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As is known, religion is one of the foremost elements that guide human life. The influences of the religion people believe in can be observed in their emotions, thoughts, preferences, and attitudes. In the primary social environment of the family, a child can adopt his/her parents' religious beliefs and practices over time by observing and imitating them. However, not all individuals remain faithful to the religious beliefs acquired from their families during childhood until the end of their lives, and some people may abandon their religious beliefs at some point in their lives and enter a phase of exploration. At the end of this period of exploration, it has been observed that some individuals abandon their former beliefs and convert to other religions and belief systems. In this context, some factors might influence an individual's relationship and communication with the God of the religion s/he believes in, and the concept of God may also have an impact on many issues, especially conversion. In this study, we have examined the influence of the concept of God on the conversion among 19 Christian participants aged 18 and over, who voluntarily participated in this study and chose to become Christian at some point in their lives despite being born into a Muslim family. In the literature, alongside studies on the concept of God and its relationship with different variables, there are also studies on religious conversion and the psychosocial factors influencing it. However, the fact that there is no study examining the influence of the concept of God on the conversion of religion from Islam to Christianity reveals the importance of this study with respect to contributing to the relevant literature. In this sense, the findings obtained from the study are not only important for the discipline of the psychology of religion also influential regarding guiding future studies in religious education. Designed with a qualitative research pattern and conducted with semi-structured interview technique and participant observation methods, the research directed a number of open-ended questions to the participants to identify their concepts of God in their former and current religions. After receiving expert opinions and ethical approval regarding the interview questions partially derived from the relevant literature, pastors from different cities in Turkey were contacted via the website "kutsalkitap.org", and individuals who converted from Islam to Christianity were invited to the research via e-mails. Following the positive response to the invitation email, meetings were scheduled with pastors who volunteered to participate in the research. Additionally, pastors were asked to inform other individuals who are members of their churches and have converted religions about the research, thus reaching individuals who have changed religions besides pastors. Interviews were conducted online between January-October 2022 due to both pandemic conditions and the participants residing in different cities. During this process, with the permission of church leaders, occasional attendance at Sunday services was also ensured to observe the emotions and thoughts of individuals during worship. With the participants' consent, recorded data was transcribed after the interviews were completed, subjected to content analysis, and common themes and codes were identified. As a result of the research, it was observed that a significant portion of the participants perceived God before changing religions as punishing, fearful, inaccessible, unloving but deserving of respect, causing shame, unforgiving, and even if forgiving, punishing with hell beforehand. In contrast, their perceptions of God after changing religions were joyful, enthusiastic, peaceful, happy, secure, and exciting; loving; instilling hope and confidence; allowing for a positive relationship and communication; transforming and forgiving, etc. These responses indicated that participants had a significantly "negative" perception of God before changing religions and a significantly "positive" perception after. Based on the findings obtained at the end of the research, some recommendations have been made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 19th century, the conversion that took place in the West under the influence of various movements caused experts interested in the psychology of religion to address the subject and conduct research about it. In Western literature, religious conversion refers to changes in the religious era and means that an individual accepts a religion or rejects a religious value or belief. Religious exchange is divided into two ways: intra-religious and inter-religious transitions. In Turkish literature, the concepts of "conversion" and "salvation" are used for the changes that a person undergoes in the religious field. When an individual who belongs to a religion but does not fulfill the requirements of the religion starts to fulfill his religious duties again, it is called guidance or return to religion. The concept of conversion or conversion, on the other hand, is the situation in which an individual abandons his religious values and beliefs and adopts another religious value and belief. Individuals who experience changes in the religious field are called converts. Studies on the phenomenon of conversion have been and continue to be among the topics of interest in many disciplines, especially the psychology of religion. Conversion is one of the main topics that the psychology of religion deals with, and independent studies are carried out that examine different aspects