Spirituality Questions for Ministry PDF

1 Spirituality Spirituality QUESTIONS FOR MINISTRY Do you have to be a ‘spiritual giant’ to have a spiritual experience? How common are spiritual or mystical experiences? What is their meaning in people’s...

1 Spirituality Spirituality QUESTIONS FOR MINISTRY Do you have to be a ‘spiritual giant’ to have a spiritual experience? How common are spiritual or mystical experiences? What is their meaning in people’s lives? Why don’t more people talk to the clergy about their religious experiences? What happens to me when I pray? Is it selfish to pray for myself? Is authentic spirituality necessarily emotional? What are the key elements of ‘spiritual direction’? ‘Spirituality’ is currently one of the most popular aspects of religion, and religious people often attach a great deal of importance to the inner, spiritual life. Furthermore, non-religious people are often sympathetic to broadly spiritual values and practices, even when they have little room for orthodox religious beliefs or the institutional church. In this chapter, we will approach the psychological aspects of spirituality from three perspectives, looking first at the concept of spiritual experience, then at the psy- chology of prayer, and lastly at psychological aspects of the spiritual path. Spiritual experience Though the concept of ‘spirituality’ is attractive to many people, it is also controver- sial. In its modern sense, it has developed only over the last two hundred years, and it reflects a growing divorce between the private and the public, and between the reli- gious and the secular. Spirituality is the non-secular, non-public aspect of religion. What some object to in the concept of spirituality is the way it focuses on the private aspects of religious life to the exclusion of other aspects of collective and cultural life. Though there is a long and varied history of writing on Christian spirituality (see Jones et al. 1986), some would argue that we tend to misread this historic tradition 4 Personality and religion from the vantage point of a more recent preoccupation with private religious experi- ence (e.g. Turner 1995). One of the most important influences on contemporary conceptions of spiritual- ity has been William James, whose Gifford lectures in 1901–2 on The Varieties of Religious Experience caught the mood of his time and have exerted a continuing influence. James’ position is seen clearly in his emphasis on ‘the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine’. This formulation reflects his emphasis on feelings and experience, with nothing about beliefs and knowledge. He also emphasises the individual person, and sees collective religious life as very secondary. Note also his attempt to avoid any explicit assumption about the existence of God by invoking the formula ‘whatever they may consider the divine’. It is an approach which implies a very broad concept of religious experience. However, James is cautious about following through the implications of his defini- tions and finds it ‘convenient’ to settle for what people conventionally mean by religion. Despite the influence that James has exerted, his views have been criticised from the outset, for example by von Hugel, for their neglect of the role of corporate Chris- tian life. Criticisms have continued to be advanced from both philosophical (Proudfoot 1985) and theological (Lash 1988) points of view. Proudfoot’s approach can be illustrated from his comments on the four hallmarks of mystical experience that James enumerates. James’ four hallmarks are that such an experience is: Ineffable (i.e. cannot adequately be described in words) Noetic (i.e. imparts knowledge) Transient (i.e. a brief, passing experience, not a continuous state) Passive (i.e. an overwhelming experience that happens to the subject) Proudfoot sees these so-called characteristics of mystical experience as ‘social con- structions’ rather than reliable reports of what the experience is actually like. For Proudfoot, the fact that people describe mystical experiences in these ways is largely due to their having been trained to do so while preparing themselves for mystical experience. Rather than taking their descriptions at face value, he asks why people invoke them. For example, he suggests that people call mystical experience ‘ineffa- ble’, not because they can’t describe it but because they think that one should not try to do so. This raises general issues about the nature of ‘social constructionism’. There is no doubt that terms like ‘ineffable’ and ‘noetic’, like all words, are in a sense products of our collective attempt to understand and talk about the world. However, it is a big step beyond that to suggest that they are mere social constructions and that they do not actually describe mystical experience. Lash has been particularly critical of the idea of ‘pure’ or ‘direct’ religious experi- ence. Many accounts of religious experience suggest, in some way or other, that those concerned are penetrating the veil that normally shields us from ultimate spir- itual realities, and seeing things as they really are. Lash wants to emphasise, in  Spirituality 5 contrast, that all experience is shaped by language and culture, and this must be true of mystical experience as well. The idea that such experience is ‘direct’ is thus exposed as an illusion. Another point of dispute concerns whether religious experience is essentially the same in different faith traditions, as James and other ‘perennialists’ would suggest, or whether it is significantly different from one faith tradition to another, reflecting the impact of different sets of beliefs on the nature of mystical experience. There has been a vigorous response to critics of the Jamesian view by Forman (1990). Forman wishes to take seriously the idea that in mystical experience there is a core of absolutely pure experience that is the common core of various mystical tradi- tions. However, it is perfectly compatible with this position to accept that, when describing such experience, people inevitably interpret it in ways that reflect their cultural background and faith tradition. As so often happens, debate here tends to become rather polarised, and it is worth stating an intermediate position that has some plausibility. Let us accept that all experience is to some extent shaped by its cultural context, and that it is impossible to escape that context absolutely. However, let us also accept that there is something unusual in mystical experience in that it goes further towards escaping cultural con- text than normal experience. It would be helpful for the debate to generalise less sweepingly about mystical experience. For example, there is probably an important difference between appar- ently spontaneous mystical experience, and experience arising from meditation or other practices. The social constructionist critique fits induced much better than spontaneous experience. 6 Personality and religion Though this is essentially a theoretical debate about psychological processes, it is also regrettable that it generally proceeds without any reference to empirical psy- chological research. However, there are a number of research findings which, if not decisive, are relevant to the debate. David Hay, in a survey conducted at the Reli- gious Experience Research Unit in Oxford, asked people: ‘Have you ever been aware of, or influenced by, a presence or power, whether you called it God or not, which is different from your everyday self?’ As with similar surveys in the USA, he found that about a third of the population reported such experiences (see Hay 1990). One of the most interesting aspects of the survey concerns how such experiences relate to religious orthodoxy. He found that 24 per cent of atheists/agnostics reported such an experience, a proportion slightly less than that found for the gen- eral population, but not massively so. More relevant than the orthodoxy of people’s religious beliefs, or whether or not they went to church, was how important they thought ‘the spiritual side of life’ was. Of those who regarded it as very important 74 per cent reported religious experiences, compared to only 11 per cent among those who thought the spiritual side of life was not important. Such findings are not easy to interpret. At first glance, the fact that a substantial proportion of atheists and agnostics have mystical experiences seems to suggest that enculturation is not particularly important. However, it might be argued that in our culture virtually everyone, even atheists and agnostics, have imbibed a certain amount of cultural predisposition to such experiences. Another interpretative prob- lem with such data is that it is hard to know what is cause and what effect. Religious belief might influence the likelihood of people having a religious experience. On the other hand, it is possible that religious experiences incline people towards religious belief. Without monitoring a substantial group of people both before and after such experiences, it is difficult to be quite sure in which direction the main causal influ- ence lies. Other relevant research is that of Ralph Hood (see Hood et al. 1996, Chapter 7), who examined mystical experiences using questionnaire methods. Particularly interesting in the present context is his finding that the terms people use to describe mystical experience tended to group into two main clusters. One seems to be con- cerned with basic aspects of the experience such as timelessness, spacelessness, unity, and ineffability. The other group is more obviously interpretative, describing their experiences as involving such things as a sense of holiness or the presence of God. This empirical demonstration that descriptions of mystical experience cluster into two groups is at least consistent with a two-component view of the experience, that is, the view that there is a relatively pure core of experience, but that this is sur- rounded by culturally mediated interpretations that vary from one faith tradition to another. Similar issues arise in connection with the role of the brain in religious experi- ence. Though research on this is at a fairly early stage of development, it promises to be an increasingly lively research area in the future. One of the best-known current theories about the role of the brain is that put forward by Michael Persinger (1987), to the effect that there is a similarity between religious experience and the experi- ences of people suffering from temporal-lobe epilepsy, and that the same part of the  Spirituality 7 brain is involved in both cases. However, the research support for this idea is not good. Though it has often been suggested that people with temporal-lobe epilepsy are particularly likely to be religious, careful research does not support that. Also, there are important dissimilarities. For example, epileptic experiences are generally unsettling, whereas religious experiences tend to occur at a time of distress and to induce a state of deep peace or happiness (as Hay among others has found). The claim of similarity between the two kinds of experiences seems to derive from poorly designed research (see Jeeves 1997). However, other more promising ideas about the relationship of the brain to reli- gious experience are developing, for example in the work of d’Aquili and Newberg (1998). One attractive feature of their approach is that they distinguish between dif- ferent facets of religious experience, and look for the different brain mechanisms that underpin them. Specifically, they have suggested that there is a ‘holistic opera- tor’ that underpins the sense of unity in religious experience, and a ‘causal operator’ that underpins the sense of divine action in the world. Though this is a speculative theory, it is a pointer towards the kind of neuro-psychological theory of mystical experience which is likely to be developed in the coming years. The main point at issue here concerns the implications of such research for the nature of spiritual experience. Persinger’s most recent research (e.g. Cook and Persinger 1997), involving the induction of a ‘sensed mystical presence’ by stimula- tion with magnetic fields, has led some to conclude that religious experiences can be explained away by such findings. The logic here does not follow – the perception of green light, say, can be induced in similar fashion, but this does not mean that green light is not real. Some might want to claim that spiritual experience was independent of the physical brain, and would see research on brain processes in religion as incom- patible with the value they placed on religious experience. Others, less sympathetic to religious experience, might argue that the involvement of the brain implies that spiri- tual experience is ‘nothing but’ a spin-off of brain activity. In fact, the involvement of the brain seems to be neutral as far as the nature and validity of religious experience is concerned. It would be equally consistent with such research for (a) the experience to arise wholly from the brain, or (b) for it to arise from communion with God but to be mediated through the physical brain. From a theological point of view, the brain is part of God’s creation, and there is no reason why it should be bypassed. There are thus many controversies and ambiguities surrounding mystical experi- ence, including terminological confusions about whether the same or different things should be meant by terms such as ‘mystical’, ‘religious’, ‘transcendent’, ‘spiritual’ experience, etc. It may help to set out a list of five issues about religious experience. 