Customer Reviews

Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality

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The research in this book essential for understanding the complexity of religious beliefs and practices. For years, I have objected to the ways that many fine authors have portrayed religious activity in America; if writers like Dawkins, Harris, and others had accessed this book, they might find that not only are most religious practices benign, but they would also discover that America is far more secular than many people suspect. For example, in the child development chapters, I discovered that teens are far more skeptical of their parent's religion than I would have thought. I was also intrigued to discover that some young children, even when raised in anti-religious families, still maintained their belief in God. There are even some independent youngsters who will stand by their belief in the reality of the Easter Bunny, even when presented with evidence to the contrary!

The chapters on fundamentalism are particularly important because the researchers detail how authoritarian ideologies govern small communities of people. This raises the question: is religion the culprit when violence erupts, or authoritarianism (a socio-political ideology that lies at the root of genocidal acts of hatred)?

If you want to speak knowledgeably about the religious landscape of America, this is the book you must own. Don't trust public-opinion polls; they only show you 10% of the picture.

Paloutzian and Park have gathered an excellent group of scholars to make contributions to this book. The articles in the field review the research conducted in this field from before Starbuck (1899) and James (1902) to 2004. Each article not only reviews the literature but makes major contributions to the issue it discusses such as Paloutzian's article on conversion and Alemeyer and Hunsberger on fundamentalism and authoritarian.

Many of the articles have practical applications for both secular and religious counselors. Oman and Thoresen article on spiritual and health strongly suggests that these two issues are deeply related. I strongly recommend any one conduction research on the psychology needs to own this important work.

I had to purchase this book for one of my psychology and religion classes and I honestly have never read a book so terrible before. Honestly. I don't know why my professor had to assign us such a terrible, boring, and hard to read book. It's like reading one giant school paper with how many quotes there are. The credit that is given in the book is distracting and I can't even read a sentence. For example; "...animisism and anthropomorphism (Antran, 2002; Atran & Normenzayan, in pressl Guthrie, 1993)."

Seriously. The entire book is like that. I don't even understand half of what this book is telling me. It is a slow death. If you take a class where this book is assigned, drop the class. I am warning you. THIS BOOK IS SO BAD.