The Covid-19 pandemic has changed work routines the world over, and the way many people socialize. It has also changed religious practices. Many faithful have attended services remotely. Some leaders now conduct baptisms and funerals by Zoom: Ashes to ashes, cam to cam. But churches are familiar with change, the psychologist David DeSteno argues in “How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion.” They’ve honed their crafts through exploration and adaptation. “Over thousands of years,” he writes, “these experiments, carried out in the messy thick of life as opposed to sterile labs, have led to the design of what we might call spiritual technologies—tools and processes meant to soothe, move, convince, or otherwise tweak the mind.”
Mr. DeSteno’s book aims to uncover why religions have landed on their particular and sometimes peculiar solutions. He doesn’t delve into the genetic and cultural evolutionary forces behind religion, in the manner of books like “Religion Explained,” by the cognitive anthropologist Pascal Boyer, and “Big Gods,” by the psychologist Ara Norenzayan. Instead, the author’s emphasis is more contemporary and results-oriented: Why, for instance, might the Jewish practice of covering mirrors salve the sting of grief? (It reduces self-focus, and science says self-focus exacerbates emotions.)