Introduction to Psychology of religion

Goran Kardum

Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Course objectives

  • To introduce students to the specific areas of psychology of religion with an emphasis on critical thinking about the relation between psychology and religion (religiosity, spirituality)

  • Complex relations among different experiences, cognition, motivation, emotion and behavior within religion, spirituality

Learning outcomes

Upon completion of the course, students will be able to:

  1. Explain the complexity of relationships between psychology (schools of psychology, theories and practices) and religiosity/spirituality in the context of person, nurture, education, research and counselling

  2. Evaluation of research in the field of psychology of religion and spirituality

  3. Analysis of the relation between psychological dimensions (cognition, motivation, personality) and religion/spirituality

Learning outcomes

  1. Explain healthy and mature elements of religion and spirituality in the context of wellbeing, mental health and counseling

  2. Analysis and reflecting personal experiences of silence, contemplation and practical sessions (workshops) as important aspects of religiosity and spirituality for personal growth and mental health

Course content

  1. Religion in psychological perspective. Dimensions of religion/spirituality. Psychological correlates of beliefs. Praying (types, influences).

  2. Psychological theories on religion and spirituality. Religion orientation and motivation.

  3. Conceptualization and measurement of religion and spirituality.

  4. Religion in the person. Psychology of personality and religious behavior.

  5. Religion phenomenon and neuroscience.

Course content

  1. Developmental psychology in the context of religion.

  2. Religion and health, psychological well-being. Psychological coping with stressful events. The role of religion behaviour in the context of counselling.

  3. Mystical experiences.

Course content

  1. Psychological dimensions of sins and sacrifice. Psychological dimensions of repentance, forgiveness and confession.

  2. Healthy and unhealthy religiosity. Maturity and immaturity mechanisms.

  3. Religion, conversion and spirituality transformation.

P & R: Mapping the terrain

  • What is the relation of psychology to religion? (Jonte-Pace & Parsons, 2002)

  • Division 36 of the APA officially became the Association for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (2010)

  • Does psychology attack, critique, and challenge religion?

P & R: Mapping the terrain

  • Subject matter of religion (religiosity and spirituality) and psychology?

  • Psychological models or implicit visions of person, personality, and personhood that interfere with ability to study religion?

  • Psychology and religion, Psychology of religion, Religion and psychology?

  • “and,” “of,” “in dialogue with” (Wulff, 2000)

Empirical investigation of psychology

  • empirical study of religion emerged in the middle of the 20. century

  • Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion

  • Journal of Religion and Health

  • Review of Religious Research

  • Journal of Psychology and Theology

  • Journal of Psychology and Christianity

  • Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (APA)

A Brief History of Division 36 of the APA

  • APA began when the Catholic Psychological Association began meeting as an interest group at the 1946 annual meeting of the APA

  • Psychologists Interested in Religious Issues (PIRI), a title formally adopted in 1970 with the intent of obtaining divisional status in the APA

  • In 1992, the division’s name was changed to Psychology of Religion.

  • The most recent change occurred in 2010, when Division 36 officially became the Association for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

The aim, goal of psychology of religion

  • The Psychology of religion or Psychology of spirituality uses scientific methods to study how beliefs, practices, and experiences influence human thought and behavior.

  • Religion (religiosity, spirituality) is the object of the study!

  • A basic goal of the psychology of religion is to understand people within the context of their faith commitments (Hood et al., 2018)

Because of that complexity….

Five views (Johnson, 2009)

  • A Levels of Explanation View
  • An Integration View
  • A Christian Psychology View
  • A Transformational Psychology View
  • A Biblical Counseling View

Levels of explanation view

  • This perspective treats psychology and theology as distinct, non-overlapping disciplines
  • Different levels of insight into the same human experience
  • Both levels are valuable and can be held together without collapsing one into the other

Levels of explanation view

  • On this view, these are not competing explanations but complementary
  • Example on depression: at the same time use some knowledge from psychological research and on the othe side try to explain with confession, forgiveness, sin

An Integration View

  • All truth is God’s truth, whether discovered through psychology, scientific research or biblical revelation.
  • Psychology provides empirical insights into human behavior, emotions, and cognition.
  • Christian theology provides ultimate meaning, moral direction, and a deeper understanding of the human person.

