Why Christmas music in shops is bad for you

I’ve always dreaded the constant replay of Christmas music in shops. From Carols to popular music and the classic Christmas tunes that are trotted out every festive season. There are no doubt various reasons for feeling this way about them, and I know I’m not alone in it. Some people really don’t like carols, others aren’t fans of the classics and while some new ones become hits there are others that miss.

I think my dread of hearing songs in shops comes from the fact that I actually rather like carols, particularly the real old carols that are basically ancient folk music for Christmas. What the shops play are mainly Victorian Christmas hymns, which I and others like less.

You also tend to find that shops tend to play souped-up arrangements of carols. There may be something significant in what those arrangements do to the rhythm.

Read the full article on my website.

My New Book on Living ‘Deeply’

I have recently handed in ms. of my latest book to Lutterworth Press. It is called “Living Deeply”. It is linked to a set of film clips that will shortly be available on YouTube for free download. This book absorbs the text of the film clips, but expands it considerably. The book is about how to live, and draws on both psychology and spirituality in an integrated way.

We had lengthy discussions about the title for this material. A previous version was called the “beta course”, but that is fairly uninformative and has already been used by others. For a while we thought of calling it ‘metanoia’, but we decided that was too obscure. We then got as far as thinking we wanted a two word title with ‘living’ as one of the words but what should be other work be? Eventually we went for ‘deeply’.

Read the article in full on my blog.

Spirituality and Life Satisfaction

Daniel José Camacho wrote in the Guardian recently about research from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) on people who are ‘spiritual but not religious’.

PRRI and Florida State University jointly conducted a national survey in the US, measuring spirituality by self-reported experiences of being connected to something bigger than oneself, and religion by frequency of religious attendance and the personal importance of religion.

Read the article in full on my blog.

Living Deeply – the inner personal journey

For the last two months I have been very focused on completing my latest book, ‘Living Deeply’. It is always exciting, and a relief, to complete a book, and I will be celebrating.

Some years ago my colleagues in the University of Cambridge Psychology and Religion Research Group produced the ‘Beta Course’. It was a psychologically oriented introduction to Christianity, with a focus on ‘Being Christian, Becoming Whole and Building Community’. We tried to bring psychology and Christianity together to help people with personal growth and pastoral care.

Read the article in full on my website.

Social Media and Inhumanity

Fraser Watts talks about the psychological dangers in the over-use of social media.

I read with interest an article by Rhiannon Williams about the dangers inherent in over-use of social media such as Facebook, and the belated recognition of these dangers by former Facebook President Sean Parker.

Looking back on the creation of Facebook he now sees that “it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other … It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.”

Read the article in full on my website.

Fraser Watts on Spirituality in the Work Place

There is increasing interest in spirituality in many different settings, and now it is entering the work place, as Lynette Reed from business.com says here.

It is interesting to reflect on the assumptions behind this. It is partly a recognition of the full potential richness of human nature. Humans are Homo Spiritualis, the spiritual species. Spirituality is just part of human nature, and one that cannot be easily ignored. It seems that early spiritual practices like trance dancing played a really important role in human evolution and helped to make us such a successful species. Even secular humanism has had to adapt to recognize that humans are inherently spiritual.

Read teh full article on my website.

The Inner Journey: Psychology And/Or Spirituality

In talking about the inner journey it is helpful to draw on the perspectives of both psychology and spirituality. Keeping both perspectives in play gives us a kind of ‘binocular vision’ on the journey. Looked at in one way, it is a psychological journey of personal growth. Looked at in the other way it is a journey into greater spiritual depth. Because it is both of these things, we miss out if we adopt just one perspective and not the other.

In our present situation is doubly important to use both languages. Neither the language of psychology, nor the language of spirituality works for everyone. We live in a fragmented society in which different people look at things from different perspectives; we can no longer rely on a single way of understanding things and expect everyone to understand.

Read the article in full on my website.

The Christian significance of psychology

I am currently preparing to lead a workshop on ‘The Christian Significance of Psychology’ for the British Association of Christians in Psychology. As I explain in a blog on the BACIP website, the original interest was in what difference being a Christian makes in psychology. However, I thought I needed to come at that through the more basic question of the Christian significance of psychology itself.

https://www.bacip.org.uk/blog

My starting point is the belief that Christ made a significant difference to the direction of human evolution, especially to how human consciousness and experience have developed. In the first part of the morning I will try to set out that view, leaning heavily on Owen Barfield and others influenced by Rudolf Steiner (though Barfield is best known as close friend of C S Lewis). I propose that Christ changed the direction of human evolution. Had it not been for that, humanity would hardly have been in a position to develop psychology, or at least it would have looked very different.

