Theology and Psychology by Fraser N Watts

Author:Fraser N Watts [Watts, Fraser N]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138743113
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-01-16T00:00:00+00:00

Empirical Research

The debate that has been reviewed so far is largely a philosophical one, though it contains assumptions about psychological processes. Indeed, the social constructionist approach really arises from a basic assumption about how, as a matter of empirical fact, all experience arises, including religious experience. It is therefore relevant to bring psychology to bear on the debate more explicitly, as a way of examining the prevailing assumptions.

A convenient place to begin is with empirical research that bears fairly directly on the debate about religious experience, even though, as we will see, that research is somewhat inconclusive. It is hard to get any empirical purchase on the debate about religious experience, largely because what is at issue are interpretations, even ideologies, rather than the facts. However, it is instructive in exploring what the debate is really about to see how far empirical research might be relevant.

One interesting issue is the relationship between religious belief and religious experience. Are people with strong religious convictions more likely to have religious experiences, or are such experiences independent of personal belief? Of course, it depends on how religious experience is defined; the narrower the definition of religious experience (that is, the more strictly it is defined as an experience that is described in religious terms), the tighter the link between belief and experience is likely to be.

One of the now classic surveys is that of David Hay (1987) at the Religious Experience Research Unit at Oxford, which took a broad definition of religious experience. Participants were asked ‘Have you ever been aware of, or influenced by, a presence or power, whether you call it God or not, which is different from your everyday self?’ Such a question is deliberately framed in a way that even an atheist could answer ‘yes’ to. In fact, 24 per cent of ‘atheists and agnostics’ said they had had such an experience. That was less than in the population as a whole (36 per cent), but still a sizeable proportion. It is a debatable point whether all the experiences reported in answer to Hay’s question were ‘religious’. It depends what is meant by a religious experience.

Some might be impressed by the lower frequency of religious experiences in atheists and agnostics than the rest of the population; others might be impressed by the fact the proportion was still substantial. That so many atheists and agnostics have ‘religious’ experiences, albeit broadly defined, might be thought to challenge social constructionists’ assumptions. However, there is also the point that we live in a culture in which religious beliefs are prevalent, whatever the position of individual might be. On that argument, it might take a completely secular society before the frequency of religious experiences fell to zero.

Another line of research of potential relevance is that of Ralph Hood and his colleagues (see Hood et al, 1996, p. 256ff), who have examined the structure of responses to a questionnaire about mystical experience, the Mysticism Scale. The wording of the 32 items of the questionnaire was

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