of religious change through a well-known figure. The psycho-social reasons for the religious conversion process are grouped under three topics. The first is conversion as a solution to stress, and the second is the view that considers a process that covers a long period, such as the education that the individual receives from the family. The third view is that the individual gains the ability to interpret events differently because of being influenced by other people. While examining the religious change processes of individuals, the motives that cause change; the motives that are effective in the conversion process are examined from different perspectives such as the direction and duration of the change, and the consequences of the change. The aim of this study is to examine the cause, process, and consequences of Michaela Mihriban Özelsel's religious conversion from Christianity to Islam. In this context, a short biography of German psychologist Michaella Mihriban Özelsel and her story of becoming a Muslim were given and Özelsel's religious change was examined. Based on two works of Özelsel translated into Turkish, the data obtained in the study carried out by the literature review method were analyzed by content analysis and descriptive analysis method. In this study, it was concluded that Özelsel’s searches and inquiries during adolescence and his social interaction during adolescence were the most important motives that led to his conversion. In terms of conversion motifs, it has been concluded that Özelsel's religious conversion fits the intellectual and mystical type of reserve model from the motifs proposed in the literature. In this study, the religious conversion of Özelsel was evaluated according to various models and it was concluded the model that recommended by Köse, and his religious conversion concluded slow religious conversion model. Özelsel’s changes after his religious conversion were examined in terms of their beliefs, worship, attitudes, changes in social life, changes in cultural values and points of change were pointed out. Suggestions were also given to experts who could benefit from the findings of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I was born into a church and a family governed by dichotomous frameworks of right/wrong, God/devil, truth/falsehood. Justifying the impulse to ask questions in such contexts was difficult, because Christian faith was perceived in an authoritarian manner as 'the truth'. But during my undergraduate study, studying attachment theory gave me an existential foothold. The existing literature on attachment theory, particularly the compassionate writings of John Bowlby, facilitated a complete reconstruction of my understanding of the needs and dynamics of human life, both generally and in relation to myself. These alterations then drew into question many of the theological beliefs shaping my religious outlook. Based on these experiences, I explore both the ways in which attachment theory has been brought into dialogue with religious studies and theology, and how it might enable us to develop an axiological and relational hermeneutic that directs attention to the ethical dimensions of theological belief and praxis, and even to a reconfiguration of absolutist approaches to the nature of truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses Jungian psychological type theory as developed by various type measures as a lens through which to explore those aspects of Celtic Christianity that attract individuals to this type of spirituality. Data were provided by 509 individuals who completed an on-line questionnaire that included Celtic Christianity items conceptually linked with the four psychological type functions, sensing, intuition, thinking and feeling. Analysis of the results led to the creation of Celtic Christianity Type Scales which identified those aspects of Celtic Christianity that might reflect the appeal of sensing, intuition, thinking and feeling to this form of spirituality. Each scale achieved an acceptable level of internal consistency reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anton Boisen was a seminal figure in the psychology of religion and pastoral psychology, but scholars have remained skeptical about his theoretical contributions and have perpetuated the stigma surrounding his psychiatric diagnosis and incarceration. I argue that Boisen was a prophet, ahead of his time, and that the academy has been slow to hear his salient critiques of the psychiatric system, and his contention that "psychosis" and "mystical experience" are overlapping phenomena. Most significantly, scholars have ignored the kernel of prophetic truth in Boisen's own visionary experience, which, remarkably, in 1920, predicted the ecological crisis of our current age. Reclaiming Boisen's unique voice might help us reclaim the uniqueness of the disciplines he helped birth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assertions outlined throughout this article are intrinsic to the "search for meaning" as centrality of human nature. The approach consists of a systematic study from the theoretical link Religion-Philosophy-Psychology underlying the spirituality and religiosity of the counselees in their way they manifest themselves in the sense of existing in relation with reality. It consists of a psycho-religious counseling, which can be useful to be applied to any religion, based on the phenomenological method and existential analysis, taking into account the ontological specificities of the counselees, so that they can actively reach a "meaning of being." A didactic example of case study is presented to illustrate