In the second half of the morning I will turn to the significance of the development of something explicitly called ‘psychology’. Various strands contributed to that, including the implicit cognitivism of Enlightenment philosophy, the Protestant concern with self-examination, and the scientism of Auguste Comte and others. From a Christian point of view it is a somewhat mixed inheritance.

I will try to locate it within the Christocentric view of the evolution of consciousness that I will set out in the first session. I will take as a particular case study how the development of psychology affected our understanding of  emotion, following the work of Professor Thomas Dixon, my former PhD student, who directs the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary in the University of London.

http://www.history.qmul.ac.uk/staff/profile/4525-dr-thomas-dixon

After lunch I will explore whether, and in what sense, psychology is a quasi-religion, and the range of attitudes to psychology to be found among religious commentators. I will steer a path between those who are strongly pro and anti psychology, suggesting that psychology can go either way when interpreted from the perspective of the purposes of God.

However, on balance, I am more enthusiastic about the potential of psychology than I am anxious about it becoming misdirected. I hope that will yield a Christian evaluation of psychology, which will have pointers for how Christians would want to steer psychology. Roger Bretherton will lead a workshop in the final part of the day to explore that further.

This BACIP day will be held in Sutton Coldfield on Saturday 18th November. Everyone is welcome. For both information and to book see

https://www.bacip.org.uk/events

I look forward to seeing a number of old friend there and to meeting new ones.

What Christians can contribute to Mental Health

Mental Health has been much in the news recently, partly as a result of the initiative of the young Royals. This raises the question of what contribution Churches and other religious organisations can make to mental health.

Theos, the admirable think tank on Church and Society, recently published a report on Christianity and Mental Health, written by Ben Ryan.

I recently contributed a blog myself on the Theos site, on spiritual aspects of depression. While I would never wish depression on anyone, I suggest that a spiritual perspective is better able to see that, despite the misery, depression can have some value. It can give people more honesty, depth and resilience. This is what Christianity is typically about. It never welcomes adversity, but it is committed to bringing good out of it, and has resources to help to do that.

Read the full article on my website.

Fraser Watts on the big questions of life… ‘How do I want to be remembered?’

As winter draws in I’ve been thinking about Ebenezer Scrooge’s experience in the tale ‘A Christmas Carol’. Do you remember it?  

The Ghost of Christmas Future gave Ebenezer a glimpse of his destiny – and he saw how people remembered him and talked about him. He had an insight so that he could see how his legacy was shaping up, and had the power to change it if he wanted to.

Have you thought about what your legacy would look like? How would people remember you and talk about you?

No matter your religion or faith there’s an important life lesson in the story of Ebenezer.

Read the full article on my blog.

Coming to Terms with Loss

Loss runs through human life, and it is one of the hardest things to cope with. At the very beginning of life there are times when we feel cared for by one or both of our parents, but then they go away and leave us alone. At first we have no understanding of why that happens, and no ability to do anything about it. Bewilderment and helplessness are intertwined with our experience of loss from the outset.

We have to cope with so many losses through life, and they are very varied. People who were important to us move away or lose interest in us; or their circumstances change in some fundamental way, so that they don’t seem the same people who we once depended on. Marriage may give some stability for a time, but partners can change over time, just like anyone else, and eventually they die (unless we die first).

Read the full article on my website.

Fraser Watts discusses his new book – a 21st Century debate on Science and Religion.

The topic of science and/or religion is one that is debated the world over. From my point of view, and indeed that of my co-authors, this question is central to the search for truth, and the proper relationship between science and religion.

As Alfred Pritz puts in his opening foreword, the search for truth is interpersonal and personal, because we exchange our views and knowledge on what we call truth, but find that it lies in the personal, subjective world.

Read the full article on my blog.

Darkness and Light in the Story of Jesus

One of the biggest puzzles is how so many things in our lives are neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but some confusing mixture of the two. It is difficult to hold onto this complexity and there is a strong tendency to simplify things and to see only the good or only the bad. That is what some psychologists call ‘splitting’.