A Christian Psychology View

  • Christianity should be the foundation for understanding human nature and behavior.
  • Modern psychology often reflects secular assumptions that may conflict with Christian beliefs.
  • Therefore, psychologists should develop a distinctly Christian psychology rooted in Scripture and Christian tradition.

A Transformation Psychology View

  • Knowledge about human beings is not only intellectual or scientific, but also spiritual and experiential.
  • People understand themselves more deeply when they experience inner transformation through faith.
  • Psychology can benefit from the wisdom that emerges from transformed Christian lives.

A Biblical Counseling View

  • Scripture provides the ultimate authority for understanding human behavior and suffering.
  • Psychological theories should not replace or contradict biblical teaching.
  • Counseling should focus on spiritual issues such as sin, repentance, faith, and obedience to God.

Substances, subject matter

  • Etymology (Latin etymologia, Ancient Greek ἐτυμολογία (etumología), from ἔτυμον (étumon, true sense), literal meaning of a word according to its origin. The study of the origin of words but it also study the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history.)

  • Psychology is concerned with the study of the mind, with the study of the soul, with the study of the human psyche. This broad definition, however, is far from unproblematic (Francis, 2009).

  • What is meant by the human mind, the human soul, the human psyche?

  • What tools are available to study such phenomena as religion (religiosity) and spirituality?

Psyche, logos, mentis?

  • Logos?
  • The word logos (λόγος) is widely considered one of the most complex terms in Western thought
  • Logos in Bible?
  • Differences between soul and spirit? Soul has some kind of the relationship with the body (during lifetime and after death)

Psyche, logos, mentis?

  • In modern contexts, the term has been repurposed to describe fundamental mental and social structures.
  • Mentis vs. mertis
  • Proto-Indo-European root men- (good spirit vs. evil spirit, death)

Academic psychology and psychology of religion

In academic psychology, scholars such as William James and G. Stanley Hall not only helped to found psychology, but manifested a great interest in the psychological study of religion (Hood et al., 2018)

  • Stanley Hall - contemporary scientific sources of evidence, evidence based thinking?
  • William James - contemporary scientific sources of evidence, evidence based thinking?

Stanley Hall (1846-1924)

  • Earned the first doctorate in psychology awarded in the United States of America at Harvard College

  • Hall was the first president of the American Psychological Association (1892)

  • Stanley Hall, founding president of Clark University (1889),

  • Inviting Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung to visit and deliver a lecture series at the Clark Conference (1909).

  • Established the Clark school of the psychology of religion

Stanley Hall (1846-1924)

  • In 1917, Hall published a book on religious psychology, Jesus the Christ in the Light of Psychology.

  • Reinterpreted traditional Christian doctrines into psychological, evolutionary and scientific concepts, emphasizing the experience of the individual over theological dogma. Jesus the Christ, despite approval from psychologists, was inadequate even to the liberal theologians (Vande Kemp, 1992a)

  • Humanistic point of view without transcedence (Jonte-Pace & Parsons, 2002) and point of view from evolutionary perpective

Stanley Hall (1846-1924)

  • Whereas Haeckel proposed that the embryonic development of each organism follows the evolutionary history of its species, Hall argued that the postnatal developmental path of the child’s mind and behaviour follows the evolutionary path of the human species as a whole. (Green, 2015)

  • Regarding Recapitulation theory and racial; have been criticized for providing a pseudo-scientific basis for racism and eugenicist thought.

  • Reasons are offered for Hall’s relatively swift obscurity as a religious psychologist (Vande Kemp, 1992b)

William James (1842–1910)

  • Published famous book: The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature
  • Pragmatism (practical impact on an individual’s behavior and well-being)
  • Pluralism (different temperaments require different types of religious satisfaction and that no single tradition has a monopoly on the divine).
  • Focused on the personal, pragmatic, emotional, and psychological effects of faith rather than doctrinal truth or connection to the divine

William James (1842–1910)

  • Working in the field of occultism and psychical phenomena as a founder of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) and launched a Census of Hallucinations to systematically study reports of telepathy and visions
  • He investigated mediums like Leonora Piper, suggesting some phenomena were real, though he remained skeptical of the “spirit hypothesis”

William James

  • Knapp, K. D. (2017). William James: Psychical Research and the Challenge of Modernity. Univ of North Carolina Press.
  • First deeply historical and acutely analytical account of James’s psychical research.
  • James’s interest in spiritualism (mediums) began early in his life

William James

  • Knapp (2017) argues that psychical research was not a mere hobby for James, but a foundational element that informed his views on psychology, “the will to believe,” and radical empiricism
  • The “Third Way” (Tertium Quid): James sought to bridge the gap between “natural” and “supernatural” or “normal” and “paranormal” through his studies of mediums and mystical experiences.