its usefulness for the Christian religion context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current article presents the factor structure of the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES) in a Polish-Christian sample. The DSES is a scale that attempts to measure a person's perception of transcendent experiences in daily life. It covers the following constructs: awe, gratitude, mercy, a sense of connection with the transcendent, and compassionate love. Most validation studies on the DSES show the scale loadings on a single factor, although different populations can show different factor loadings. The study aims to verify the factor structure of the DSES results and to test the psychometric properties of its Polish version. The results of exploratory factor analysis conducted on a sample of 246 individuals and confirmatory factor analysis performed in a sample of 738 participants supported the single-factor model, which includes all 16 items of the DSES. Therefore, it was concluded that qualitatively different spiritual experiences have one common and integrated core with a homogeneous structure. Very high values of internal consistency measures indicate the excellent reliability of the Polish version of the DSES. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current article presents the factor structure of the Daily Spiritual Experience Scale (DSES) in a Polish-Christian sample. The DSES is a scale that attempts to measure a person’s perception of transcendent experiences in daily life. It covers the following constructs: awe, gratitude, mercy, a sense of connection with the transcendent, and compassionate love. Most validation studies on the DSES show the scale loadings on a single factor, although different populations can show different factor loadings. The study aims to verify the factor structure of the DSES results and to test the psychometric properties of its Polish version. The results of exploratory factor analysis conducted on a sample of 246 individuals and confirmatory factor analysis performed in a sample of 738 participants supported the single-factor model, which includes all 16 items of the DSES. Therefore, it was concluded that qualitatively different spiritual experiences have one common and integrated core with a homogeneous structure. Very high values of internal consistency measures indicate the excellent reliability of the Polish version of the DSES.

This article examines Donald Capps’s work on the psychology of major religious figures and the social forces that informed their psychic lives, spiritual worldviews, and teachings. Drawing on four texts that were published between 2000 and 2014, the essay explores Capps’s views on the importance of psychobiography to the study of religion and the specific contributions his thinking has made to a greater understanding of the historical Jesus. The article considers Capps’s analysis of Jesus’s illegitimacy and his role as healer within the society in which he lived and preached. Building on Capps’s work, the article also expands on feminist and postcolonial theories that offer insight into the psychosocial development of religious figures whose teachings and beliefs emerged out of their individual life circumstances and the larger socio-political culture in which they lived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity was designed in the mid-1970s to assess individual differences in attitude through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood from the age of 8 years upwards. This study examines the internal consistency reliability, factor structure, and construct validity of the instrument 40 years later among 1511 year 4 students (8–9 years), 1544 year 5 students (9–10 years), and 1526 year 6 students (10–11 years) in Wales attending Church in Wales voluntary aided and voluntary controlled primary schools. The data support the internal consistency reliability and construct validity of the instrument among the age range and commend the instrument for continued use in research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Operating from a perspective of an empirical psychologist of religion and spirituality, in this paper, I point to some areas of improvement in our field. Specifically, I (1) briefly target the lack of consensus in defining religion and spirituality; (2) point to the need for answering the crucial question: How unique is religion? (3) tackle the Western/Christian bias of the field; and (4) address three fundamental methodological issues (generalisability, self-report, and cross-sectional design) and their implications for research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study set out to explore the trajectory of personal, moral and spiritual values of students taking Religious Studies at A level in the UK. A sample of 150 students completed a battery of measures at the beginning of their period of A level study and again at the end. The data found no difference over this period of time in personal values (purpose in life, self-esteem, and empathy) in some moral values (concerning anti-social behaviour and concerning substance use) and in levels of religious exclusivism or frequency of private prayer. The areas in which significant differences were observed were concerned with attitude toward sex and relationships, religious pluralism, belief in life after death, and mystical orientation. Between the ages of 16 and 18 years, following two years’ engagement with Religious Studies at A level, the participants became more liberal in their approach toward sex and relationships, less convinced about the truth claims of religious