Psychology of religion: an ultimate reference source.

Goldsmith, W. Mack

Spilka, Bernard, Hood Jr., Ralph W., Hunsberger, Bruce, & Gorsuch, Richard (2003).

The psychology of religion: An empirical approach (3rd Ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press. Hardcover. xv+ 671 pp. $70.00. ISBN 1-57230-901-6.

Spilka is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Denver, Hood is Professor of Psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Hunsberger (deceased October, 2003) was Professor of Psychology at Canada's Wilfrid Laurier University and Gorsuch is Professor of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary. All have been major contributors to the psychology of religion literature for many years, and three have been recipients of the William James Award, the highest honor of APA Division 36 (Psychology of Religion).

If you're only going to read the first paragraph or so of this review, know this: Spilka et al. (3rd) is by far the biggest and broadest reference source extant in the empirical psychology of religion. There may never be another to equal it, since all of the authors are preeminent in the field, and all are getting long in the tooth; Hood, the youngest, is 62. The first edition, in 1985, was 387 pages. The third edition is 671 pages, over 20% bigger than the massive 2nd edition (545 pages). There are over 2400 references (94 pages). My sampling indicates that about 20% of these are more recent than 1996, the date of the 2nd edition, and the median citation date is about 1987. The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion is the most frequent among journal citations, but dozens of other journals and many books, papers, etc. are included in the vast range of sources.

Scholar Lee Kirkpatrick, in a back-cover blurb, put it well: "... the most comprehensive and authoritative text on the topic. This is the place I turn--and where I send students and colleagues--with virtually any question about theory or research in the field."

The seventeen chapters parallel, in many ways, the chapters of an introductory psychology text, beginning with the definition and foundations of the psychology of religion field, and proceeding through biological factors, childhood religion, adolescence, the forms and functions of adult religion (including religion and death attitudes), religious experience (including chapters on mysticism and conversion), the social organization and social psychology of religion (with chapters on morality, helping behavior, prejudice, coping and mental health). The writing style, also similar to an introductory psychology text, is a clear but rather flat, very compact committee prose. A major feature of this edition, as with the past ones, is boxes that summarize particular studies' rationales, methods and results. There are roughly six of these per chapter and their details help offset the dense, summary style of the main text. In addition to the sidebar boxes, there are frequent data tables. Indices to the boxes and tables would have been desirable, in my view. Mercifully, the authors abandoned the 2nd edition's awkward footnoting of citations at the ends of chapters for an all-inclusive APA standard reference list, plus author and subject indices, in the end pages.

A social-psychological perspective in both conceptual structure and methodology prevails, so it is no surprise that contributions by sociologists of religion are liberally mixed with psychological ones. Attribution theory, a favorite of Spilka, is liberally represented. Others of the authors' special foci, for example Hood's interest in snake-handling cults (including legal-ethical concerns), are also prominent. The book also features the emphasis developed for some years by Hood and his colleagues at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga of the concept of an "ideological surround" for religious effects. The idea, crudely, is that religious behavior must be understood in its cultural belief-context, and I feel it deserves more serious attention than the field as a whole has given it.

As with the first two editions, the development of adult religious life is organized around Adler's (1935) "three great problems of life" (relations with others, work and love) plus politics. Their treatment of political matters includes the American Christian right and radical fundamentalist movements; e.g., Islamic. Attachment theory is used to organize the developmental aspects of religion. There is brief coverage of the developmental theories of Allport, Piaget, Elkind, Kohlberg, Fowler and others, but non-empiricists, such as Freud and other psychodynamic developmental theorists receive scant mention.

In general, religious organization is hung on the familiar church vs. sect frame, plus sects vs. cults. As with the prior editions, the authors continue to refer to new religious movements as cults despite the fact (which they concede) that many scholars in religious studies consider the term "cult" to be pejorative. The thousands of studies cited (and their samples) are overwhelmingly of North American religion because North American scholars dominate this specialized field, as they do empirical psychology in general, but the authors include British, other English language and non-Western religious researchers where possible.

The chapters on mysticism (reflecting Hood's many studies in the area), conversion, coping and helping/prejudice behavior are strong, wide-ranging and balanced. The study of mysticism and conversion rest on a foundation of William James' (1902) pragmatic approach, and the study of prejudice or prosocial religious effects harkens to the classic work of Gordon Allport (1950, 1954, etc). In many respects, studies of mysticism, conversion and prejudice are the heartland of the empirical psychology of religion, and it is fitting that these topics receive major and excellent treatment here. At the conclusion of Chapter 15 on coping and adjustment, the authors state (p. 506): "A central theme of this chapter, if not the book, is that religion 'works' because it offers people meaning and control, and brings them together with like-thinking others who provide social support." I feel this statement summarizes the strongest parts of the book.

