Abstract
This essay is an extended reflection on Belzen’s (2010) groundbreaking book Towards Cultural Psychology of Religion: Principles, Approaches, Applications. We will critically examine the terms culture, psychology, and religion separately and in relation to each other. The question we address is whether unconsciously Western understandings underlie these concepts and then are exported into non-Western cultures. The concept of ‘culture’ may reflect a Western bias and may be injurious when exported if culture means de facto becoming self-consciously modern, remains an abstract idea, reinforces “othering,” and serves to colonize the other. It is proposed that we listen to voices of non-Western scholars as they reflect on what ‘culture’ means to them rather than assuming that the meaning of the word ‘culture’ is universally the same. Second, we examine briefly the ways in which our understanding of religion reflects our Western biases in terms of the presumption of secularization, the meaning of religiousness, the Christian influence on defining religion, the use of religion in Western colonization, and the degree to which religion is defined abstractly. Third, we are concerned that the psychology utilized in the emerging discipline of psychology of religion is Western in that it reflects a capitalist, industrialized, individualistic, and pluralistic culture that may be less present in other cultures and perhaps even eschewed. Further, we think that in various cultures of the world, psychological knowledge emerges less from scientific observation but from the local religious/cultural traditions themselves. Finally, we examine how cultural psychology intersects with religion. We propose a model in which the specific religious cultures nurture the attitudes, emotions, behaviors, and relationships that reflect their critical values.
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Notes
For the purpose of this paper the authors have utilized the term ‘Western’ to refer to European and other non-indigenous traditions. In doing so, the authors also acknowledge the tension of the potential for the rhetorical erasure of indigenous nations, peoples, and traditions existing in Western geographic contexts.
The British Indian Salman Rushdie’s (2011) novel Satanic Verses made controversial references to texts in the Koran that were attributed to the devil. The title and the content of the novel provoked protests from Muslims and death threats were made against him.
The fact that we are examining texts for an implicit psychology of a society is not to imply that only texts shape identity. A folk psychology is shaped by a myriad of factors: institutions, economies, communities, friends and family.
Although we are using Dalal and Misra (2010) to illustrate the close connection between a cultural psychology and religion, we acknowledge that their position on cultural psychology is at variance with ours. They argue that Indian psychology “is deemed to be a universal psychology. It cannot be subsumed under the labels of indigenous, folk or cultural psychology, if that purports to delimit the scope of psychological inquiry” (p. 137). And again: “Indian Psychology is more than such indigenous (or folk) psychologies for the reason that it offers psychological models and theories, derived from classical Indian thought, that hold promise of panhuman interest” (p. 145).
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Dueck, A., Ansloos, J., Johnson, A. et al. Western Cultural Psychology of Religion: Alternatives to Ideology. Pastoral Psychol 66, 397–425 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-016-0731-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-016-0731-3