pluralism, less likely to adhere to traditional Christian teaching on life after death, and less open to mystical experience. They are also less certain of ever having had a religious experience, and less frequent in their practice of religious attendance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employs psychological type theory and tests the hypothesis that some psychological types are more likely to experience and to report religious experience than others. A total of 4421 practising Anglican clergy and laity (2586 men and 1835 women) responded to the question, “Have you ever had something you would describe as a ‘religious experience’?” on a four-point scale, and completed the Francis Psychological Type Scales that distinguish between two orientations (introversion and extraversion), two perceiving functions (sensing and intuition), two judging functions (thinking and feeling), and two attitudes toward the outer world (judging and perceiving). The data confirmed that the perceiving process is fundamental to individual differences in openness to religious experiences. Among practising Anglican clergy and laity intuitive types were more likely than sensing types to report religious experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper explores the relationship between attachment to God (AG) and authenticity/inauthenticity among Christian youths in relation to a range of socio-demographic variables. Cross-sectional data were collected from 100 South African Christian youths using measures of AG and authenticity/inauthenticity. The correlation results reveal that feelings of insecurity in terms of having anxiety in a relationship with God is positively related to self-alienation (feeling out of touch with oneself) and accepting external influences (conforming to the standards and expectations of others), but negatively correlated to authentic living (being in tune with one’s self). Feelings of insecurity in terms of avoidant God-attachment was also related to self-alienation. In addition, demographic differences were observed for gender and church denomination. These results suggest that insecurity with God may either be linked to feelings of authenticity or self-estrangement among Christian youths and have broad implications, both for clinical usage and further cross-cultural research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on data from the 2011 Australian National Church Life Survey, this study was designed to assess the connection between religious affect (as a measure of Christian commitment) and global happiness (as a measure of personal well being) among a sample of 6,194 young churchgoers in Australia between the ages of 8 and 14 years, attending a range of denominations, including Catholic, Anglican, Uniting, Pentecostal, and other Protestant churches. Employing the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity and the Powell Index of Global Happiness, the data demonstrate a significant positive correlation between religious affect and global happiness, after controlling for individual differences in sex and age. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The coping method suffering for others as religious meaning-making (SORM) is analysed regarding its varieties, prerequisites, and functions in a group (n = 10) of practising Christians living with cancer. In-depth interviews are featured in this qualitative, longitudinal study of the interdependence of religiosity and coping. A common feature of the analysed narratives is the idea that the informant's suffering would have – or at least had the potential to have – a positive effect on other individuals. This idea is identified as the “coping tool” of the coping method. Three different variants of SORM are identified, with a variety of prerequisites. The function in all cases is to conserve the significant object sense of meaning and, in some cases: survival. A case study is presented that shows how the coping method can be maintained over time by changing the coping tools of the method when they lose their efficacy in the coping process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Church Growth Research Programme reported a significant link between the psychological type profile of the senior cleric and patterns of church growth and decline. The present article examines the implications of this finding from the perspectives of personality psychology, Christian theology and church practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increasing interest in studying the association between spirituality and addiction, and the effect of mindfulness on recovery. There have been some attempts at exploring the mediators of the association, but seldom in the context of Christian contemplation and rarely within a single theoretical framework of psychology. This article reports two case studies from an intervention study carried out in Nairobi, Kenya, that suggest that the Christian contemplative practice has the potential to reduce alcohol misuse while facilitating the emergence of a three-dimensional religious-spirituality model involving the character strengths of self-awareness, self-regulation, humility, and leading to forgiveness, social responsibility, and social intelligence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Italian translation of the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity was developed and tested among a sample of 575 young people between 16 and 17 years of age attending secular secondary schools in Rome, Italy. The data supported the unidimensionality, internal consistency reliability and construct validity of this instrument and commend