Publisher's Synopsis
One of the greatest conflicts between science and religion has been over evolution. So all the spheres of human activity and experience which have been regarded as the special sphere of religion have also been studied by psychologists in a quite different, and scientific, way. Over the past decade, there has been arguably more literature devoted to conceptualizing religion and spirituality than to any other topic in the psychology of religion. It has become fashionable, both culturally and in the scientific literature, to differentiate between the spiritual and the religious. Psychologists have exerted as much effort as anyone debating the meaning of these terms. The psychology of religion re-emerged as a full-force, leading-edge research area that contributes new knowledge, data, and professional activity to the rest of psychology. The challenge for the next century of psychologists do what they began to do - come to an understanding of the psychological bases of religious belief, experience, and behavior, with the goal of applying this knowledge for human good. These include but are not limited to the establishment of scientific psychology after the model of physics, the separation of psychology departments from their former home in philosophy departments and the tendency by psychologists to stay away from "taboo" topics that might be considered too philosophical. Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality discusses progress in the psychology of religion by highlighting its rapid growth during the past decades. Recent conceptual and empirical developments are described, with an emphasis on the cognitive and affective basis of religious experience within personality and social psychology. Religion and spirituality as domains of study, as well as being common and important process variables that touch a large portion of human experience, are highlighted. Movement away from the previously dominant measurement paradigm is noted, and particularly promising directions suggestive of an emerging interdisciplinary paradigm are described.
