Response to Cooper and Browning's Commentary

Each of the four responses to the articles that began this special issue have challenged and deepened many of the ideas we think are critical to the relationship between psychology and religion and I greatly appreciate these authors' contributions to the project. Indeed, I feel that this type of sympathetic and yet critically constructive examination of ideas lies at the heart of the kind of genuine and helpful dialog we would like to see take place between religion and psychology. My purpose here will be to carry this dialog along a little further by commenting on to some of the main points of Cooper and Browning's Response. A basic premise of the four articles that began this special issue is that for any genuine integration or dialog between religion and psychology to be possible or desirable the unequal footing of the disciplines will have to be addressed and rectified. In their supportive commentary, Cooper and Browning contend that one key hindrance to a fair and balanced dialog between the disciplines is foundational truth. They contend that foundationalist epistemologies in both religion and psychology "lead in the same direction--a monopoly on all conversation, a 'final word' about everything" and illustrate through several examples how foundational truth claims shut down dialog and devalue the other discipline. I especially appreciate Cooper and Browning's point that commitments to foundational truth can be found in psychology just as easily as they can be found in religion. This is wholly consistent with a major point of my article, which is that from the perspective of original secularism it would be inappropriate for secular psychologists to see dogmatic claims to authority in religion without also recognizing the tendencies toward dogma in their own discipline. Indeed, Slife and Whoolery have effectively shown in their article how psychology's commitment to naturalism often takes on a foundational and dogmatic air when it comes to matters of method that can result in the "naturalistic 'take over' of religion" that Cooper and Browning describe. Cooper and Browning's examination of the impact of foundational truth on the relationship between psychology and religion is right on track with the thrust of our four articles and the work of a number of other noted philosophers, psychologists, and theologians. Shults (2003), for example has noted that when truth is understood to be foundational in the way Cooper and Browning have described it, the relationship between religion and psychology is framed by what he terms a "traditionalist fiduciary structure", which is marked by an antagonistic relationship between disciplines that stems from each discipline's view of the relationship from one side only. From the traditionalist perspective, argues Shults, the disciplines exist in an ex parte relationship in which each side "tends to lean toward absolutism ... and continues to search for certain foundations for knowledge (typically rooted in one's own discipline)" (p. 50). Van Huyssteen (1998) has similarly argued that foundationalism leads both disciplines to "seek knowledge with a secure and incontrovertible foundation, and find this in either logic and sense data (science), or in an infallible scripture or self-authenticating revelation (theology); both claim that science and theology make rival claims about the same domain and one has to choose between them" (p. 240). Cooper and Browning's comments regarding foundational truth fall right in line with Shults (2003) and van Huysteen on this point. Speaking of ontological materialism in psychology and Biblical literalism in religion, Cooper and Browning contend that "both are forms of foundationalism, the attempt to find a completely certain, objective, and absolute starting point for human knowledge". In reading Cooper and Browning's discussion of foundational truth and the comments of Shults (2003) and van Huysteen (1998), I found myself wondering along with Cooper and Browning if in many cases religion was being "forced" to fit into psychology's "hyper-empirical, naturalistic paradigm". …