Abstract
Cultural psychology as a field has emerged over the past 30 years, but little effort has been expended in extrapolating its findings to transformative religious experiences. This essay posits a model of cultural psychology of religion and then uses it to assess Rambo and Farhadian’s (2014) Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion. The collection of essays in this handbook provides extensive and diverse perspectives on significant life changes labeled as such by the individuals involved and/or their communities. Instances of alignment with and departure from a cultural psychology of religion perspective are discussed, with careful attention given to the implications of indigenous views of selfhood, community, and religion for the phenomenon of religious transformation. We present cultural psychology of religion as a mutually constellating network of cultural, psychological, and religious phenomena. Spiritual change, then, is a movement, be it subtle or extreme, from one cultural/psychological world to another. In expounding this view, we will refer for support to three exemplars of spiritual change (one each from the Muslim, Protestant, and Jewish traditions), the literature from the handbook, and other studies on the cultural psychology of religion.
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Notes
Hereafter this volume will be referred to as the OHRC.
As is apparent above and will be evident in subsequent analyses, we think both the etic and emic perspectives are valid and important. Each represents an epistemological community and each is relatively incommensurable in the rationalities and the problems they think are worth researching. Emic research begins with the culture and rationality of the individual, whereas the etic approach takes a transcendent, external perspective. The latter is not necessarily more objective. We use each, in a sense, to critique the other. And, beyond that, we acknowledge moral and theological biases that color our interpretation of the research on spiritual transformation. Our religious convictions regarding religious pluralism extend to an epistemological pluralism. The dialogue between etic and emic perspectives is shaped by a meta-perspective (Tekke et al. 2016) of what is peaceable, what contributes to greater social harmony (Dueck and Reimer 2009).
Throughout this essay we will refer to transformative experiences as religious/spiritual. We are aware of the distinction that has been made repeatedly in Western literature between religion and spirituality. Zinnbauer and his colleagues (Zinnbauer et al. 1997) have been most clear about the distinction. They conclude:
There is evidence to suggest that the terms religiousness and spirituality describe, in part, different concepts. In terms of the previously outlined hypotheses, religiousness and spirituality have some different correlates. As predicted, religiousness was found to be associated with higher levels of authoritarianism, religious orthodoxy, intrinsic religiousness, parental religious attendance, self-righteousness, and church attendance. In line with predictions, spirituality was associated with a different set of variables: mystical experiences, New Age beliefs and practices, higher income, and the experience of being hurt by clergy. (p. 561)
This conclusion comes as a result of research conducted in the United States and may not hold cross-culturally. The distinction will not play a significant role in our review as our focus is on both religiousness and spirituality as cultural manifestations, as will become apparent below.
Although we acknowledge the role of the neurological in human experience and religious transformation, we will not address that aspect, though the OHRC does have a chapter by Kelly Bulkeley (2014b) entitled “Religious Conversion and Cognitive Neuroscience” (Chapter 10).
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Dueck, A., Johnson, A. Cultural Psychology of Religion: Spiritual Transformation. Pastoral Psychol 65, 299–328 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-016-0690-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-016-0690-8