Definition of religion (Wulff, 1999)

  • ‘all definitions of religion are more or less arbitrary’ James Pratt

  • Thus, religion ‘as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences if individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever thty may consider the divine’ William James

  • Religion is a felt practical relationship with what is believed in as a superhuman being or beings (Robert Thoules)

Definition of religion (APA)

  • A system of spiritual beliefs, practices, or both, typically organized around the worship of an all-powerful deity (or deities) and involving behaviors such as prayer, meditation, and participation in collective rituals.

  • Other common features of organized religions are the belief that certain moral teachings have divine authority, and the recognition of certain people, places, texts, or objects as holy or sacred. (APA Dictionary of Psychology, n.d.)

Religion and spirituality

  • religion: both individual and an institutional construct

  • spirituality: increasingly used to refer to the personal, subjective side of religious experience

  • religious or religiousness: representing as institutional, formal, outward, doctrinal, authoritarian, inhibiting expression

  • spirituality: individual, subjective, emotional, inward, freeing expression

Dangers of bifurcation (Hill & Pargament, 2008)

  • polarization or religion and spirituality (institutional/individual domain) ignores the fact that all forms of spiritual expression unfold in a social context and that virtually all organized faith traditions are interested in the ordering of personal affairs

  • implicit in the evolving definitions is the sense that spirituality is good and religion is bad - very simplistic perspective

  • most people experience spirituality within an organized religious context

  • SBNR

The Meanings of Religion and Spirituality

  • Attribution in the psychology of religion and spirituality

  • Search for the meaning (Why now?, Why me?, Why here?)

  • Importance of meaning making in context

  • Core theme for the psychology of religion

Problem with reductionism

  • an attempt at explanation

  • various types of reductionism (methodological, theoretical, etymological, ontological)

  • Examples: Sigmund Freud and William James

  • Freud The Future of an Illusion

  • James: religious beliefs are reduced to their pragmatic functional value

References

APA Dictionary of Psychology. (n.d.). Retrieved March 16, 2023, from https://dictionary.apa.org/
Francis, L. J. (2009). The Psychology of Religion and Spirituality: Implications for Education and Wellbeing – An Introduction. In M. de Souza, L. J. Francis, J. O’Higgins-Norman, & D. G. Scott (Eds.), International Handbook of Education for Spirituality, Care and Wellbeing (1st ed.). Springer Netherlands.
Green, C. D. (2015). Hall’s developmental theory and Haeckel’s recapitulationism. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 12(6), 656–665. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405629.2015.1074069
Hill, P. C., & Pargament, K. I. (2008). Advances in the conceptualization and measurement of religion and spirituality: Implications for physical and mental health research. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, S(1), 3–17.
Hood, J. R. W., Hill, P. C., & Spilka, B. (2018). The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach. (Fifth). Guilford Publications.
Johnson, E. L. (Ed.). (2009). Psychology and Christianity: Five Views. IVP Academic.
Jonte-Pace, D., & Parsons, W. B. (Eds.). (2002). Religion and Psychology: Mapping the Terrain. Routledge.
Knapp, K. D. (2017). William James: Psychical Research and the Challenge of Modernity. Univ of North Carolina Press.
Vande Kemp, H. (1992b). G. Stanley Hall and the Clark School of Religious Psychology. American Psychologist, 47, 290–298. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.47.2.290
Vande Kemp, H. (1992a). G. Stanley Hall and the Clark School of Religious Psychology. American Psychologist, 47, 290–298. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.47.2.290
Wulff, D. M. (1999). Psychologists Define Religion: Patterns and Prospects of a Century-Long Quest. In P. Molendijk & A. Molendijk (Eds.), The Pragmatics of Defining Religion. Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004379091_015
Wulff, D. M. (2000). Psychology of religion: An overview. In D. Jonte-Pace & W. B. Parsons (Eds.), Religion and Psychology: Mapping the Terrain (1st ed.). Routledge.