1 Phenomenology The first question is how far such experience has a distinct phenomenological quality. For example, sensations may have an unusual brightness and immedi- acy, and there may be an unusual sense of all things being united together, and a sense of unity between the perceiver and the perceived. Such special phenomenological qualities are probably an essential requirement of experi- ences properly termed ‘mystical’, but not necessarily of ‘religious’ experiences. 8 Personality and religion 2 The object of experience The next question is whether or not the experience is presumed to be of some special world or being, such as an experience of God or of the spiritual world. Certainly, this is sometimes assumed to be the case. However, it is also possible to regard religious experiences as a special way of seeing the ordinary world, rather than as an experience of a special world. There is a fundamental disagree- ment here between those who regard the presumption of a distinct spiritual world as essential to a proper understanding of mystical experience, and those who regard it as a confusion arising from a philosophically objectionable form of dualism. 3 Causation Various accounts can be offered of causal factors that contribute to mystical experiences, such as background cultural conditioning and context, the state of mind of the person at the time and what they are doing, their brain processes, etc. At the extremes, some would regard these as the whole causal story, others would regard them as causally irrelevant. An alternative position is that they are relevant causal factors, but do not exclude the possibility of the experience having a different kind of source in God or the spiritual world. However, where this is claimed, it is important to be clear that we are talking about different kinds of causes (natural and divine), not alternative causes of the same kind. 4 Directness For some people, the key hallmark of mystical experience is that it is direct or unmediated. This may mean that there is direct experience of the material world, bypassing the normal constructive processes of perception. Alterna- tively, it may mean that there is unmediated experience of God or the spiritual world. We have suggested above that religious experience cannot be completely direct or wholly unmediated. However, it remains a plausible position that is has a greater degree of directness than most other experience. 5 Interpretative framework For some, the most important characteristic of religious experience is that it is experience to which a religious interpretative framework is applied. Indeed, some people would regard this as the only distinctive characteristic of religious experi- ence. Certainly, it is a remarkable feature of many spiritual traditions that very ordinary activities can be interpreted in a religious way, and an example is in the prayers of the Celtic tradition about lighting fires, milking cows, and so on. Children are also often good at seeing spiritual or religious significance in the everyday world (see Chapter 5). My suggestion would be that the interpretative framework is an important, though not the sole, characteristic of religious experi- ence. There may have been an evolutionary change in the way such interpretative processes arise, from a primitive animistic experience in which a religious inter- pretative framework is applied in an automatic and involuntary way to the more recent state of affairs where it seems that a religious interpretative framework has to be voluntarily and deliberately adopted. Increasingly, it seems that a religious interpretative framework needs to be applied deliberately, or it doesn’t arise at all.  Spirituality 9 SUMMARY OF KEY THEMES William James’ view of mystical experiences: ineffable, noetic, transient, and passive. The social construction of spiritual experiences. The idea of ‘pure’ religious experiences. The frequency of mystical experiences among atheists and agnostics, and among those who value the ‘spiritual side of life’. The role of the brain. Five different perspectives: phenomenology, object of experience, causation, directness, interpretation. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER How many people in your congregation have (or have had) spiritual or mystical experiences? Have they talked to you about them? What causes such experiences? What value do they have? Do they contribute helpfully to religious development? Are they reliable sources of religious knowledge and understanding? Should you encourage the attainment of such experiences as part of a full reli- gious life? Prayer Next in this chapter we will consider the psychological processes that arise in prayer. This immediately raises issues about causation, such as those indicated above. The assumption is that prayer is in part a psychological activity, and that psychology can illuminate, from one point of view, what is going on in prayer. However, this does not imply that there is nothing more to prayer than psychology. To talk about the psychology of prayer is not to deny that prayer can be a communion with God, that it can have a special phenomenological quality, and so on. There can be a psychology of prayer without assuming that prayer is ‘nothing but’ psychology. Some aspects of prayer involve reflection on experience, especially confession and thanksgiving. Such experience is valuable psychologically, especially where there are stressful or unfamiliar experiences, and prayer provides one opportunity for the necessary ‘working through’. The part of prayer that is a reflection on experience can thus be seen essentially as an interpretative activity, learning to apply a religious interpretative framework to recent events. Thanksgiving and attributions Thanksgiving can be approached in terms of the psychological study of attributional processes. It seems to be natural for people to make ‘causal attributions’ of why 10 Personality and religion events in their lives have occurred. Moreover, there is abundant psychological evi- dence that the psychological impact of events is considerably affected by how things are attributed. One key distinction has been between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ attri- butions. Generally, if successes or failures are attributed internally, they have more emotional impact than if they are attributed externally. On the other hand, if too many things are attributed externally, that can induce an unpleasant feeling of helplessness. Thanksgiving involves bringing God into this framework of causal attributions for recent events. If people thank God for what has happened to them, that presup- poses that he is in some way responsible for it. However, from a theological point of view, it is important to be clear that God is not the same kind of cause of events as other natural causes. Furthermore, God is not an alternative to natural causes but a supplementary cause of a different kind. The nature of God’s presumed influence on events has not been adequately appreciated in some recent psychological work on causal attributions made to God (e.g. Hood et al. 1996). The next interesting issue that arises about attributions to God is whether they should be seen as internal or external attributions. Some people tend to attribute negative events internally, putting them down to their own failings, and to discount positive events as caused by external factors over which they have no control. Other, more self-confident, people tend to do the opposite, taking pride in their own suc- cesses, and discounting failures and losses as down to chance external factors. For Christians, however, there will be attributions to God, alongside normal internal and external attributions. The interesting thing here is that God is neither an inter- nal nor an external attribution in the normal sense. In one sense, as the transcendent source of all being, He is external; in another sense, as an indwelling presence, He is internal. In fact, it may be one of the interesting features of attributions to God that they are a hybrid between internal and external. Internal attributions, which put everything down to one’s own personal influence on events, can be egocentric, whereas external attributions, which put everything down to chance or the outside world, can be alienating; attributions to God may help avoid both these unattractive extremes (Watts and Williams 1988). Finally, there is the interesting issue of exactly which events Christians do, or should, attribute to God. In ordinary life, people say thank you for ‘good’ things. However, as D. Z. Phillips (1965) has pointed out, there is a kind of naturalistic fal- lacy involved in applying this to thanksgiving to God. He is properly thanked for everything, not just selectively for the nice things. Christians are pulled in compet- ing directions here. On the one hand, we feel that everything that happens is within the providence of God and could not happen without him. On the other hand, we feel that some things are particularly inspired by God and in accordance with his will; other things not. This can be handled, theologically, in terms of the distinction sometimes made between general and specific providence. There is a sense in which Christians see everything within the general providence of God, but some particular things can be seen as specific acts of his providence. There will be different qualities of thanksgiving in the two cases. So how do Christians identify the particular things that they wish to attribute to  Spirituality 11 God in a special way? This has not yet been investigated in a rigorous way, but it does lend itself to empirical research. The basic issue is whether we divide events into welcome and unwelcome ones, or into what St Ignatius called ‘consolation’ and ‘desolation’ (that is, experiences that draw the person closer to, or further away from God). It is perhaps an important part of the spiritual transformation from immature to mature thanksgiving that it should be offered particularly for consolations rather than just for agreeable events. Surveying experience for consolations brings into play a specifically religious interpretative framework, and it is perhaps part of the human value of thanksgiving that it trains people in doing that. Confession and guilt Confession also involves attributional reflections that are in some ways the mirror image of those involved