These issues arise in religion as well as in our personal lives, and I can illustrate this from the story of Jesus’ life, and how that is celebrated through the Christian year. When you look carefully, all the key stories are a complex mixture of light and darkness, though there is a tendency to simplify them and to see only one side of the picture.

Read the full article on my website.

Fraser Watts on the big questions of life… ‘Who am I?’

Have you ever asked yourself ‘Who am I?’

If you have, then you’re certainly not alone. But if you haven’t, you might well be pondering it now…

The question of identity is one that is asked often, and there is a belief that people who ask it are typically struggling with their identity. That these ‘souls’ are in fact a bit lost and seeking a definitiveanswer to – quite literally – help them to define themselves. But you don’t have to be struggling with your identity to ask it either.

Read the full article on my blog.

Fraser Watts: How behaviour and environment could affect your lifespan?

I was recently cited in an article on minnpost.com which discussed epigenetics and cited some of my comments from the Religion, Society, and the Science of Life Conference at Oxford University back in July.

In her recent article, Sharon Schmickle notes how a Minneapolis life insurance company GWG Life, is collecting and analysing saliva samples for epigenetic markers in order to identify how an individual might beat his or her chronological age and either live longer or indeed die younger than predicted.

Read the full article on my website.

Darkness and Light are Intertwined Deep Within Us

Many people have mixed feelings about themselves. Of course some people have a very dark view of themselves, especially when they are depressed. Other people think highly of themselves and can’t see anything wrong. But most of us see both good and bad in ourselves; sometimes it is hard to see the connection between the two, hard to understand how the same person could do both good and bad things.

Read the article in full on my blog.

Issues in Science and Theology: Do Emotions Shape the World?

This book examines emotions and emotional wellbeing from a rich variety of theological, philosophical and scientific and therapeutic perspectives.

To experience emotion is part of being human; but what are emotions? How can theology, philosophy and the natural sciences unpack the nature and content of emotions? This volume is based on contributions to the 15th European Conference on Science and Theology held in Assisi, Italy.

Read the full book review on my blog.

Psychology and Spirituality: A House Divided

The relationship between psychology and spirituality is divided within itself. On the one hand there is the psychology of religion, which has recently broadened to become ‘the psychology of religion and spirituality’. On the other hand there is ‘transpersonal psychology’, which largely eschews religion and often seeks to integrate psychology and spirituality.

On the face of things you would expect the psychology of religion and spirituality to be quite close to transpersonal psychology, but in fact there is little connection between them, even some mutual distrust. It is worth examining the reasons for this. There seem to be several factors that make any integration between them quite hard to achieve.

Read the full article on my website.

Laws of Nature, Laws of God

Up until the time of Newton, scientists regarded the understandings of the physical world, at which they were arriving, as glimpses of the working of the Creator’s mind. Thus, the generalisations being formulated about the behaviour of matter – the “Laws of Nature” – were seen as the Creator's injunctions, to created matter, as to how it was to act.

They were “laws” in the same sense as laws, Divine or human, about how people should behave: that is why the same word was used for both. And even now, scientific laws are occasionally spoken of as being “obeyed”.

Read the full article on my blog.

Handbook of Chaplaincy Studies: Understanding Spiritual Care in Public Places

This Handbook of Chaplaincy Studies explores fundamental issues and critical questions in chaplaincy, spanning key areas of health care, the prison service, education and military chaplaincy.

Leading authors and practitioners in the field present critical insight into the challenges and opportunities facing those providing professional spiritual care. From young men and women in the military and in custody, to the bedside of those experiencing life’s greatest traumas, this critical examination of the role played by the chaplain offers a fresh and informed understanding about faith and diversity in an increasingly secular society.

Read the article in full.

The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion

The relations between science and religion have been the subject of renewed attention, in recent years.

Developments in physics, biology and the neurosciences have reinvigorated discussions about the nature of life and ultimate reality. At the same time, the growth of anti-evolutionary and intelligent design movements has led many to the view that science and religion are necessarily in conflict.

Read the article in full on my blog.

The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology

The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology is the first collection to consider the full breadth of natural theology from both historical and contemporary perspectives and to bring together leading scholars to offer accessible high-level accounts of the major themes. The volume embodies and develops the recent revival of interest in natural theology as a topic of serious critical engagement. Frequently misunderstood or polemicized, natural theology is an under-studied yet persistent and pervasive presence throughout the history of thought about ultimate reality – from the classical Greek theology of the philosophers to twenty-first century debates in science and religion.

