Jacob A. Belzen

Methodological Issues in the Psychology of Religion: Toward Another Paradigm?

Recent evaluations have identified the psychology of religion as a field in crisis and have called for a new multilevel interdisciplinary paradigm. However, a critical meta-perspective on methods reveals a broad range of methodologies, each appropriate for particular levels of complexity in the psychology of religion. No single methodology is appropriate for every level, nor can higher levels of complexity be explained by data from lower levels. The authors identify the different types of research practiced in the psychology of religion and critically discuss philosophical presuppositions involved in two major methodological traditions, the empiricist-analytical and the hermeneutical, often identified as quantitative and qualitative traditions, respectively.

Psychology of religion: perspectives from cultural psychology

After a brief introduction, this paper tries to establish what type of psychology the psychology of religion is. Having introduced cultural psychology in general, some theories applicable in research on religion are presented, and some examples of cultural psychological research of religious phenomena are discussed.

Studying the specificity of spirituality: lessons from the psychology of religion

Psychological research on spirituality need not start from scratch: the psychology of religion provides substantial knowledge and experience that can be drawn on when psychologists want to do research on spirituality. Spirituality, while certainly not identical with religion or religiosity, is a human phenomenon to which many methodological insights from the study of religion may be applied, although it is also a domain where many mistakes from the history of the psychology of religion are likely to be repeated. After presenting some thoughts on the conceptualization of spirituality, and reflecting on the type of psychology required to do research on spirituality, the paper points out some hidden agendas in the psychologies of religion and spirituality. Focusing on and keeping in mind the specificity of spiritual conduct, the paper discusses a number of practical aspects of empirical research on spirituality.

Ideology, politics and personality: shaping forces in Dutch psychology of religion, 1907-1957

Although the academic establishment of the psychology of religion in the Netherlands has been stronger than in any other Western country, the start of these developments has been remarkably late (in 1957), especially when taking into account that Dutch academic life: (1) before World War II modeled itself after Germany (where psychology of religion flourished); and (2) was to a considerable extent included in the system of pillarization, which characterized Dutch society at large. The general factors that can be distinguished as having played an important role in the shaping of the situation for psychology of religion in the Netherlands had different impacts in the several universities under consideration.

Religion and Self: Notions from a Cultural Psychological Perspective

After a brief introduction of a cultural psychological perspective, this paper turns to the concept of self. The paper proposes to conceive of that reality to which the concepts of self refer as a narrative, employing especially autobiographies and other ego-documents in empirical exploration. After discussing some psychological theories about “self,” the paper points out that they may well be applied in research on personal religiosity.

To read and to be read–the problematic nature of communication: comment on comments

This paper primarily contains a reply to critical reflections on Towards cultural psychology of religion as provided in the preceding papers of this special issue.

Music and Religion: Psychological Perspectives and their Limits

Criticizing some psychological approaches that speak in too general terms about both music and religion, this article turns to a precise empirical observation and asks what psychology might possibly contribute to its understanding, after first necessarily questioning what terms such as ‘religion’, ‘religious music’, ‘religious experience’ encompass. Given the nature of the leading question, a cultural–psychological approach is chosen. After refuting a number of commonly heard assertions, and drawing on a number of psychological theories, the article then discusses several empirical observations and argues that contemporary psychology has indeed achieved some progress in dealing with classical questions.

Cultural Psychology of Religion

After having situated a cultural psychological approach to religion and religiosity in the larger hermeneutical camp within the social and human sciences, it should by now be appropriate to introduce cultural psychology in some more detail. As one can imagine, like psychology in general, cultural psychology is a rather broad, heterogeneous enterprise to which many well-known psychologists have made significant contributions. It is important to realize from the onset that cultural psychology is not a psychology entirely different from other kinds of psychology as developed during the discipline’s past; neither is it one of its separate subdisciplines or simply a field of application. Broadly stated, cultural psychology is an approach within psychology that attempts to describe, investigate and interpret the interrelatedness of culture and human psychic functioning. It is the branch of psychology that tries to take seriously the superficially trivial observation that these would not exist without each other, that culture is therefore a major factor in all meaningful human conduct, and that traces of human involvement can be detected in all expressions of culture. By “culture” this kind of psychology usually means a system of signs, rules, symbols and practices that on the one hand structure the human realm of action, structures that are on the other hand constantly being (re)constructed and transformed by human action and praxis. It may be instructive to divide cultural psychology into several variants, subsections which are obviously not entirely independent from one another and cannot all be justly dealt with in this chapter.

Religion and Religiosity as Cultural Phenomena: From Ontological Reductionism to Acknowledgment of Plurality

After reminding some of the historical relationships between psychology and religion, this chapter explains what is usually understood by psychology of religion in a proper sense, differentiating it from neighboring fields such as ‘psychology and religion’ and ‘pastoral psychology.’ The chapter continues to point out why it is more appropriate to speak of ‘psychologies of religions’ than of ‘psychology of religion,’ discussing in which sense one could speak about progress in psychological reasoning about religion. A typology for the diverse kinds of research in the psychology of religion is proposed, and cultural psychological approaches to the study of religion are shown to be indispensable for any comprehensive psychological analysis of religious phenomena and states of affairs.

Musik und christlicher Glaube

Wer aus der Psychologie heraus sich bemuht etwas uber das Verhaltnis zwischen Musik und Religion vorzutragen, sieht sich, wie durchweg wenn ein einigermasen interessantes Thema formuliert wird, vor ein mer a boire gestellt. Das Problem besteht nicht nur darin, dass es mehr Beziehungen zwischen Musik und Religion gibt als man sich vorstellt. Das grosere Problem ist vor allem, dass mit den Bezeichnungen “Musik”, “Religion” und “Psychologie” auserst heterogene Wirklichkeiten angesprochen werden, die jeweils den Bestrebungen zurKonzeptualisierung zu widerstreben scheinen.