The psychology of religion/spirituality and the study of religion

Bibliographic Data

ID16909307
AuthorsMichael Stausberg (0000-0002-2011-6997, University of Bergen, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume5
Issue2
Pages147-157
Publication date2015-04-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligion Brain & Behavior (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2153-5981 • E-ISSN: 2153-599X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/2153599x.2014.891251
OpenAlexW1976824854
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited14

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1. Contrary to psychology, which is known under this designation all over the world, this discipline is known under different names. In the Anglosphere, the main designations are Religious Studies, Comparative Religion, Study of Religion, and History of Religions. The use of the backslash is meant to acknowledge the diversity of names but more fundamentally to index a series of theoretical and meta-theoretical questions regarding the referents of "religion" and "religions" and their interrelations.2. All quotes without authors and date are to Paloutzian and Park (Citation2013).3. It may be worth pointing to the overwhelming US author base of the HPRS. Among its 69 contributors, 60 (87%) are from the USA. All the remaining authors are from Western Europe (one from Sweden, two from the Netherlands, three from Belgium, three from Germany). Five out of 33 chapters (15%) have at least one non-US co-author. Of interest, the only chapter written entirely by non-Americans (i.e., the chapter on "Psychodynamic Psychology of Religion" (pp. 94–117)) addresses differences between European and American research strategies, namely the reluctance of Europeans to commit to the "spiritual strategy," that is, the absorption of spirituality into therapy. The authors would denounce the strategy mentioned above with regard to mindfulness as "a naive functionalist 'use' of religion and spirituality as an 'insurance' for better mental health" (p. 108).4. In fact, another chapter acknowledges that "[r]eligious or spiritual experience cannot be divorced from institutional, collective, or cultural settings" (pp. 597–598); in other words, also spirituality is institutionally grounded.5. The chapter does not have much to say on religion, but mainly discusses psychological theories that are applicable to terrorism generally.6. See Jeserich (Citation2013, p. 21) for the paradoxical claims of universalism in Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR).7. Among more recent contributions, the widely reviewed work by Bellah (Citation2011) sometimes mentions the term meaning, which even occurs in the title of two chapters, but the notion is not unfolded theoretically. Meaning features prominently in the works by Flood (Citation2012) and Luhmann (2000/Citation2013); both theories have so far had a limited impact.8. Similarly, the study of religion\s has recently been increasingly concerned with "lived religion" (McGuire Citation2008) and "everyday religion" (Ammerman Citation2007)

Psychoanalysis · Psychodynamics · Psychology of religion · Social science · Sociology · Spirituality · Philosophy · Psychology · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Religious studies · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices · Social Psychology

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