There Is No Such Thing as Spiritual but Not Religious

The Sacred Core: What My Students Taught Me About Religion and Spirituality Psychology of Religion The Sacred Core: Rethinking Religion vs. Spirituality A classroom argument over the "spiritual but not religious" turned into a deeper question: are religion and spirituality two things, or one search wearing different clothes? VC Dr. Victor Counted The Flourishing Journal It started, as the best class discussions often do, with a disagreement. This healthy disagreement, I must say, has been ongoing throughout the semester. This time, we were working through the standard definitions in my psychology of religion course, the ones every textbook offers: religion as the institutional and doctrinal thing, and spirituality as the…

Continue ReadingThere Is No Such Thing as Spiritual but Not Religious

Your Earliest Relationships May Have Shaped How You Experience God

Psychology · Faith · Human Flourishing Your Earliest Relationships May Have Shaped How You Experience God By Victor Counted, Ph.D. Professor, Author, and Psychologist There is a question most people never think to ask about their faith. It is not a theological question, but a psychological one: where did your felt experience of God come from? Not the doctrine you were taught or the catechism you memorized, but the actual texture of your relationship with God—whether He feels close or distant, welcoming or demanding, safe or unpredictable. For much of the history of psychology, that question was either dismissed or spiritualized. However, a growing body of research at the intersection…

Continue ReadingYour Earliest Relationships May Have Shaped How You Experience God