Read the full article on my blog.

What Jesus Accomplished

In my last blog I took a modest line about claims for the divinity of Jesus. In this blog I turn to what Jesus accomplished, and here I take a stronger line. In both cases I believe I am following the New Testament, which is much stronger about the ‘work’ of Christ than about the ‘person’ of Christ.

Strong claims are made for the resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament, but it is interesting that the claim is generally that ‘God raised him up’, rather than that Jesus rose of his own accord, because he was God. That way of phrasing it (‘God raise him up’) seems to indicate that it is not being claimed that Jesus is God.

Read the full article on my website.

The Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality

The Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality is an interdisciplinary reference for a rapidly emerging approach to contemporary science. It reflects the recent broadening of the field of psychology of religion to include the psychology of spirituality, and engages with some of the post-materialistic assumptions associated with contemporary spirituality. The Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality codifies the leading empirical evidence in this emerging field This overarching work provides both a foundation and a roadmap for what is truly a new ideological age.

Read about the book in full on my website.

Was Jesus God?

The claim made by Christians that Jesus was God has become problematic for many people, and deters many people who might otherwise think of themselves as Christians. I think Christians have become over-dogmatic about what Christians have to believe about Jesus, in a way that has become an obstacle to people following him.

Read 'Was Jesus God?' in full on my website.

Handbook of Emotion Regulation

In the Handbook of Emotion Regulation, contributor Fraser Watts, considers the role of religion in emotion regulation. The first section of the chapter considers changing concepts of religion and emotion. Subsequent sections deal with the contribution of different aspects of religion to emotion regulation, with a section on religious practice on the role of mediation in emotion regulation.

Read the full article on my blog.

Handbook of Memory Disorders

An international panel of renowned scientists and clinicians offers an accessible and practical review of the key research and latest clinical developments in the field.

This handbook describes theoretical concepts, assessment processes, clinical management and therapy, to produce results of considerable relevance to clinical practice and rehabilitation.

Read 'Handbook of Memory Disorders' in full on my website.

Why Religion is Good for your Health?

Religious people tend to be healthier than non-religious people, and live longer. The evidence for that is beyond dispute, though it is only a trend, and there can be exceptions. In this blog I want to explore why religious people are healthier.

Read the full article on my website.

Behavioural and Mental Health Research: A Handbook of Skills and Methods

Behavioural and Mental Health Research, 2nd Edition is a thoroughly revised, updated, and expanded version of the invaluable guide to research skills for psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, and graduates training in those disciplines.

It provides a series of practical guidelines for conducting any research project: from selecting the most appropriate approach, using computers, and analysing data to applying for funding, writing reports, and even how to enjoy your research.

Read more about my book I co-authored.

New Developments in Clinical Psychology (Volume 1)

This book contains 17 chapters each providing a concise summary of an advance in clinical psychology. The chapters cover work with a wide variety of patients and a range of clinical methods and approaches. Problems of handicap, adjustment and health, are all represented; as are methods of assessment, individual therapy and social intervention.

Read more about this book on my blog.

Churches and Mental Health

I think that churches and other religious communities could do more to help people with minor mental health problems. Churches can probably make even more difference with mental though with physical health. The ‘walking worried’ (as one Psychiatrist I used to work with called them), are more numerous now than the walking wounded. And there is such a close intersection between mental and spiritual aspects of health that I think churches could really make a difference in this area.

Read the full article on my website.

Creation: Law and Probability

Ten illustrious contributors explore an important but neglected topic on the interface of science and theology, i.e, the relationship between law and probability within creation.

Read about a book in which I edited that discusses this relationship in more detail on my website.

Social Division

Divisions in society are sharper now than for some years, between young and old, left and right, poor and wealthy, immigrants and the indigenous population, leavers and remainers, nationalists and unionists etc. The task of building social consensus seems enormously difficult. There are so many different opinions about everything, and it seems that everyone wants their point of view to be the one that prevails. People seem very willing to pick an argument about anything and everything.

Read about my view on the current social division in the world on my website.

Christians and Bioethics

An examination of issues in bioethics from the perspective of Christianity. The contemporary world is facing some very difficult ethical issues in regulating the possibilities resulting from bioethical research – cloning, genetic engineering of food, organ transplantation, reproductive medicine and euthanasia.

