The Psychology of Christian Spirituality

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Many of us try to balance two key sides of ourselves: a spiritual side and an analytical side. Our spiritual side seeks the sacred—something timeless or ultimately important or beautiful to us. For many, however, what we’ve learned through our quest for the sacred conflicts with what we’ve learned elsewhere. For example, we might learn that the religious teachings we were raised with conflict with science, and, so, with time, we come to view our previous religious beliefs as wishful thinking, silly, or flat-out unreasonable. We might still want to integrate our spiritual side and our analytical side in a desire for wholeness, but it doesn’t seem possible.

Integrating the Spiritual With the Analytical

Psychological research asking individuals who became less religious over time why they believe this happened suggests that difficulty integrating the spiritual with the analytical is one of the primary factors often reported. In historically Christian countries, such as the United States, this contributes to what has been called “the great dechurching,” as Christian beliefs and practices have become less common over the past several decades.

As Elizabeth Oldfield writes in her book Fully Alive, one effect of this is that “the stories that used to orient and guide us, handed down through generations of our ancestors, seem to have gotten lost in transit.” Oldfield shares how, at one point in her personal journey, “I tried to find a church, but struggled to connect… I found myself muttering cynically under my breath through services, so stopped going.”

Fully Aliveness and Connection

In light of this increasingly common experience involving loss of faith, I was fascinated to read Oldfield’s attempt to reclaim the core of Christian spirituality in her book. As I read it, as a psychologist of religion and spirituality, I couldn’t help but relate what she was saying with what I know of psychological theory and research. For instance, Oldfield offers what I consider a continuum of human functioning, with “fully aliveness” on one side of the spectrum and “sin” on the other. What Oldfield emphasizes in this is that how people function reflects the extent to which they are connected with themselves, the Earth, others, and the Divine. In other words, to be fully alive means we are connected; to be in sin means we are disconnected. This reframe helped me to appreciate Christianity in a new way, one that fits with my understanding of psychological research that humans generally do better when they feel meaningfully connected in a web of belonging.

Oldfield ultimately reviews the historical “seven deadly sins” and what Christian tradition suggests “fully aliveness” looks like with respect to each. For instance, with regard to “wrath,” Oldfield discusses some of the reasons why people appear increasingly polarized and how stories of Jesus often highlight how he initiated relationships with the lowest-status, most-outsider people around, as a way to break down social walls. For “avarice,” Oldfield notes how many tend to be motivated toward extrinsic values such as money, possessions, appearance, and fame, and how social problems such as poverty and climate change could be so much better addressed if we could focus more on virtues such as gratitude and generosity. For “gluttony,” Oldfield discusses addictions, in general, and how our needs for awe and self-transcendence could be redirected to better promote health and flourishing than when we try to find ecstasy through chemical means. For “pride,” Oldfield writes about the limitations of individualism and the need for repetitive, accessible social structures that nudge us into deep community.

With these ideas, what Oldfield and, indeed, what Christianity seem to be getting at are broad principles of conduct that help individuals and communities thrive. To me, these just seem like good social psychology. They have the potential to orient and guide us in ways that not only benefit us but also get at some of the social causes that contribute to unjust human suffering. As another example, when Oldfield writes about “envy,” she explains how the belief that all humans have a spark of the Divine within provides a compelling rationale to believe every person has unconditional worth. Of course, this shares a lot with a fundamental principle of humanistic psychology as well, but by centering this belief within sacred ideology, it more powerfully provides a reason for undermining the kind of status anxiety and social comparison that seem to contribute to so much unhappiness and emotional suffering today.

Oldfield also—and with a great deal of hesitation—talks about what she calls the “G Bomb”—God—what theologian Deanna Thompson refers to in her book Glimpsing Resurrection as “the One who creates and calls human beings into relationship with the Divine and with each other.” In a book trying to highlight the core of Christianity, there’s really no getting past God and Jesus, although Oldfield also points out that you could still benefit from much of the above without those beliefs. For many, this is where the analytical mind takes over and wants to throw the baby out with the bath water. In contrast, Oldfield’s Christian beliefs are, for her, “just my best guess, my wager on what makes me feel most human, the strongest container I have found for the pain and love and longing of being alive.”

Convergence of Faith and Science

For me, Oldfield's book raises a fundamental question: Must the spiritual side of us be at irreconcilable odds with the analytical side of us? If we focus on the mythological aspects of religion or spirituality, or if we read a sacred text like a fundamentalist does, conflict may be unavoidable. But, if we look at the general principles of any religious or spiritual tradition, I believe what we see reflects a great deal of what we know in science. In this sense, faith and science need not conflict; in fact, they may often converge.