in thanksgiving, though it is a matter of attributing blame to oneself rather than goodness to God. Fraser Watts and Mark Williams (1988) have argued for the importance of a distinction between causal and moral aspects of such attributions. It is one thing to try to discern more clearly what has gone wrong and the contribution one has made to it, it is quite another to blame oneself in a moralis- tic way. Christian language about sin sounds oppressive to many people. However, there is a distinction to be made between the general ‘original’ sinfulness of humanity, and the specific sins of particular individuals. This parallels, in many ways, the distinc- tion between general and specific providence that arises in relation to thanksgiving. The Christian assumption is that individual people are caught up in a web of sinful- ness that goes far beyond them and for which they are not personally to blame. With this in mind, it is possible to recognise where one’s actions have been affected by this sinfulness, without feeling unduly weighed down by it. The key requirement for Christians is that they should recognise sinfulness and try to resist it rather than that they should blame themselves excessively. This psychologically important distinc- tion is reflected in the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery (John 8). Jesus does not condemn the woman but simply tells her not to sin again. Confession raises issues about guilt, a subject that has often seemed to be the focus of dispute between psychologists and Christians. To handle this, a discrimi- nating approach to guilt is needed. The essential distinction is between realistic and neurotic guilt. There are undoubtedly circumstances, in which wrongdoing has actually occurred, where guilt is appropriate. This is particularly so where the wrongdoing is not trivial, but serious. Also, guilt is particularly appropriate where the wrongdoing was deliberate (not just inadvertent) and where circumstances made it perfectly possible to have acted otherwise. Neurotic guilt is a very different matter. Realistic guilt is selective in the sense that it only arises in appropriate cir- cumstances, whereas neurotic guilt is unselective in that it arises all the time, regard- less of whether it is appropriate or not. Whereas realistic guilt only occurs after serious wrongdoing, neurotic guilt is equally likely to arise after trivial wrongdoing. The psychological tradition is actually more mixed than might at first appear. Though therapists and counsellors have been much concerned with the ravages 12 Personality and religion flowing from excessive guilt, there has been a marked tendency in recent psycholog- ical theories of the emotions to emphasise their value. The assumption is that we would not have emotions at all if they did not serve an important function for us. Even negative emotions such as guilt can be ‘rational’ in the sense of conveying information about the real world and helping people to adapt to it appropriately. The function of guilt is then to facilitate a necessary and appropriate change of direction. Though guilt can serve this valuable function, the sad fact is that it does not always do so. It is all too easy to get stuck in repetitive guilt without making the reforms in our behaviour that should properly flow from it. Guilt can be ‘cheap’, and less costly than to change how one lives one’s life. It then becomes a chronic state that serves no useful purpose. There is a similar need for a discriminating approach to shame, an emotion that is rather similar to guilt but also subtly different from it. Guilt focuses itself on our behaviour and on specific actions we have carried out, shame on who and what we are. Another contrast is that guilt is a rather thought-laden emotion in the sense that it leads to much rumination and reflection. In contrast, shame is more immediate and physical. When people are ashamed, they want to shrink back and be swallowed up; they blush with embarrassment and can’t bear to be looked at. There is no doubt that excessive shame is a very destructive emotion, and can lead to various forms of self-abuse. It can also isolate people from others because, for the person prone to shame, every close relationship is a potentially shaming one. However, some shame is appropriate. It is perhaps before God that it is particu- larly appropriate for people to feel shame. In comparison with Him, we can only be deeply aware of our limited, fallible and perverse nature. It is more doubtful whether shame is appropriate before another human being. It is also worth noting that the most intense feelings of shame arise when other people deliberately embarrass and humiliate us. God does not do that; we may feel ashamed in comparison with Him, but we are not shamed by Him. When we feel ashamed in front of other people, it is often because we sense that they can see through us and there are no defences left against their critical gaze. Though God can see through us, and there are no more places to hide from Him, His gaze is a benevolent one. The critical gaze of God thus has a different effect. Petition Petitionary prayer also raises very interesting psychological issues, and one fruitful approach to take initially is the developmental one. We know something about fac- tors that influence whether or not children pray, such as their church attendance, their parents’ church attendance, and their denominational identity (Francis and Brown 1991). However, the most fruitful issues arise in connection with how children pray. An early classic study that examined prayer, among many other aspects of the development of children’s intellectual understanding of religion, was that of Goldman (1965). He describes a developmental sequence from seeing prayer as a magical way of achieving material results (ages 7–9); seeing prayer more in terms of inner experience, though expecting things to happen as a result of  Spirituality 13 prayer (ages 9–12); to a stronger emphasis on altruistic and compassionate prayers, and an emphasis on the benefits of prayers to the person who prays (ages 13+). (Fur- ther issues in religious development will be addressed in Chapters 5 and 6.) There are also changes in how children make sense of prayer not working, from their having been naughty, to their asking for the wrong things, and finally to their not having enough faith. Subsequent research has come to somewhat similar conclu- sions (Brown 1994, Chapter 11). One of the things that emerges from such research is the changing nature of what children pray for. For adults too, there is something of a dilemma about the maturity of the wishes and desires that are framed in prayer. The most ‘immature’ extreme is to simply pray for whatever one most wants. Child- ren may begin by praying in that way but, for the most part, move beyond it. This presumably results from a growing sense that what one prays for is constrained by the purposes of God, not just one’s own wishes. However, there are problems at the other end of the spectrum, and prayer that simply articulates what people feel they ought to be praying for can be sterile. It is helpful to see prayer as providing an opportunity for the refinement of desires. One of the key assumptions here is that people can easily be misled about the nature of their desires (May 1982). What people think they want can be strangely unfulfilling if what they desire actually occurs. This reaches its most extreme form in the phenomenon of addiction, where people develop intense cravings for things that give them little pleasure, beyond temporary release from the craving. Prayer provides us with an opportunity to explore our desires and to probe beneath the sur- face. As Watts and Williams (1988) suggest, it is rather like the ‘chasing down’ that is used in cognitive therapy. For example, a depressed patient might cite something that they are upset by, and the therapist would then probe to find why they were upset by it. In a similar kind of way, it can be helpful for people to take a desire, and examine why they want what they want, leading to a deeper understanding of funda- mental desires. Petition can be seen as an exercise in the exploration of desire in the presence of God. As Ann and Barry Ulanov (1982) put it: ‘Prayer is the place where we sort out our desires and where we are ourselves sorted out by the desires we choose to follow’ (p. 20). It may be helpful to formulate this process of the exploration and transfor- mation of desires within the Freudian framework (Lee 1955). One can see untransformed desires as arising like primitive impulses from the id. On the other hand, many such desires will be censored by the super-ego as reprehensi- ble and unsuitable for prayer. There is then a conflict between id and super-ego as to what to pray for. The most psychologically healthy solution to this prob- lem is one of integration and the strengthening of the ego. That is what takes place when desires are transformed. To move from prayer for oneself to prayer for others represents another impor- tant stage in the transformation of desires. Intercessory prayer can be seen as requir- ing a reasonably well-developed ego, with a capacity to engage with external reality in the way that is required for love and work. Intercessory prayer involves the use of a number of ego functions, such as a capacity for perspective-taking, that is, seeing things from the point of view of another person. It also involves an empathic 14 Personality and religion sensitivity to the feelings of other people, and concern for them. Intercessory prayer thus challenges people to strengthen their ego functions, and itself contributes to that strengthening. Another important developmental aspect of prayer, as Goldman’s research made clear, is a change in understanding of how prayer can be effective. Initially, people may make anthropomorphic assumptions about God, to the effect that, unless they pray, He may not know what they want, or be disposed to give it. Such assumptions are hardly credible, and are inappropriate theologically. Donald Capps (1982) has suggested that prayer can be seen rather as a process of ‘co-orientation’ in which there is an alignment of desires and purposes. He reaches this formulation from the perspective of communication theory, and likens the co-orientation involved to that which takes place within the family. His position is similar to that of John Polkinghorne (in press) who talks of a ‘resonance’ being established between God and the person who prays, which becomes part of the channel by which prayer is efficacious. SUMMARY OF KEY THEMES Prayer as both a psychological activity and communion with God. Attributing positive or negative life events to self, chance, or God. Discriminating between appropriate and inappropriate guilt and shame. Petitionary prayer as an opportunity to refine and transform one’s desires. How prayer can change oneself and change the lives of others. Resonance between one’s desires and the will of God.  