This edition has a new chapter on religion and biology. It may be, as the authors claim, that genetics and biological processes are the wave of the future in the empirical psychology of religion, but this is not a strong chapter. Oddly, the key biological topic of the religious effects of psychedelic drugs (called "entheogens" in this book), is in the chapter on religious experience rather than the chapter on biology. The split-brain hypothesis and Jaynes' (1976) bicameral brain theory are also relegated to the religious experience chapter rather than the biology chapter, and there is more biological material included in the mental health chapter.

Chapter 16 on "Religion and Mental Disorder" will probably be of prime interest to many of this Journal's readers. Unfortunately, it is not among the strongest chapters. This weakness is inherent, in part because most empirical researchers (including the text's authors) have focused on academic rather than clinical issues, so there are fewer quality studies. The weakness is also due in part because psychodynamic theories have dominated clinical approaches to religion and in part because value aspects of the field have been polarized ever since Freud's sweeping negative attributions about religion.

Despite studies, reviewed in this text, that consistently show a positive relationship between religiosity and mental health, many psychologists--both clinical and academic--continue to view religious beliefs and practices as irrelevant at best and psychopathological at worst. An example of the negative bias toward religious phenomena by clinicians, not shared by these authors, is the fact that glossolalia (speaking in tongues) receives its major treatment in this chapter on mental disorders because the bulk of researchers have approached the phenomenon as pathological. Similarly, the chapter contains a box on conversion to the "Moonies," and the effects of cultural isolation among the Amish and Hutterites (no mention of Hasidic Jews, though), and psychopathology among Catholic nuns. The obvious effects of some coercive groups, such as the Branch Davidians, are noted but the authors point out that research does not support the common assumption that fundamentalism fosters bad mental health. A valuable special section deals with the mental health of clergy, but the material on sexual abuse by clergy has been expanded and moved from the Mental Disorder chapter in the 2nd edition to the chapter on Morality in this one.

As noted, this book is a great reference source for scholars. It is not, however, a good potential text, in my view. With my junior-level psychology of religion course, I used the first edition, compared to which this one is an 800-pound gorilla, but even that edition was difficult for most. The present edition might serve well for a class of doctoral-level students in social psychology, interested in religion, who are well trained in multivariate statistics and research methodology. To my knowledge, there are no such classes extant. A reader of this text should know scale construction and measurement theory, correlation theory, factor analysis in some complexity, meta-analysis, content analysis, etc. Three pages of "statistical appendix" in Chapter 1 give capsule descriptions of correlation theory, simple factor analysis and reliability-validity theory, but I believe they would not be adequate help for readers untrained in advanced empirical methods. For good coverage of empirical measurement in the psychology of religion, one should see Peter Hill and Ralph Hood, Jr. (1999), Measures of Religiosity, published by the Religious Education Press.

Despite the book's vast scope, I was surprised at some missing materials. There is no mention of Rokeach's (1974) massive survey of religion and values. The coverage of personality factors in religion is cursory at best with nothing about current research into five-factor personality theory by Ralph Piedmont and others. Although the text covers religion as a source of social control in several places, there is no mention of B.F. Skinner's substantial interest in this question. Also missing are discussions of beliefs in demon possession, satanic ritual abuse and related topics. There is not even an index entry for "theology," despite the claim (p. 542) that researchers in this area need more sophisticated theological literacy.

There is only one paragraph (p. 523) on religion and psychotherapy; interested parties should see Ed Shrafranske's (1996) large edited work Religion and the Clinical Practice of Psychology published by the APA, or other recent APA books, one by William R. Miller and three by Scott Richards and Allen Bergin. For a more balanced general coverage of psychology of religion--not just empirical studies, more theory and a lot of non-Western materials--see David Wulff's (1997) outstanding work, Psychology of Religion: Classic and Contemporary, 2nd Ed., published by Wiley.

Finally, there is the question of "religion" and/or "spirituality" that, seemingly, is coming to represent a major conceptual muddle for the field perhaps even to rival the dominance of the "intrinsic/extrinsic religiosity" muddle. It used to be that "religion" was good and "spiritualism" was bad. Now we have a paradigm reversal, such that "religion" is often seen as institutional, irrelevant and stale while "spirituality" is personal, post-modern and alive. I am reminded of George Orwell's (1945) "Animal Farm" where, over-night, the pigs change the farm's revolutionary slogan, "Four legs good; two legs bad," to "Four legs good; two legs better." Spilka et al. address the religion/spirituality problem from the beginning of the text (pp. 8 ff) to the Epilogue (p. 536 ff). The authors' main discussion is in their opening chapter, which summarizes the problem and speculates lightly on how to search for solutions. See more current discussions of this puzzle in four American Psychologist (2003, 1) articles and comments in following 2003 and 2004 issues. But, as I see it, only the tip of the religion/spirituality iceberg is apparent at the moment, so hold your breath till the fourth edition of this book appears, if ever.

Reviewed by W. MACK GOLDSMITH, Ph.D.