A new era has emerged in research on entheogens largely due to clinical trials conducted at Johns Hopkins University and similar studies sponsored by the Council for Spiritual Practices. In these notes and queries, I reflect on implications of these developments for psychological studies of religion and on what this research may mean for Christian churches in the United States. I conclude that the aims and methods of this research fit well within Jamesian efforts of contemporary psychology of religion to (...) assess religious practices by their fruits for life. Furthermore, some communitarian religious concerns that religious experiences occasioned by entheogens pose risks to the integrity of religious community are shown to be largely unfounded. However, it is suggested that certain risks for religious life posed by all investigations/interventions by knowledge experts—in particular, the colonization of the religious life world and the commodification of its practices—also attend these developments for Christian churches. Additionally, risks of individual harm in the use of entheogens appear to be significant and, therefore, warrant earnest ethical study. (shrink)

In his 1970s work Chance and Necessity, Jacques Monod provided an explanatory framework not only for the biological evolution of species, but, as has become recently apparent, for the evolutionary development of cancers. That is, contemporary oncological research has demonstrated that cancer is an evolutionary disease that develops according to the same dynamics of chance and necessity at work in all evolutionary phenomena. And just as various challenges are raised for religious thought by the operations of chance and necessity within (...) biological evolution, so this particular theological question is raised by the findings of contemporary cancer science: Where is love, divine and human, within the evolutionary chance and necessity operative in all dimensions of cancer? In this article, we contribute to the dialogue in science and religion by offering the following responses to this question: the thought of Arthur Peacocke to claim that divine love may be understood to be at work in, with, and under our very efforts to make theological meaning of the chance and necessity that inform the evolution of cancers; and Charles Sanders Peirce's evolutionary philosophy to make this claim: that the work of scientific communities of inquiry to understand and to find better ways to cope with the disease of cancer is itself the work of divine love amid the chance and necessity of cancer. (shrink)

Building on the theoretical research of community psychology and cultural psychology, I focus in this paper on these two questions: What kind of religious coping is practiced by some members of the Lutheran tradition? What does an understanding of the relationship between the tradition and religious coping of these members indicate that may be distinctive or unexpected about their religious coping? I do this by: reviewing the background of my research in community psychology, cultural psychology, and tradition-specific research on religious (...) coping - particularly in the United States; outlining a method for a qualitative study of nine Lutheran co-researchers in the United States who had experienced a significant negative event; reporting some of the results of that study; using the results of the study to discuss the two questions above; concluding with some suggestions for future research of the specific religious traditions in which religious coping phenomena may occur, and of the phenomena of religious coping in specific religious traditions. (shrink)

. In his work The Cosmos in Light of the Cross physicist and Lutheran pastor George L. Murphy extends the religious rationales of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Eberhard Jüngel to argue specifically for a nonreligious, scientific study of and appreciation for the world. In doing so, Murphy offers a clear and coherent theology of the cosmos within the bounds of piety alone. Like Calvin and Schleiermacher before him who strove to stay within these bounds, Murphy shares their endpoint of a practical (...) theology—that is, faithful reflections that will encourage wise and faithful existence. In doing so, Murphy has written a brilliant and extraordinarily readable account of a chiasmic cosmos. He also quite practically and indeed pastorally offers suggestions for how the God of that cosmos may be not only understood but also worshiped and adored. (shrink)

How do the experiences of people who undergo extreme suffering and trauma in one generation get passed on to the next generation? And how do these experiences affect religious–spiritual beliefs and practices? Can we help to create resilience in these later generations through these religious–spiritual beliefs? In order to answer these questions, one must remember and understand not only how trauma is embodied and inherited, but also the role that religious beliefs and practices play in facing and overcoming the trauma. (...) People who have experienced trauma can pass on the effects to subsequent generations biologically through epigenetic changes to their DNA, but also through their religious and spiritual beliefs and practices. The ways people remember and recover from trauma involve complex biological, psychosocial, and spiritual processes. We use the sciences of embodied cognition and epigenetics to analyze the heritability of trauma and its spiritual–religious manifestations in the next generations. Having done so, our hope is that we can understand how spiritual and religious practices can be developed to help people who undergo trauma so that they can become resilient and thrive. (shrink)