Spirituality 15 QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER What are the psychological functions of prayer? What happens to you when you pray? Do you see yourself, other people, and your own desires in a new light? For what kind of events in our lives is it appropriate to thank God? Do you know people who are prone to excessive guilt, and is it ‘cheap’ guilt that stands in the way of personal change? Which of our desires is it appropriate to bring to God in prayer? Do you find praying for others hard work? What areas for growth might this suggest? The spiritual path Spiritual development We will turn now to psychological aspects of the spiritual path, and spiritual direction. The concept of progress or development in the spiritual life is one that lends itself to interpretation within the framework of developmental psychology. This is a theme that is addressed in more detail in Chapters 5 and 6. However, it is important to note at the outset that there is no straightforward way in which concepts of progress or devel- opment can be applied to the religious life. Individuals are not sufficiently predictable for there to be one orderly and standard model of religious development; nor is a later stage of development always ‘higher’ or ‘better’. In fact, there are good theological rea- sons for seeing value in childlike spirituality as well as in psychological maturity. Talk of spiritual progress gives inadequate regard to how God can encounter people pray- ing or meditating in different ways. He is not restricted to people who have reached a supposedly ‘advanced’ stage of spiritual development. Spiritual guidance Nevertheless, the fact is that many people encounter problems from time to time in their spiritual life, and seek help in overcoming them. The practice of giving such help used to be called ‘spiritual direction’. However, there has been a movement to talk in more egalitarian terms of ‘guidance’, or simply having a ‘soul friend’ (Leech 1994). The nature of spiritual guidance has changed markedly in recent years and has become much more sophisticated psychologically (Schneiders 1986). Whereas spiritual directors used to see a clear distinction between their role and that of psycho- logical counselling, it is now increasingly recognised that there is a close interplay between the two (see Chapter 10). The problems that arise in the spiritual life are in some ways rather similar to those that arise in counselling for personal problems, and Robert May (1982, Chapter 5) has given a good account of them. He suggests that most of the standard psycho- logical defences described by Freud can arise in response to a religious experience. People can deny or repress it, engage in some form of intellectualisation to discount 16 Personality and religion it, isolate the cognitive content from all emotional connotations, and so on. There is also a similar set of resistances to spiritual practices, such as avoiding prayer because of anxieties about what might surface in the quiet time, or there can be a rebellion against the discipline required for steady prayer, or an excessive diligence in prayer without any real spiritual engagement, and so on. There are also psychological maladjustments that arise in the spiritual path. May suggests that the two most common are spiritual ‘cop-out’ in which the person uses their spiritual practice as an excuse for escaping the responsibilities and relation- ships with which they should be engaging, and spiritual narcissism, in which the person’s spiritual life is used to bolster their sense of self-importance. Self and spirituality Attitudes to the self and their relationship to spirituality have been particularly problematic. It is a central part of the Christian tradition that the spiritual life involves, in some sense, turning away from ‘self’. However, this is open to alterna- tive interpretations. Psychologically-minded guides to the spiritual life have become increasingly aware that too sweeping a renunciation of the self can involve the sup- pression of personal problems that need to be dealt with, and make any real spiritual development impossible. It is helpful here to make a distinction between true and false selves, such as would be made, for example, by Thomas Merton. From a theological point of view there is a true self that is made in the image of God, and which it is people’s vocation to real- ise more fully. The true self is thus an integral part of the spiritual life, rather than an impediment to it. On the other hand, there is a false self that arises out of unresolved personal problems and needs, and which is antagonistic to spiritual development. Under the impact of twentieth-century psychology, there has been a discernible shift of emphasis in Christian spirituality, from repression of a false self towards realisation of the true self. Similar issues are raised by James Hillman in his paper ‘Peaks and Vales’, in terms of the classic distinction between soul and spirit (Hillman 1976). These terms have been used in a fluctuating way within the Christian tradition. Hillman’s charge is that Christianity has too often promoted a flight into spirit, when what was needed was ‘soul-making’. The path that Hillman is advocating is an explicitly psychological, rather than a Christian one, though there is perhaps no other contemporary psychol- ogist who has written more richly and sensitively about the life of the soul. Emotional engagement It is increasingly recognised that people need to be emotionally engaged in psycho- therapy or counselling if these are to be effective (see also Chapter 10). It seems that spirituality, to be an effective agent of personal change, also needs to involve the whole person. One of the key issues here is the degree of emotional engagement in spirituality. This has been the subject of a good deal of controversy among Chris- tians over the centuries. Some, especially revivalists, have regarded evident  Spirituality 17 emotionality as a key requirement of authentic spirituality. Others, have seen emo- tionality as at best incidental, and at worst dangerous, distracting people from a calm focus upon God. It is relevant here that there has been a substantial shift in psychological views about the nature and value of emotions in recent years. There has long been a sense of an opposition between reason and emotion. However, recent theories of emotion have emphasised the close intertwining of cognition and emotion, that emotion can be an integral part of human understanding, rather than an impediment to it. The phrase ‘emotional intelligence’ captures well this new view of emotion. Emotions are highly informative. For example, when danger arises, the fear that sweeps over us instantly makes us aware of it, before we have had time consciously to work out what the threat is. Psychotherapists use their own feelings about a client as a vital clue to what the client may be feeling themselves. In everyday life too, we learn much about other people by noticing how we respond to them. Perhaps most important of all, we learn about ourselves by noticing what emotions we feel, and what rouses them. Spiritual practice in which people cut themselves off from their emotions would be ‘flying blind’ without a crucial source of information. For these reasons it is of great importance to be in touch with and engaged with one’s emotions in the spiritual life; it is not desirable to repress or ignore them. How- ever, it is equally dangerous to live by nothing but one’s emotions. A spiritual life given up to nothing but emotionality would be an undiscerning and disorderly one. Reflection on one’s emotions, and some degree of control over them and their expression, are important aspects of emotional engagement. Understandings of God Spiritual guidance also needs to have sensitivity to how concepts of God often arise from, and can be distorted by, a person’s psychological background and problems. Freud’s (1927) view of this, in The Future of an Illusion, was essentially that ideas about God serve a compensatory function, so people who are oppressed with a sense of helplessness may deal with that by invoking the idea of a good and powerful God. However, it is equally possible that people’s ideas about God are consistent with their personal problems rather than a compensation for them. Thus, someone who felt helpless might be tempted to overemphasise the arbitrariness of God’s judge- ment, and someone who felt excessively guilty might overemphasise the severity of God’s commands. This is a key issue in the psychology of religion that would repay more careful investigation. There seems little doubt, however, that images of God often arise from, and are distorted by, key personal relationships. There have been a number of questionnaire studies investigating the relationship between concepts of God and concepts of parents, and the results are consistent with the idea that God is often seen as a kind of ideal parent. However, the connections found in such studies are relatively weak, and they certainly do not prove a causal connection, that is, that con- cepts of God arise from concepts of parents. In some ways more compelling are clin- ical studies such as that of Rizzuto who has demonstrated, in detailed case studies, 18 Personality and religion an incredibly close similarity between how people conceptualise God and their par- ents (Rizzuto 1979). Though the nature of the causal relationship remains ambigu- ous, it is difficult to dismiss the similarity as mere coincidence. Discernment of God’s revelation of himself is a subtle matter, and one that is potentially open to psychological understanding. It was noted above that William James and others have often described mystical experiences as being ‘ineffable’. One could put this psychologically by saying that they often occur as what Gendlin has called ‘self meanings’, understandings that cannot readily be articulated. Alterna- tively, and more formally, they can be seen as meanings that arise within the ‘implicational’ subsystem rather than the ‘propositional’ subsystem of the Inter- acting Cognitive Subsystems model of mind (Watts 1999). What begins as a felt meaning then needs to be re-coded in a form in which it can be articulated. Such psychological formulations are fully consistent with the traditional theological insight that God is, in some sense, beyond full human comprehension. Sometimes, felt meanings gather around some particular powerful symbol, phrase, scriptural text, or whatever. Even when this happens, the full significance of the symbol or text usu- ally remains a felt meaning, and the task of articulating its significance remains. SUMMARY OF KEY THEMES No single model of development to which everyone should conform in their religious life. Problems on the spiritual path and spiritual direction. Turning away from false selves towards the true self. Engaging with emotions but not being ruled by them. The relationship between psychological make-up and concepts of God. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER Are you aware of the different stages along the spiritual path that members of your congregation have reached? Have you ever received the help of a spiritual counsellor or ‘soul friend’? What was most helpful about their approach? How do you respond to people with an ‘immature’ spirituality (for example, one that is narcissistic or escapist)? How should people understand and respond to the Christian call to die to the old self? How is such language related to psychological ideas of true and false selves? Who do you know who is closed off to their emotions or, conversely, uncriti- cally ruled by them? In your experience, is it true that a person’s image of God is often conditioned by their individual psychological make-up, and their views of their parents in particular? If so, should they be encouraged to develop a different understanding of God, or not?  Spirituality 19 Further reading Spiritual experience Beit-Hallahmi, B. and Argyle, M. (1997) The Psychology of Religious Behaviour, Belief and Experience, London: Routledge, Chapter 5. d’Aquili, E. and Newberg, A. B. (1999) The Mystical Mind, Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Forman, R. (1990) The Problem of Pure Consciousness, New York: Oxford University Press. Hay, D. (1982) Exploring Inner Space, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Proudfoot, W. (1986) Religious Experience, Berkeley: University of California Press. Prayer Brown, L. B. (1994) The Human Side of Prayer, Birmingham Alabama: Religious Education Press. Godin, A. (ed.) (1968) From Cry to Word: Contributions Towards a Psychology of Prayer, Birmingham Alabama: Religious Education Press. Phillips, D. Z. (1965) The Concept of Prayer, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Ulanov, A. and Ulanov, B. (1985) Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer, London: SCM Press. Watts, F. (ed.) (2001) Perspectives on Prayer, London: SPCK. The spiritual path Benner, D. G. (1988) Psychotherapy and the Spiritual Quest, London: Hodder and Stoughton. May, G. G. (1982) Will and Spirit: A Contemplative Psychology, New York: HarperCollins. May, G. G. (1982) Care of Mind, Care of Spirit: A Psychiatrist Explores Spiritual Direction, New York: HarperCollins. 