Read about a book in which edited that covers the relationship between Christianity and the work in bioethics.

Anger at the Grenfell Towers fire

There has been a huge and understandable outpouring of anger over the Grenfell Towers fire. Society endlessly struggles with anger, swinging between fear of the harm that anger can do, and fear of the harm that it does to suppress it. The twentieth century became increasingly tolerant of anger, compared to the Victorian period, and I am broadly sympathetic to that. I think the earlier fears of anger were often exaggerated.

In my latest blog, I discuss the anger that has been generated from the horrible incident at Grenfell Towers.

Hope, Politics and Religion

As I have said before, hope is not the same as optimism. Optimism is a matter of simply expecting things to go well, whereas hope can survive in adverse circumstances. Hope is primarily as much a matter of determination to make things better, leading to a belief in that being possible.

Recently, many successful elections are often those that inspire hope. In my latest article i discuss these campaigns and the impact they have had on those targeted - especially the youth.

The Psychology of Religious Knowing

In my latest article I take a look at my book 'The Psychology of Religious Knowing', which was co-authored with Mark Williams.

This work describes the psychological processes involved in arriving at religious knowledge. It is argued that the ways in which people come to know other things, particularly how people arrive at personal insights, is close at many points to how they arrive at religious insights. The psychological processes involved in religious knowing are described in the terminology of contemporary cognitive psychology.

Read more about 'The Psychology of Religious Knowing' on my blog.

A Psychologist’s Approach to God as Trinity

Next Sunday is ‘Trinity Sunday’. I want to continue my recent blogs that have taken a psychologist’s approach to occasions in the Christian year, and take a psychologist’s look at the Trinity. At first glance the Trinity may seem unpromising ground for a psychologist, but there are two aspects to the idea of God as Trinity.

One concerns the essence of God, and the relationality that is at the heart of God. Theologians have recently written a lot about that. The other aspect concerns how humans come to know God, and is nicely summed up in the title of a book by my former teacher, Professor Nicholas Lash, Believing Three Ways in One God.

Read A Psychologist’s Approach to God as Trinity in full on my website.

Cognitive Psychology and Emotional Disorders: 2nd Edition

This book responds to the explosion of interest in using the methods of experimental cognitive psychology to help understand emotional disorders, especially common anxiety and depressive disorders. It reviews recent research, focusing on how emotion affects: conscious and non–conscious processing, memory bias and memory deficits, attentional bias, schematic processing, judgements, thoughts and images. It also explores how irregularities in these processes can contribute to emotional disorders.

Read about the book 'Cognitive Psychology and Emotional Disorders: Second Edition' in which I helped co-author.

Pentecost: A Human Sciences Perspective

Next Sunday is Pentecost (Whitsun), the annual commemoration of how Jesus’ disciples experienced the Holy Spirit in a new and powerful way. In this blog I want to suggest how the significance of that event can be understood from the perspective of the human sciences.

In doing this, I find the mature reflections about the coming of the Spirit in the ‘farewell discourses’ in John’s gospel more helpful than the narrative report by Luke in is Acts of the Apostles. For John, the key point is that the Spirit will dwell within the disciples in a new way, making his ‘home’ within them, guiding them into truth, comforting them, empowering them, helping them to find the right words etc.

Read Pentecost: A Human Sciences Perspective full article on my website.

Is the Ascension of Jesus Scientifically Credible?

One of the major festivals of the Christian year falls on Thursday this week, the Ascension of Jesus, 40 days after Easter. When I was a boy it was still a significant occasion, but it has lost ground badly in the last half century.

In my latest article, I look at the decreased interest in this event, in my latest article 'Is the Ascension of Jesus Scientifically Credible?'

Why We Should Stop Talking about ‘Religion’

Religion seems to have changed massively in the course of evolution. There is a widespread misconception, popularised by the so-called ‘cognitive science of religion’, that religion has always been primarily a matter of beliefs about gods.

I get increasingly impatient with the way people talk about ‘religion’, as though all religion was essentially the same. It is such a broad category, and different forms of religion are so different from one another, that it really makes no sense to talk about ‘religion’ at all.

Read my article 'Why We Should Stop Talking about ‘Religion’ to see why I think the way we discuss religion and faith should change.