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.