Conclusion: Implications for the Psychology of Religion

As we look back over the articles, comments, and replies of this special issue, we are struck by two themes that appear to garner the most agreement among the various authors and involve the most important implications for the psychology of religion. The first theme is the need to respect the unique worldviews of today's religions and treat them as equal partners in dialogue. Too often, we believe, the naturalism and scientism of psychology are viewed as neutral discourses and given a higher status. The second theme follows from the first-the need for a pluralism of methods to help level the research playing field and formalize the respect of religious worldviews. Some pluralism is already occurring with the advent of qualitative methods, but we envision an even broader pluralism that is open to theism. Space limitations allow only a brief description of each theme here. Respecting a Religious Worldview We should clarify at the outset that we believe that few, if any, researchers intend to disrespect a religious worldview. Although some border on this in our view, depicting religious worldviews as "folk beliefs" and "counterintuitive ideas" (Boyer, 2001; Churchland, 1995), we believe the most problematic issues are the more subtle, method-related issues. For many cultural and historical reasons, psychological practices have long been centered on methods (Nelson, this issue; Reber, this issue). Research questions are framed in ways that the method can handle; theoretical constructs are measured in ways that the method can use; and results are interpreted in ways that are "close" to the method-generated data. This method-centeredness would not be a problem if the methods were themselves devoid of values and assumptions. Without values, this centering would exert no particular bias and permit no taint of the ultimate outcome of empirical studies or research programs (Reber, this issue). However, this common understanding of psychological methods is a myth (Slife, this issue). The traditional methods of psychology do have assumptions and values that influence how research questions are posed, constructs are measured, and data are interpreted. More importantly for this special journal issue, these assumptions and values are not the assumptions and values of most world religions. The articles of this special issue make clear that the assumptions and values of psychological science include a slew of "isms"--materialism, reductionism, objectivism, scientism, positivism, and determinism. These assumptions are often wrapped together in the term "naturalism" (e.g., Griffin, 2000), but they point to radically different understandings of the world from most religions. Psychologists who study religious claims and experiences with naturalistic methods could overlook these differences or assume the superiority of a "scientific understanding" and impose a naturalistic rendering on both the research process and outcome. The authors of the first four articles focus primarily on theistic religions in this regard, such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. However, the assumptions and values of psychological science are problematic for a host of nontheistic religions. For instance, the reductive materialism implicit or explicit in much of psychology (Nelson, this issue; Slife, this issue) marginalizes or explains away the type of consciousness needed for many schools of Hinduism, such as Sankhya and Ayurveda, where the Brahma underlies the generation of matter. Consider also traditional Buddhist Abhidhamma philosophy where the importance of consciousness is emphasized over the obvious material world. In all these situations, philosophical positions are adopted in modern psychology that foreclose the possibility of real dialogue by denying assumptions that are fundamental to religious points of view. Perhaps the primary implication, in this sense, is that researchers should allow themselves to consider other research questions, construct measurements, and data interpretations than those associated with naturalism. …