it for further use in contributing to comparative empirical research within the psychology of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Theistic and spiritually based beliefs and behaviors have been demonstrated to consistently predict physical and mental health, although the psychological processes underlying these relationships are unclear. This study investigated associative relationships and pathways of mediation between religious functioning, locus of control (LOC) and health. The sample consisted of 122 Christians (79 women, 43 men) who were predominately Catholic, ranging in age from 18 to 80 ( M = 45.47, SD = 15.0). Participants were recruited from churches in the Western suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, and completed a questionnaire package measuring (1) psychological and physical health, (2) the religious variables of awareness of God, instability and impression management, and (3) God, internal and external LOC domains. Results indicated that awareness of God and internal LOC were associated with better health, whereas external LOC and instability were associated with poorer health. God LOC and impression management were not significantly associated with health. Sobel tests were used to analyse mediation hypotheses. Internal LOC was found to mediate the relationship between awareness of God and better psychological health, and external LOC was found to mediate the relationship between instability and poorer psychological health. These findings are of considerable clinical significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Items were generated to explore the factorial structure of a construct of fundamentalism worded appropriately for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Results suggested three underlying dimensions: (a) External versus Internal Authority, (b) Fixed versus Malleable Religion, and (c) Worldly Rejection versus Worldly Affirmation. The three dimensions indicate that religious fundamentalism is a personal orientation that asserts a supra-human locus of moral authority, context unbound truth, and the appreciation of the sacred over the worldly components of experience. The 15-item, 3-dimension solution was evaluated across Mexican (n = 455) and American (n = 449) samples. Fit indexes point out the viability of the new inventory across these two samples henceforward referred to as the Multi-Dimensional Fundamentalism Inventory (MDFI). Additional validity tests supported that the new inventory was negatively correlated with participants' integrative complexity in a religious domain-specific way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion that you don't have to go to church to be a good Christian is accepted as an indicator of the form of implicit religiosity espoused by those who (in Bailey's analysis) say that they "believe in Christianity. " The prevalence of this belief was examined in a sample of 1226 individuals attending harvest festival services in Anglican churches in rural Worcestershire. The data demonstrate that around two out of every three attenders (63%) endorsed this view of Christianity. The levels were highest among those who attended church less than six times a year (84%), and among those who never prayed (81%). Such high levels of endorsement among those who attend church for harvest festival services suggest that de-institutionalized implicit religion may be superseding commitment to conventional explicit religious attendance. This form of implicit religion could erode further the already weak connection between the rural church and rural society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Donald Capps stands among a number of pastoral theologians and psychologists of religion who in recent decades have examined the nature of Christian hope. His sustained research on this topic over the entire decade of the 1990s has made his a primary pastoral theological voice on the subject. This article examines how Capps, without declaring a formal method, uses an “artistic approach” to construct a Christian perspective of the hopeful self. Consideration is given to how this understanding of the hopeful self relates to African American young men who feel muted and invisible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one by Jorge Castro, Enrique Lafuente and Belén Jiménez on the impact Spanish national politics had on applied areas of psychology, one by Jacob A Belzen on Roman Catholicism in the Netherlands and another by Graham Richards on religion, psychotherapy and politics in Britain from 1945 to the 1960s.

Poor health often motivates people to engage in religious and spiritual approaches to healing. However, there is limited research on such experiences from a northern European perspective. This article investigates healing experiences related to Christian faith and practices in Norway by thematic analysis of 25 semi-structured interviews with individuals who have experienced healing of different ailments. In so doing, healing events across diverse contexts are characterised, and the results show that such experiences not only feature practices in which other people are present in prayer, preaching, and the laying on of hands, but also spontaneous extraordinary encounters with a divine being through visions and voices. The healing events are further described as experiences of transformational, powerful touch. In light of the lived body theory, these transformational experiences can be understood as re-inscriptions of health that are manifested in the intertwined bio–psycho–social–spiritual aspects of the body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]