Brad D. Strawn

Liturgical Animals: What Psychology and Neuroscience Tell Us about Formation and Worship

How does Christian liturgy form participants? Does liturgy fill the mind with thoughts and ideas that can trickle top-down to eventually influence the sorts of persons we are and the way we act? Or, does liturgy allow us to act individually and corporately in ways that reshape our minds and change our behavioral tendencies? If the former is true, then we must consider Christian liturgy in the light of the rightness of its abstract ideas. If the latter be true, then we need to consider liturgy as an embodied practice. And if embodied, then we also need to consider what the sciences of human nature tell us about the nature of liturgical animals.

The impact of lay pastoral telecare on the spiritual well-being of church attenders.

Examines the efficacy of Lay Pastoral Telecare (LPT) on the spiritual well-being and church satisfaction of churchgoers (N=207). Compares an experimental and a control group and concludes that the use of telephone by lay pastoral caregivers can be a means of promoting interpersonal support and enhancement of spiritual well-being within a church congregations.

Beyond the Isolated Self: Extended Mind and Spirituality

ABSTRACT Extended Cognition is a theory from philosophy of mind that has its roots in the more general notion of Embodied Cognition. Embodied cognition understands all human thought as involving the body (not just the brain), and as always situated in particular contexts. Cognitive extension goes further to suggest that intelligent mental processes often include things outside the brain and body, involving interactions with other persons or external artifacts that significantly enhance cognitive capacities. Thus, while intelligence was once thought to be an attribute of a single individual’s brain, it is now understood to extend into processes outside the person within immediate interactive space. For example, smart phones or problem-solving groups expand cognitive capacities beyond what is possible on one’s own. This article explores the possibility of supersizing-through-extension spirituality and Christian life within the interactive space of congregations and religious communities.

Learning Clinical Integration: A Case Study Approach

The present article identifies three waves in the integration of psychology and theology literature including apologetic, model building, and empirical validation, bringing the discussion to a fourth wave, clinical integration. Rather than a model or destination, clinical integration is an emergent phenomenon of the dynamic complexity of the particular therapeutic configuration and therefore is best learned through supervisory experience, which includes observing, hearing, and reading cases. Subsequently, the articles that make up this special volume are case studies. In addition, the article notes the lack of cultural and theological diversity in the integration literature so invited authors were selected not only for their scholarship, but also for being newer voices in the field and for their personal diversity. The rewards, challenges, and ethics of writing about clinical cases are also explored.