Psychology of Religion Field-Building in North America: Planning Phase

Religion is a central aspect of being human, yet has largely been ignored within academic psychology since the behavioral revolution in the early 20th century. US and Canada now has around a dozen people in tenure-track or tenured positions in research-oriented universities who are willing to take graduate students who want to study religion. As these dozen are scattered across doctoral programs in social , personality, counseling, clinical, and developmental psychology—and that only a small fraction of the 200+ research-oriented universities in North America are represented—the field is still in a parlous state. We seek the Foundation’s support to help increase the prominence and thus understanding of the psychology of religion. This planning grant will include a workshop of early career scholars, and seed grants to support their research. Attention will be paid to achieving diversity across gender, ethnic, and religious lines for both attendees and presenters/mentors. Initial stages of preparing a highly engaging undergraduate textbook in the psychology of religion will also be part of this grant. This grant will also support assessing the current level of training and interest in the psychology of religion and spirituality in research-focused psychology departments in US and Canada (“landscape analysis”). It will also support the planning and writing of the ~$2.5M field-building initiative, to include funding of post-doctoral fellows and emerging faculty grants to make them competitive at top flight jobs. The initiative will be led by 3 highly visible scholars in the psychology of religion: Adam Cohen, Kevin Ladd, and Azim Shariff. It is an ideal team, all of whom are committed to spending time on growing psychology of religion within the academy. Division 36 enthusiastically supports this endeavor. This planning grant will support these investigators meeting to accomplish the workshop and seed grant program, and to prepare the full grant proposal.