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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Turn to Spirituality...

The most striking feature of the current religious scene is the turn away from organised religion and towards ‘spirituality’.

Many people seem to see religion and spirituality as alternatives, pitted against each other. Historically this is very strange, as almost all spirituality has roots in a religious tradition (especially if you include Buddhism). What is new, however, is the widespread interest in pursuing spirituality outside religion.

People have strong views about this. Many people in traditional religion deplore it and see it as a kind of degenerate form of religion. Some of those engaged in free-standing spirituality are equally hostile to organised religion.

Read the full article on my website - www.fraserwatts.co.uk