What the Psychology of Religion Is and What it Is Not

Abstract

Often an unreflective perspective that governs the psychology of religion is vaguely philosophical, theological, or sociological. As empirical science, psychology starts by taking religion as a specific cultural fact. It does not have the competence to explain religion or to make truth judgments, nor is its task to supply sociology 'with accurate instruments of observation. It examines subjective factors: drives, desires, emotional reactions, and experiences that are involved in the ways individuals positively or negatively rated to given culturally contextualized religious tokens (language, symbols, behaviors). Many confused concepts must be broken down, including religious needs, experience, and maturity. Subjective religiousness and nonreligion should be studied as they actually present themselves, as dynamic processes of (re)solution of conflicting but interacting religious and psychological factors. When psychological and religious causes interact, research can focus on subjective religion as either a dependent or an independent variable. Only this perspective allows psychology to achieve proper psychological interpretations of particular subjects or populations and to set up lawful regularities.

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