2 The psychology of church services The psychology Personality of church and services religion QUESTIONS FOR MINISTRY Is charismatic worship merely about whipping up an emotional experience? Why are religious rituals important? What are their functions? Is hearing confession like offering counselling? If I forgive those who seriously hurt me do I become a doormat? What is happening when people speak in tongues or pray for healing? Ritual and worship Human beings are active collaborators in their religious faith, not just passive recipients. We bring to worship all that we are. Ritual, worship, and healing, in both traditional and charismatic church contexts, engage us on all levels: physical, emotional, voli- tional, intellectual, spiritual, and social. This chapter looks at these religious prac- tices from a psychological perspective, asking how they can help or hinder personal and spiritual growth. As in other chapters, this perspective is complementary to (rather than an alternative to) religious accounts of worship, ritual, and healing, which focus on their transcendent dimensions. We take a broad view of ritual, considering it to apply equally well to the unspoken but fixed format of many charismatic traditions as to more formalised liturgy. The psychology of ritual In order to understand how people engage with church rituals, it is important to have a broad concept of ritual and its place in society. One prominent psychologist who has understood this is Erik Erikson (1977). Another is Bani Shorter (1996), who has written from a Jungian point of view about how people develop rituals in a vari- ety of contexts in everyday life. In the United Kingdom, the death of Princess Diana was a particularly interesting occasion that seemed to cry out for ritualisation. An  The psychology of church services 21 astonishingly large proportion of the population lit candles, gave flowers, or per- formed some other tribute. Intriguingly, little of this was organised from above; it welled up spontaneously because of a heart-felt need to find rituals that caught the moment. To be worthwhile and effective, rituals need both to connect with psychological needs and also to offer an effective way of meeting and transforming them. There are thus two ways in which rituals can fail. When rituals fail to connect with anything that matters to people, they can degenerate into empty formalities, what Erikson calls ‘ritual excess’. On the other hand, if rituals fail to meet psychological needs effectively, they are not adequate to their task. Looked at from this perspective, there seems much more danger of church rituals falling into the first trap than the second. Too often, they become empty and detached from real human experiences and concerns. This raises the question of continuity and change in ritual. It is in the nature of ritual that it should be predictable and to some extent formal. Only so can it transcend ordinary unritualised activities. However, if it becomes too inflexible, it fails to adapt to meet people’s ritual needs. Erikson has suggested that religious rituals are particularly related to the earliest infant phase of life development (see Erikson 1977; also Capps and Browning (eds) 1983). In his view, the rituals that develop in infancy naturally connect with the numinous, and religious rituals are a continuation of this form of ritualisation. One important feature is looking and being looked at, which harks back to the mother and baby gazing at one another. Various aspects of church ritual, such as the priest giving a blessing, or the sacred use of icons seem to reflect the importance of looking in numinous rituals. Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew Newberg (1999) have approached ritual from a rather different, neuropsychological, point of view, suggesting that a key function of ritual is to modulate the levels of arousal that people experience. Looking at rituals across a variety of traditions and cultures, they argue for the importance of the dis- tinction between rapid and slow rituals. Rapid rituals, perhaps involving ecstatic dance, produce a state of arousal and hyper-excitement. Slow rituals, on the other hand, can produce a quiescent state. Looked at from this point of view, the majority of church services in the West seem likely to induce relatively low levels of arousal, but do not do so in an extreme way. Innovations in church ritual seem often designed to make the ceremony more effective at inducing high or low states of arousal. Some recent charismatic practices, discussed later in this chapter, are clearly likely to raise arousal levels. In contrast, meditation and other contemplative practices, when introduced into church services, will induce low levels of arousal. Though the contrast between hyper-arousal and quiescence seems clear, d’Aquili and Newberg claim that ‘spill-over’ phenomena can occur. Thus, when one system is induced very strongly, a spill-over effect can occur whereby the other system is also activated, producing a particularly powerful experience in which arousal and quiescence are combined. 22 Personality and religion Rites of passage Like all religions, the Judeo-Christian tradition marks important points of transition in the life cycle – birth, ‘coming of age’, marriage, death – with their own specific rit- uals. Roger Grainger describes these rites of passage as ‘essential tools for living’ (Grainger 1988a: 45). Developing the ideas of Arnold van Gennep (1909/1977), Grainger describes the ways that baptisms, marriages and funerals follow three discernible ritual stages: 1 Separation Before the transition to the new stage of life can be made, a separation from the old life must be effected. For example, the bride and groom separate from their birth families; they ‘leave’ in order to ‘cleave’; the baptismal candidate is separated from the previous state of ‘natural’, sinful life by repentance. 2 Transition A period of great change, a return to chaos and formlessness in which the person is dissolved in order to be reformed. For example, the baptismal candi- date is submerged under the water, the bride and groom are joined via the symbol of a wedding ring. 3 Reincorporation Re-entering the communal structures at a different level, as a new person. For example, in death entering the community of heaven and the communion of saints; in bereavement, re-entering social structures as a person with a new identity. As well as being a celebration of a significant moment in the life cycle, rites of passage have a performative power: they actually bring about the social changes to which the ritual points. The adolescent is now seen as, and (ideally) treated as, an adult in soci- ety; the couple are now seen as, and treated as, married; the baby is now seen as, and treated as, a member of the church or social group. It is no accident that these rituals rely strongly on non-verbal symbols. Non-verbal symbols, such as the placing of hands on the one to be ordained, the drenching with water of the baptismal candidate, the exchange of wedding rings, the anointing with oil in healing rituals, the putting on new clothes for the religious taking vows, symbolise and bring about the change in status, not only for the individual in question, but for the whole social group. The use of non-verbal symbols allows for multiple levels of interpretation; such symbols can point to the numinous more easily than words. In a Jungian sense, the symbols allow for the person to integrate the profound (and sometimes threatening) realities repre- sented by the ritual at a depth and rate that the participant can handle without being overwhelmed by the unknown and mysterious. A sense of awe, holiness, and profound unity can accompany such rituals, enabling these threatening realities to be held in a safe, controlled atmosphere. Radical life changes can be negotiated without either the individual or the social group being overwhelmed. The public recognition and involvement in these momentous transitions serve the purpose of creating a new social equilibrium for the group. Not only is the individual  The psychology of church services 23 communicant or baptismal candidate embarking on a new stage in life, so too is the group in relation to that person. The wisdom of such religious practices is now recog- nised also in psychological contexts such as family counselling: if one person in a family is to change their behaviour, there are knock-on effects for the whole family that the whole family needs actively to accommodate. To facilitate individual change, the group needs to embrace the new identity and behaviour of the changing individual. Funerals are among the most significant of religious ceremonies marking rites of passage. They are important times not only to honour the memory of the deceased, and to offer comfort to the bereaved, but for the social group itself to re-affirm the ongoingness of life, even in the face of death. The symbols used in funerals provide clear, usable images that help structure the changed world for the bereaved, helping them eventually to re-emerge from mental and emotional chaos. The sense of being part of something greater than oneself, something that survives the onslaught of dis- ruptive change, is, according to Durkheim, the very essence of religion. Those in the Christian faith take this implicit psychological and sociological aim of the funeral ritual even further by actively identifying themselves as a faith community with the One who went into death, and after three days, showed himself to be the resurrec- tion and the life. The funeral rite signifies this final journey towards the divine source of being. Although there are secular ‘rites of passage’ now on offer (civil ceremony mar- riages, eighteenth birthday celebrations, even a proposed government-approved secular celebration for a newborn), many people (including those with no explicit Christian faith) still look to the church for rites of passage such as baptism for their children. Can this be understood as an inarticulate groping towards a religious view of life? Or is a religious ritual, such as baptism, emptied of its meaning when used as a social rite of passage rather than a specifically religious rite? In the long-term, the spiritual meaning of the ritual (and the church which performs the ritual) may suffer when used merely as a social marker by people who do not espouse faith. On the other hand, what are the immediate (and perhaps long-term) psychological effects of turning someone away because they haven’t ‘measured up’ to the expectations of the faith community? Far-reaching damage can occur on either side of this tightrope. Where church doctrine does not constrain such decisions, ministers have to wrestle out their own position concerning requests for church ceremonies marking rites of passage by those outside the faith community. Although the risk of real faith being short-circuited always exists, even a seemingly shallow request for a rite of passage might provide an opportunity for someone to connect with the springs of his or her own religious impulse. Holy Communion The service of Holy Communion, or Eucharist, is the most powerful ritual of the church, and its human side can be elucidated at a psychological level (see Jung 1958; Lee 1955; Murphy 1979) without in any way suggesting that it is just a matter of psychology. Part of the richness of the Communion lies in the fact it has so many aspects, and can be approached in many different ways. How the service is 24 Personality and religion conducted affects which of these aspects is to the forefront. For example, when the priest faces the people, it emphasises the ‘fellowship’ meal aspect of the Communion; when priest and people all face