Towards Cultural Psychology of Religion

The aims pursued in this book are quite modest. The text is not an introduction in the traditional sense to any psychological subdiscipline or field of application, nor does it present anything essentially new. Rather, it shows ‘work in progress’, as it attempts to contribute to an integration of two differently structured, but already existing fields within psychology. In order to explain this, it is probably best to say a few words about how the book came into being and about what it hopes to achieve. As a project, the volume owes very much to others. While lecturing in places ranging from South Africa to Canada and from California through European co- tries to Korea, colleagues have often urged me to come up with a volume on ‘c- tural psychology of religion’. For reasons that should become clear in the text, I feel uncomfortable with such a demand. To my understanding, there exists no single cultural psychology of religion. Rather, there are ever expanding numbers of div- gent types of psychologies, some of which are applied to understanding religious aspects of human lives or to researching specific religious phenomena, while others are not. Within this heterogeneous field that is, correctly or not, still designated as ‘psychology’, there are also many approaches that are sometimes referred to as ‘cultural psychology’ or as ‘culturally sensitive psychologies’. It would be wor- while applying many of these to research on religious phenomena, but at present not too many are in fact so applied.

From the reviews:

“In just 237 pages of text, this book achieves these aims remarkably well and more. Much of the discussion is relevant to the whole field of psychology. … In short, any graduate student in either cultural psychology or the psychology of religion needs to read this book. American psychologists will probably find diverse perspectives that are both provocative and engaging, both challenging and enlightening.” (Lê X. Hy, PsycCRITIQUES, Vol. 56 (14), April, 2011)

"As the first introduction to contemporary cultural psychology of religion, this book will appeal especially to psychologists and psychiatrists, but also to any scholar interested in culture and conceiving of it as the critical ingredient to understanding an individual, a given society, and the role of religion in the life or lives studied.  Belzen’s repeated protestations that these aims are modest are countered by his trenchant literature review, which indicates that culture has at best been used as a variable among others in psychological research in the twentieth century; at worst culture has been completely ignored in favor of studies that aim for objective results, irrespective of cultural or individual idiosyncrasies.  The monumentous review of literature in this work is as keen and probing as they come, which adds to the persuasiveness of Belzen’s modest appeal to cultural psychology of religion, while at the same time making obvious how stacked the trends in literature are against such a “modest” appeal.  Belzen’s exposition is shrewd and creative in its ability to identify problems in psychology of religion, and how cultural psychology of religion can possibly solve them, but at this high price point and given the expansive literature review, it is meant for a well-informed and wealthy audience.  This book is a must acquire, therefore, for any major university research library."(Joseph M. Kramp, John Jay College, CUNY)

Having received several international awards and distinctions, Jacob A. Belzen is one of Europe’s best-known psychologists of religion. As he has obtained doctorates in social science, history, philosophy and sciences of religion, his numerous publications are characterized by a strong interdisciplinary approach. He is a full professor at the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands). He worked on this book while he was a visiting Fellow at Cambridge University (UK).