God or gods as providing a secure
base is by no means limited to this religious tradition. In his study of
the Nuer people of the southern Egyptian Sudan, Evans-Pritchard (1956)
offers the following:
The believer, who has communicated with his god, is not merely a man
who sees new truths of which the unbeliever is ignorant; he is a man who
God as an Attachment Figure 67
is stronger. He feels within him more force, either to endure the trials of
existence, or to conquer them. It is as though he were raised above the
miseries of the world, because he is raised above his condition as a mere
man; he believes that he is saved from evil, under whatever form he may
conceive this evil. (p. 61)
Specifically, respondents reporting an avoidant attachment
relationship with God (i.e., God is perceived as impersonal, distant,
and doesnt care about me) scored significantly lower on a variety
of measures of well-beingincluding loneliness, depression, psychosomatic
symptoms, and life satisfactionthan respondents reporting secure
(God is perceived as warm, responsive, caring) or anxious (God is perceived
as sometimes warm and responsive, sometimes not) attachments
to God. These results closely paralleled results for a similar variable
measuring individual differences in security of attachment in human love
relationships.

An attachment figure who is simultaneously

omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent would provide the
most secure of secure bases. As the theological Kaufman (1981) noted,
God is an absolutely adequate attachment-figure.

Ainsworth (1985) concern responses to separation

from, or loss of, the attachment figure per se: The threat of separation
causes anxiety in the attached person, and loss of the attachment
figure causes grief. If God functions psychologically as an attachment figure,
then separation from or loss of God should engender these same
kinds of responses.
Determining whether God meets these criteria is a difficult matter,
because one does not become separated from, or lose a relationship with,
God in the same ways that people typically lose human relationship partners.
God does not die, sail off to fight wars, move away, or file for divorce.
Indeed, this is a primary reason why God is an absolutely adequate
attachment-figure in the first place.

God images are perceived as more closely related to maternal

than paternal images (Godin & Hallez, 1965; Nelson, 1971;
Strunk, 1959)

Wenegrat (1990) has observed that the deities of the oldest known
religions were largely maternal figures and that modern Protestantism is
unusual in its lack of significant female deities. Freud himself puzzled
over this fact, confessing that I am at a loss to indicate the place of the
great maternal deities who perhaps everywhere preceded the paternal deities
(quoted in Argyle & Beit-Hallahmi, 1975, p. 187).

Childrens Beliefs about God

Heller (1986) observed a number of personality themes in childrens
images of God that seem to illustrate attachment phenomena (although
he did not interpret them in attachment terms). His God, the Therapist
image refers to an all-nurturant, loving figure which closely resembles asecure attachment figure. Two
alternative God images described by
Heller appear to parallel the two insecure patterns of attachment: The
Inconsistent God seems to correspond to anxious/ambivalent attachment,
and God, the Distant Thing in the Sky parallels avoidant attachment.
Heller also noted several themes that appeared to him to transcend common
familial and cultural influences, including intimacy (feelings of
closeness to God) and omnipresence (God is always there). While Heller
seemed to find some of these themes enigmatic, there is nothing
mysterious about them from an attachment perspective.

inferences
about other deities both within and outside of Christianity.
Wenegrat (1990) suggests that due to its lack of significant female deities,
modern Protestantism provides a particularly poor vehicle for attachment
concerns (p. 143). In contrast, he notes that Catholicism provides
division of psychological labor, in which a desexualizedVirgin Mary adopts
maternal characteristics (and attachment functions) while God assumes
other paternal functions. I thinkWenegrat may have been misled here by
the red herring of the paternalmaternal or masculinefeminine distinction,
and consequently overlooks the degree to which Jesus serves as an attachment
figure in Protestant beliefs. However, his point is well made that
a kind of division of psychological labor is common in polytheistic religions,
with some gods perceived as attachment figures and others in terms
of other psychological functions and dynamics.

in the marvelous possibility that God loves us the way a

mother loves her baby (Greeley, 1990, p. 252). Drawing

Dickie et al. (1997) found in a study of 4- to 11-year-old children that

individual differences in perceptions of parents were related to differences
in images of God. Different patterns were observed with respect to mothers
and fathers and to the dimensions of God images. For example, perceptions
of fathers as nurturant were related to the degree to which God was per-
104 ATTACHMENT, EVOLUTION, AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION
FIGURE 5.2. Continuity of attachment internal working models (IWMs) across time.
ceived as nurturing, whereas perceptions of mothers as powerful were related
to images of God as powerful.