the altar, it emphasises that they are approaching God together. The Communion can have a powerful psychological resonance. However, it fails to fulfil its potential if it becomes just a time for cheerful but superficial worship, or mainly for intellectual reflection on the faith; and it is certainly not just a spectacle. If it is to ‘work’, it needs to be conducted in a way that invites deep psychological engagement, and that engagement also needs to be effectively contained. In this it is like a funeral service when the grief is intense; the service needs both to connect with that grief, but also – by containing it in the ritual of the funeral – to help to transform it. Something similar should happen in the Communion service, though the balance is not easy to hold. The ritual can become either so sterile and formalised, or so mun- dane and unevocative, that it no longer makes contact with any real human experi- ence, and so nothing transacts. Perhaps the central strand of meaning in the Communion service concerns the relationship between God and humanity. It is about their drawing close to one another, and achieving a kind of union when the consecrated bread and wine are received. Different parts of the service prepare for that in different ways. There may be a formal start to the service when the priest and his assistants draw close to the altar, representing a drawing close to the transcendent God. Confession helps people to recall their unworthiness, while worship (e.g. ‘Lift up your hearts’ ) encourages people to raise their sights to this God. While all this is going on, people are engaging with the discrepancy between their real self and their ideal self (or, in Jungian terminology, between the ego and the Self). Worship helps people to aspire to the ideal self, while penitence makes them aware of the inadequacy of the real self. Offering or sacrifice prepare for a mystical union between Christ and the congregation; both the offering of Christ that is recalled, and the offering by the people of themselves. It is through this mutual offering that there can be the drawing close which culminates in the act of Commu- nion, that helps to heal the gulf between real and ideal self. Different meanings are fused here. There is an historical meaning that arises from what Christ did at the Last Supper and on the Cross, a meaning in which God and humanity are relating to one another in the present, and another meaning where the Communion is experienced as a foretaste of the kingdom of heaven. Equally, there is a meaning in the Communion that is symbolic, where the bread and wine represent the body and blood of Christ, but another meaning that transcends the symbolic in a real and actual mutual indwelling, of the congregation with one another, and of all with Christ. If the Communion is to ‘work’ at the level of human experience, it is essential that these different meanings are held together, and are not collapsed. As R. G. Lee (1955: 106) comments, ‘this union of the historical and the symbolic is of great importance psychologically viewed’. Only then is the Communion a powerful integrative and transforming experience. How different people respond to the Communion, or indeed whether it affects them at all, will depend to some extent on their psychological style and capacities. It  The psychology of church services 25 requires them to engage both emotionally and intellectually, and to hold those two aspects of their response together. It requires them to draw deeply from their own experience, to relate to those around them, and to reach out to God, and again to hold all of these together. Above all, it requires people to overcome the dry literalism that has been a feature of much thinking since the Enlightenment, and to recover a new kind of more holistic or participatory cognition that is somewhat similar to the primitive, animistic thinking that has now largely died out (Barfield 1957). All that is a tall order, and helps to explain why many Communion services fall so far short of the powerful human experience they can be. A psychological perspective can help to clarify what is required if the Communion is to be celebrated in a way that trans- forms people. Music, liturgy, and movement Worship is more than a ritual activity; it is relational in intent and content. The col- lective dimension of worship can provide a sense of being related to others, joined in a corporate relationship to God. It is an occasion for worshippers, individually and collectively, to enter into a relationship of love, trust and thanksgiving that over- flows into creative expressions of praise. From earliest history, humans have expressed their deepest emotions through music and dance. The Christian church has its own rich repository of hymns, songs, and liturgical gestures to express the phases of the human heart. Music is a carrier of the emotional flow of worship services. Listening to music, or singing hymns or choruses in a service, engages worshippers via their bodily senses, emotions, intuitions, and intellects. A well-planned liturgy is sensitive to the emotional trajectory of a service, and provides a variety of ways for the wor- shipper to engage in a transformative religious experience that takes people from a starting place to a goal. This journey of transformation is aided by various devices: standing to sing, gesturing to signify important liturgical moments, moving to the altar rail to receive Communion, kneeling in prayer, sitting to listen to readings or sermons, or lifting hands and arms in worship, are all movements that enable a person to enter into the experience more fully. The emphases of Christian services may vary greatly: they may be primarily intellectual and word-centred, or domi- nated by sacrament or aesthetics, or they may seek ecstatic emotional experiences. Whatever the emphasis, a successful liturgy will follow a trajectory that is faithful to the ‘narrative’ flow of human emotions. You can’t push a person from deep despair into joyous praise, whatever forms of worship are used. A human being needs to move through stages of emotional transformation gradually and authentically. Good liturgies are like helpful psychological aids to growing in a spiritual rela- tionship with God. In designing a liturgy it is possible to err on either side of a fine boundary: either the worship service is emotionally manipulative or it is remote and disengaged. Many would argue that large parts of the traditional church don’t do enough to engage the whole person in worship; services are felt to be boring, irrele- vant, or incomprehensible. Religious practices that may have been meaningful in 26 Personality and religion one era have become foreign currency to many in the new generation. Churches can be emptied by this factor alone. Over time, the way in which social and psychological needs and desires are expressed changes. Traditionally, Western Christianity has tended to espouse the Neoplatonic elevation of the intellect over the physical and emotional aspects of our being. This has led not only to an over-intellectualising of the faith, but for many, has contributed to a deep divide in their own person, relegating emotions, physi- cality and sexuality to a garbage bin left outside church walls. Forms of worship that engage the body and the emotions, such as symbolic movement, pilgrimage, dance and drama, are potent vehicles for healing this split between mind and body. These ancient forms of worship (but forms which are relatively new to parts of Western Christianity) resonate with our contemporary culture. The average person today is bombarded with fast-paced visual and auditory stimulation. In this social context, traditional church services can appear flat and lifeless. It is no wonder that new styles of worship are reflecting contemporary cultural norms and psychological needs. How far this should be taken is a sensitive question. The need for Christianity to be relevant to our culture, and to involve the whole person, needs to be balanced with guarding against sheer sensation-seeking. SUMMARY OF KEY THEMES The need for rituals that connect with psychic energy, and contain and trans- form it. Different levels of arousal induced by different rituals. The symbols and psychological importance of rites of passage. Historical, symbolic, intellectual, and emotional aspects of Holy Communion. The roles of body, movement, and music in Christian rituals. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER Does the worship style of your church seek states of hyper-arousal or of calm quiescence? What kind of match is there between this and your own personal preferences? How do you feel after your ‘average’ church service? Bored? Transformed? Calm? Excited? Which elements of church services do you find most effective yourself? 1 Music and singing? 2 Liturgical rituals (such as Communion and rites of passage)? 3 Symbolic movements (crossing oneself, kneeling, lifting hands in worship)? 4 Practice of charismatic gifts? 5 Bible readings and preaching? 6 Prayer (intercessory or in ministry)? Which aspects of your being do these different elements engage (e.g. body, emotions, intellect, unconscious, will, spirit)?  The psychology of church services 27 Confession and forgiveness Confession of sin is central to Christian ritual and worship; it is a sacrament in its own right and a central part of the Communion service. It therefore provides an interesting case study in the psychological processes involved in, and the psycholog- ical issues raised by, Christian liturgy and ritual. Confession focuses our attention on the crucified and risen Christ, through whom flows the forgiveness for which we long. Even outside religious circles, any therapist worth her salt knows that the confession of wrongdoing (or even wrong attitudes) is a turning point in personal growth. This vital practice, which forms a key part of most Christian worship services, can be an agent of astounding liberation. The relief and joy of being forgiven is a fount of spiritual renewal, and a place from which real change can occur. However, ritual confession can sometimes be ineffective in deal- ing with stubborn problems of guilt and habitual sinful patterns. Why does confes- sion sometimes ‘work’, and sometimes not? First, non-specific confession of sin which rehearses a general sense of ‘I am bad’ will not tend to provide real liberation. In fact, vague confession of sin can be used by some as a tactic to avoid a more precise confession rooted in an active awareness of specific wrongs (intentional or unintentional). Confession that pinpoints actual wrongs, and is infused with a realisation of sin’s impact on others, self and God, can lead to a surgical contrition, which is active in its desire to be rid of sin, and to make amends wherever possible. It is well known in counselling circles, as well as in the confessional, what extreme lengths we will go to in order to avoid this kind of precise reckoning. Christian teaching prompts us to ask the Holy Spirit to bring about the grace of real contrition in the face of our (sometimes unconscious) efforts to avoid it. On the other hand, we are not personally responsible for everything that is wrong in life. The realistic or right taking of responsibility for sin entails a realistic attribution of self-blame within a wider network of causality; our own sinful responses may comprise only one aspect of a complex interweaving of social and interpersonal wrongs. Realistic attribution of sinfulness takes into account that for which we are responsible, and distinguishes it from sins that lie at someone else’s door. Fraser Watts and Mark Williams (1988) point out that it is crucial for this realistic attribu- tion to occur in the ‘felt presence of God’ which reframes our acknowledgement of sin in the context of being (already) forgiven by God. After precise, realistic confes- sion has occurred, liberation is made complete when forgiveness is received, which also needs to happen at a ‘felt’ level. Some people have developed frameworks of understanding sin, guilt and forgive- ness based on a faulty, overly negative sense of self. Our sense of self is developed in the context of relationship. This happens in a profound way in infancy and child- hood, and continues throughout life. What is mirrored back to us in the reactions of others becomes a part of our ‘looking glass’ self. For a child, the responses of their ‘god-like’ parents (or other powerful others) form a potent source of information about the self. Because the security parents provide for children is so vital, clinicians have noted how children often construe their parents as being ‘all-good’ and their pronouncements as ‘all truth’. The child, in his dependent state, needs to rely on a 28 Personality and religion carer who is seen as good, powerful and right. Further, children do not have the cog- nitive development to query or critique the behaviour of their parents. In a situation where the child is being unfairly criticised, punished, abused, or neglected, the child is likely to construe this sad state of affairs as ‘my good parent is meting out to me the punishment I deserve’ (Rowe 1987). Repeated abuse (verbal, emotional, physical or sexual) drums in a message that the child is inherently bad, and deserving of punish- ment. Cognitively, negative events tend to carry more psychological weight than positive events, exacerbating an already negative sense of self. What can result is a profound subjective sense of guilt which is based upon rejection, not upon actual wrongs. Confession of sin may provide little relief from this subjective sense of guilt as long as the psychological roots remain unexamined. It is possible for such individ- uals to feel guilty for every mishap in the universe. Feelings of guilt can be hidden by an overblown self-righteousness, or a tendency to project one’s own faults onto others. Meanwhile, objective wrongs may be mounting up. A person can act out their sense of being despicable as if fulfilling, through destructive acts, some pro- phetic pronouncement. These real transgressions further embroil the person in an intolerable burden of guilt. A person may also suffer from a subjective sense of guilt because they require of themselves an unrealistic degree of perfection. Confession of sin can fail here as well; the harsh inner taskmaster (or super-ego in Freudian terms) has not been assuaged. Howard Gordon (1997) points to the need to understand that a sense of guilt can result from three different sources: 1 Transgression guilt: real, objective guilt resulting from moral wrongdoing. 2 Rejection guilt: subjective guilt feelings resulting from rejection, abuse or neglect. 3 Perfection guilt: subjective guilt based on the self’s own harsh demands of perfection. Many people who come to confession bring a complex mixture of all three types of guilt. A token waving of ‘Jesus died for your sins’ may not lift feelings of unacceptability, especially if the sources of guilt are other than objective transgres- sion. Gordon (1997) found that the people he interviewed on this topic reported that their feelings of objective and subjective guilt, which are often conflated, found alle- viation from four sources: 1 A balanced Christianity whose creedal convictions and community life emphasised grace as well as law, and which advocated openness to people with all their faults, limitations and hurts. 2 Caring professionals who were good listeners, understanding, non-judgemental and encouraging. 3 Supportive relatives and friends who exhibited the same characteristics. 4 An individual who, through special skill or insight, was able to make a precisely relevant – and therefore liberating – pronouncement.  The psychology of church services 29 Ministers in all denominations will pastor people who need to talk, formally or informally, about their struggle to receive forgiveness and release from guilt, subjec- tive and objective. If properly handled, confession to a human intermediary, and receiving of absolving statements (to the effect that God has forgiven the wrongdo- ing), can help a person appropriate forgiveness in the context of a real relationship. Forgiveness is not some abstract entity that merely requires intellectual assent; for- giveness is participation in a loving, accepting relationship. As most of our wounds in life have been delivered through (faulty) relationships, it is not surprising that our healing, and our ability to receive forgiveness, also develops in the context of rela- tionship. It is here that a relationship with a priest, minister or caring professional can help a person build the necessary scaffolding for a relationship with God through Christ, which extends to others. Forgiving others Our (in)ability to receive forgiveness can also be tied to our (in)ability to forgive others. Jesus himself suggested that the two are intimately linked: ‘Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.’ It may be helpful to understand that for- giving others, especially those who have deeply damaged us, is a long process that should not be forced or glossed over with a ‘surface’ offer of forgiveness. Robert Enright and the Human Development Group (Enright et al. 1998) propose four phases, which themselves have several sub-stages: 1 Uncovering phase An injured party examines his own defences, and confronts anger, in order to release it. Any shame, or cognitive rehearsal of the offence, is acknowledged. Awareness that one may be permanently changed by the offence, along with one’s previous conception of a ‘just world’. 2 Decision phase The injured party decides that the old strategies are not working and that for- giveness is an option. A commitment is made to forgive the offender. 3 Work phase Reframing, through role-taking, who the wrongdoer is by viewing him or her in context, developing empathy towards the offender. An acceptance and absorp- tion of the pain. 4 Deepening phase Finding meaning for self and others in the suffering. Realisation that self has needed forgiveness in the past, insight that one is not alone in suffering. Reali- sation that the self may have new purpose because of the injury; negative affect decreases. Emotional release. A number of other psychological models of forgiveness also focus on the importance of reframing (phase 3). Reframing involves the reworking of attributions of blame in view of the complex interplay of situational and other factors that contribute to wrongdoing. Our attributions of blame commonly suffer from a number of cognitive 30 Personality and religion distortions (for example, overemphasising personal rather than situational aspects of causation), so the outcome of reframing is to bring about a more realistic view, enabling understanding of, but not condoning, the offence. At the same time we must be wary of merely excusing someone’s offence (‘he couldn’t help it’) rather than truly forgiving someone (‘she could have done something different, but I for- give her anyway’). Reframing means that the hurtful behaviour is not the defining feature of that person in our eyes: ‘The story is not usually about an innocent lamb and a bad wolf. Most of us have to do our forgiving while we are being forgiven’ (Smedes 1988: 7). Understanding our enemy (even if only partially) brings back down to size the wrongdoer who has appeared in our imagination as ‘twice as large, twice as power- ful, and twice as evil’ (Smedes 1988: 99). However, reframing cannot explain freely chosen evil, and, in fact, examination may reveal its full horror and incomprehensibility even further. In the face of enor- mous acts of brutality, it is reasonable to ask whether it is always morally correct to forgive. Does not an easy ‘forgiveness’ add further outrage to the victim, while mini- mising the crime? Is it even humanly possible always to forgive? Can a child who has been tortured by parents find the resources within to forgive them? Can survivors of the Holocaust, or ethnic cleansing, whose lives have been devastated, find the strength to forgive their tormentors? Stephen Burns (1996) argues that in pastoral care it is not helpful to present total forgiveness as yet another burden survivors must embrace. Forgiveness is not to be confused with a martyrish passivity. Forgiveness may only be possible after the victim’s outrage has spurred action to ensure there are structural impediments against future abuse. Burns also points out that we must realistically consider the level of forgiveness to which a deeply scarred person can aspire. Survivors of profound trauma may be so wounded that they need to be accepted in their limited ‘ungenerous’ state; to require impossible feats of forgive- ness from them may only cause further damage. However, to aim for some level of forgiveness is helpful; at the very least, forgiveness seems to release us from those who have hurt us, while resentment and vengeance binds us to those whom we cannot forgive. While there may be realistic human limitations to the degree of for- giveness of which we are capable, it is helpful to realise that God is not limited in either his concern for justice or his ability to forgive, whose forgiveness alone can release us from the inevitable cycle of sin begetting sin. This sort of reframing takes place within a divine context; our own limited ability to forgive can be placed within the context of God’s unlimited capacity both to forgive and to suffer with those who suffer. Studies have further shown that reframing alone may not be as successful in pro- moting forgiveness as reframing along with strategies to encourage empathy with the offender. Imagining the distress, or neediness, of an offender, and realising our own need for forgiveness, may initiate feelings of compassion. An apology can pro- mote empathy as it makes it possible for the injured party to see the offender’s distress over the wrongdoing. However, apologies are not always forthcoming; and it is sometimes impossible to feel compassion for the wrongdoer. Here, we must turn to  The psychology of church services 31 the possibility that God’s compassion is not limited, relieving the injured party from having to shoulder the task of forgiveness alone. A third strategy, ‘role-taking’, imagines what it would be like in the future if one was fully able to forgive. By acting out the chosen role of forgiver, a person can grad- ually ‘grow into’ the experience of being able to forgive. Indeed, employing an array of strategies (reframing the past, developing empathy in the present, and growing into a future role as forgiver) may, in combination, help a wounded person take real- istically sized steps in the arduous journey of forgiving others (Gulliford 1999). SUMMARY OF KEY THEMES Using confession to discern the extent to which we are responsible for bad events in our lives and the lives of others. Different kinds of guilt: transgression, rejection, and perfection guilt. Choosing to forgive others, through cognitive reframing and empathy. QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER What is your own experience of weekly confession in church services? Are you able to deal with concrete, specific sins? Does weekly confession sometimes merely confirm a sense of being ‘bad’? Are you able to forgive yourself for your sins and shortcomings, or do you feel you don’t ‘deserve’ to be forgiven? Think of the person(s) in your life that have caused you the most hurt. If you visualise yourself on a long journey that leads towards forgiveness, how far have you travelled so far? What might help you on this journey? Charismatic worship and spiritual gifts Although it is widely acknowledged that Western society is increasingly secular, and that traditional forms of Christianity seem to be waning, recent decades have seen a world-wide explosion of Pentecostal and charismatic forms of Christianity. In the UK, the fastest growing churches are new, independent charismatic churches (Brierley 1999). This contrasts with the gradual, seemingly inexorable