The Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

In this article, we attend to issues central to the psychology of religion and spirituality, and promote intellectual perspectives that will enable this field to maximally contribute to psychology and allied fields. We address how to best conceptualize the field and conduct research in an increasingly international psychology of religion context. We advocate for clarity regarding the nature of questions answerable by psychological science, what a valid scientific explanation of religiousness is, and the intellectual and methodological boundaries of this science, which are matters rooted in the questions of what constitutes evidence and why knowledge is public with no private, unverifiable privileged positions. Religion, the original term used to designate this area of psychology, is a cultural concept and not a psychological term; thus, it does not connote mental or overt behavior or social relationships. The recognition that most of our scholarship does not focus on religion—rather it focuses on related psychological phenomena (i.e., religiousness)—will enable our field to mature with the rest of psychological science. Thus, we should strengthen our psychological identity and contribute our knowledge to interdisciplinary research via a multilevel meaning systems approach that is focused on the concepts at the roots of religiousness and spirituality. These steps will help integrate our knowledge across levels of analysis and situate our research within—and connect it to—the larger universe of knowledge.