Assessing Spirituality in a Diverse World

Abstract

Assessing Spirituality in a Diverse World, edited by Florida State psychologist Amy Ai and her colleagues, is a true “event” publication for the field of religious assessment. Directed at both researchers and practitioners, the editors and contributors are a who’s who of mostly (but not exclusively) psychologists of religion, including Crystal Park, Ken Pargament, Julie Exline, Doug Oman, Harold Koenig, the late Chris Peterson, and so many others. The authors offer a contemporary deep dig on psychometric development in the psychology of religion, with an associated focus on theory. Each chapter stands on its own and is detailed and insightful. The editors have crafted a book that is both encyclopedic and comprehensive. It contains nearly two dozen chapters in five sections: “The Past and the Trend Calling for New Dimensions,” “Advanced Topics Related to Spiritual Worldviews,” “Spiritual Emotions and Personal Experiences,” “Spiritual Diversity in Under-Investigated Cultures,” and “Spirituality-Based Specific Concepts.” Significantly, the book includes excellent narrative material providing a field-wide historical perspective on the measurement of dimensions of religious expression within academic psychology. For example, the chapter entitled, “Mainstreaming the Assessment of Diverse Religiousness and Spirituality in Psychology,” traces the historical development of religious assessment within psychology from Edwin Starbuck, in the nineteenth century, to the mid-century theoretical writing of Freud, Jung, and the behaviorists and Gestalt school, to Allport and Ross’s important empirical work, to the contemporary expansion of research on clinical outcomes. The latter has been especially relevant to the work of readers of this journal. In the concluding chapter, “Diverse Spirituality Revisited: Lessons Learned,” the authors summarize the book’s overarching mission as advancing the idea that “culturally specific measures enhance our ability to explain and understand the complexities of