decline in attendance in most mainstream denominational churches. Worldwide, this century has welcomed 400 million new Pentecostal or charismatic Christians, the largest spurt of growth in Christian history. We do well not to ignore this vibrant group of Christians. Two very different accounts of this sort of worship are available. The discourse of Pentecostal and charismatic insiders is full of references to the power and presence of God, and all but eliminates human agency from the picture. Psychologists and sociologists, by contrast, draw attention to social norms, conformity, use of lan- guage, emotional manipulation, hysteria, and other human factors. A third approach, and the one taken in this chapter, suggests that the human–divine 32 Personality and religion relationship is one of active collaboration. Spiritual seekers are human beings who, through active collaboration with God, receive spiritual gifts. This model accepts that religious experience, however real, will be shaped to some degree by the teaching and social rules of the faith community, as well as by the psychological propensities of the person involved. Misunderstandings of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements are prone to arise when either an exclusively theological or an exclu- sively reductionist approach is taken. In this section, two spiritual gifts in particular are examined from this dual perspective: speaking in tongues and healing. Speaking in tongues Controversy has long attended the practice of the charismatic gifts (speaking in tongues, the interpretation of tongues, healing, miracles, the discerning of spirits, prophecy; see 1 Cor. 12). There are those who are vehemently for the practices and defend them on biblical and doctrinal grounds. Then there are those who are against them, also for biblical and doctrinal reasons (for example, those who adopt a ‘dispensational’ interpretation of the biblical narrative, according to which the miraculous gifts of the Spirit belong to an earlier ‘dispensation’ – the Age of the Apostles – which is now over). Others dislike the practice of the gifts of the Spirit simply on social and emotional grounds; to them these practices seem wacky and embarrassing. For some, the practicalities present a stumbling block: ‘Won’t church services get out of control?’ The scientific community has tended to take a sceptical view of the mysterious gift of speaking in tongues, also called ‘glossolalia’. Early studies tended to confirm prejudices: glossolalia was considered the ‘loose jargon of a maniac’ (e.g. Le Baron; cited in Malony and Lovekin 1985: 293). Later studies soon demonstrated, however,  The psychology of church services 33 that the kind of nonsensical jumble of words found in the private languages of schizophrenics (termed ‘word salads’) bore no relationship to speaking in tongues. Linguistically, tongues cannot be considered the language of the mad. But is it a language? Linguists and psychologists in the early part of the twentieth century were fasci- nated with the question of whether, as many Pentecostal tongues speakers insisted, tongues was an actual language (variously described as God’s own language, a heav- enly language, or some real, but unknown, earthly language). Opinions on either side seemed to assume that if this could be demonstrated one way or the other, then the debate regarding the appropriateness of speaking in tongues to Christian experi- ence would be settled. As it turned out, linguists studying numerous examples of glossolalia have concluded that tongues is not a ‘real’ language (Malony and Lovekin 1985). Tongues does not have the syntactic structure of a real language; the sounds generated often bear striking resemblance to the typical phonemes of the speaker’s own mother tongue; and the variety of phonemes is quite restricted. Characteristics such as echoing a key sound are common, for example: ‘she miya, ne kiya, sonoriya e-kiya’. However, this finding does not settle the question regarding the appropriateness of speaking in tongues in Christian experience one way or the other. Indeed, why should we assume that God would merely duplicate the uses and functions of a learned language with another ‘tongue’ similar in kind to the one we already have? It may be more useful to think that something else is afoot, and that perhaps speaking in tongues achieves other purposes. Further, speaking in tongues is not simply gibberish. Linguistic studies show that it is speech-like in its rhythm, cadence and intonation (if not in its syntax). Nor can it be readily faked. Pretend speaking in tongues is easily distinguished from the real thing by both linguists and by tongues speakers. Speaking in tongues appears to be expressive; the emotions and the mood of the utterance are clearly discernible to lis- teners and those speaking. However a one-to-one word correspondence is generally not feasible. A useful analogy may be that tongues speaking is like an improvised song or dance. An improvised dance is, at one level, a flow of expressive movement whose meaning cannot be put into exact words, but it is not thereby meaningless. Similarly, tongues is an expression that is beyond words, yet one that may bear a nar- rative structure. Another, rarer, form of glossolalia is reported to involve speaking a real foreign language that is completely unknown to the tongues speaker. Ever since the account in Acts 2, there have been numerous anecdotal accounts of tongues speakers speak- ing in a language that is understood by the hearers, but not the speaker. The utter- ance is understood by the hearers to be a message to them directly from God, delivered in this surprising way. This is termed ‘xenoglossolalia’, and appears to be similar to the experience of the disciples on the first day of Pentecost. Early Pente- costals believed that such experiences would become normative, enabling them to share the gospel in foreign lands without having to bother with the lengthy process of learning a foreign language. Despite recurring stories that such events do occa- sionally happen, researchers have had little luck in actually observing 34 Personality and religion unintelligible intelligible to intelligible to (but expressive) some all present non-interpreted tongues with xenoglossolalia tongues speaking gift of interpretation Figure 2.1 Degrees of intelligibility in glossolalia xenoglossolalia in process; hence it receives little empirical support in the literature. More commonly, a message in tongues is interpreted within the context of a Chris- tian gathering. In such instances, another person receives the ‘gift of interpretation’, and gives an interpretation (not a direct one-to-one ‘translation’) of the original tongues utterance. Figure 2.1 shows that these three kinds of tongues speaking can be located along a dimension of intelligibility. Quite apart from doctrinal differences, there have been arguments concerning whether or not speaking in tongues is psychologically healthy. As speaking in tongues appears linguistically to be a regression to earlier, more primitive forms of speech, it seemed possible that such activity could induce an unhealthy psychologi- cal regression as well. However, a host of studies over several decades showed that there was no evidence for mental illness or pathological regression among tongues speakers in comparison with the general population. Some theorists, such as Jung, have taken a more benevolent view. Jung is well known for his view that the religious quest is central to healthy individuation and, along with others, has suggested that glossolalia may connect a person to this deep religious impulse within the collective unconscious of the human personality at a pre-verbal level. The temporary loosen- ing of thought from its normal verbal anchor may be a healthy way of integrating other layers of the personality. Ego psychologists have suggested that speaking in tongues is indeed regressive, but that some speaking in tongues could be regressive ‘in the service of the ego’ (e.g. helping the ego to do its organising, integrating work in the personality). In contrast, other researchers have concluded that the regression involved in speaking in tongues can be indicative of deep inner conflict. E. Mansell Pattison (1968) observed that some speaking in tongues was ‘playful’ and conflict- free; this could indeed be healthy and positive for the personality; other forms of speaking in tongues seemed more conflictual; Pattison wondered whether perhaps this form could have negative functions in the psyche. From research so far, it seems plausible that the ability to speak in tongues is dormant in all humans, and may reflect an earlier developmental speech stage. There has also been debate concerning whether speaking in tongues is the result of an involuntary, trance-like state. Charismatics today generally eschew the idea of ‘out-of control’ states of mind. Dennis Bennet, one of the charismatic leaders of the 1970s stated: ‘Christian speaking in tongues is done as objectively as any other speaking, while the person is in full possession and control of his wits and volition, and is in no strange state of mind whatever’ (quoted in Malony and Lovekin 1985:  The psychology of church services 35 105). This recent emphasis on ‘normalcy’ accords with the observation that the charismatic movement is a more middle-class, socially acceptable and inclusivist movement than its Pentecostal forbears (who were more working class and separat- ist). Far from being ‘out of control’, there is recent evidence that speaking in tongues has a learned component: people become better and more fluent with practice. Not surprisingly, people often receive the gift with the help of other tongues speakers praying for them, and even coaching them to take the first steps towards utterance. Speaking in tongues happens today, as it did historically, most frequently where it is expected and hoped for. It is to be expected that the social context shapes people’s expectations about tongues, and influences the way in which the gift is sought, and then described afterwards. This does not mean that speaking in tongues is mere fab- rication; as we have said, pretend speaking in tongues is easily recognised as such. Further, not all those who seek the gift receive it (which may be in part due to psy- chological factors, such as being over-controlled, that militate against relaxing into speaking in tongues). Whether speaking in tongues ultimately comes from God, or puts one in direct touch with God, is beyond the scope of empirical psychology to determine. However, a strong tradition in qualitative research asserts that psychologists should listen to what tongues speakers themselves say about the experience, and should respect the religious framework in which it is understood. Tongues speakers today describe the experience variously as ‘a prayer language’, ‘a way of speaking to God when I don’t know what to say’, something that ‘helps me to feel God’s presence’, or as the writer of Romans puts it: ‘the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express’ (Romans 8. 26). Repeated speaking in tongues can be thought of as a personal ritual that allows the person to ‘pass out of a world determined entirely by pragmatic, rational, structured parameters and to pass into a new world of meaning where free- dom, spontaneity and feeling dominate’ (Malony and Lovekin 1985: 138). Psychology can, of course, ask such questions as ‘what are its effects?’ For this question, it seems that what ultimately determines whether speaking in tongues has healthy outcomes psychologically has more to do with the framework of teaching within which it occurs. A framework of Christian teaching (and its attendant social context) which is imbalanced may contort the experience of tongues, over-inflating its importance. Early Pentecostals used to insist on the presence of the gift of tongues to identify a ‘true’ Christian, twice blessed. Pentecostals and charismatics are rarely so hardline