s as a characteristic of people who are emotionally disturbed or maladjusted" (p. 15).
If such a bias is prevalent in the scientific community, it is sure to be even more pronounced in the lay community. Such prejudices are ill-founded, however. Richards (1994) found that religiously devout persons have no more of a tendency to be socially anxious or self-conscious about their public impressions, private thoughts, or moods (p. 20). In other words, their socio- and emotional health are not at risk because they are true believers.
As Taggart (1994) observes, "sometimes the impression of churches as instruments of oppression, rigidity, and guilt . . . results from a tendency [on the part of people] to project their own fears and angers onto power structures with which they are involved" (p. 123). Two father figures of psychology and psychiatry lend credence to the view that scientific bias has lead to prejudice against religious individuals. The Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls used to say, "All is projection," meaning that we interpret the external world on the basis of our own experience (cited in Taggart, 1994, p. 123). The fact that we project our worst fears and suspicions onto those who are devoutly religious should be a warning that prejudice is not far behind. Freud called religion a "universal obsessional neurosis" (cited in Lewis, 1994, p. 191).
Freud (1907) suggested parallels between obsessive actions and religious practices. He described how both neurotic and religious practices serve as defensive, self-protective measures involved in the repression of instinctual impulse. As Lewis (1994) point
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