Ralph W. Hood Jr. – författare

What does it mean to live out the theology presented in the Great Commandment to "love God above all and to love your neighbor as yourself"? In Blood and Fire, Poloma and Hood explore how understandings of godly love function to empower believers. Though godly love may begin as a perceived relationship between God and a person, it is made manifest as social behavior among people.Blood and Fire offers a deep ethnographic portrait of a charismatic church and its faith-based ministry, illuminating how religiously motivated social service makes use of beliefs about the nature of God's love. It traces the triumphs and travails associated with living a set of rigorous religious ideals, providing a richly textured analysis of a faith community affiliated with the "emerging church" movement in Pentecostalism, one of the fastest-growing and most dynamic religious movements of our day.Based on more than four years of interviews and surveys with people from all levels of the organization, from the leader to core and marginal members to the poor and addicts they are seeking to serve, Blood and Fire sheds light on the differing worldviews and religious perceptions between those who served in as well as those who were served by this ministry.Blood and Fire argues that godly love— the relationship between perceived divine love and human response— is at the heart of the vision of emerging churches, and that it is essential to understand this dynamic if one is to understand the ongoing reinvention of American Protestantism in the twenty-first century.

Keeping up with the rapidly growing research base, the leading graduate-level psychology of religion text is now in a fully updated fifth edition. It takes a balanced, empirically driven approach to understanding the role of religion in individual functioning and social behavior. Integrating research on numerous different faith traditions, the book addresses the quest for meaning; links between religion and biology; religious thought, belief, and behavior across the lifespan; experiential dimensions of religion and spirituality; the social psychology of religious organizations; and connections to coping, adjustment, and mental disorder. Chapter-opening quotations and topical research boxes enhance the readability of this highly instructive text.New to This Edition*New topics: cognitive science of religion; religion and violence; and groups that advocate terrorist tactics.*The latest empirical findings, including hundreds of new references.*Expanded discussion of atheism and varieties of nonbelief.*More research on religions outside the Judeo-Christian tradition, particularly Islam.*State-of-the-art research methods, including techniques for assessing neurological states.

This book presents a new psychological framework for understanding religious fundamentalism, one that distinguishes fundamentalist traditions from other faith-based groups and helps explain the thinking and behavior of believers. Steering clear of stereotypes, the highly regarded authors offer respectful, historically informed examinations of several major fundamentalist groups. Focusing primarily on Protestant sects, including the Church of God (a Pentecostal denomination), the serpent handling sects of Appalachia, and the Amish, the book also discusses Islamic fundamentalism. Addressed are such key themes as the role of the sacred text within fundamentalism; how beliefs and practices that many find difficult to comprehend actually fit into coherent meaning systems; and how these meaning systems help meet individuals' needs for purpose, value, and self-worth.

This open access book, updating a 1999 volume, is a resource for researchers who study religion and spirituality either as an interest in its own right (e.g., psychologists of religion) or in relation to some other variable such as physical or mental health (e.g., medical researchers). In the past few decades the study of religion in psychological terms has grown exponentially. Over this time, many measures have been developed, but are often difficult to find or have not been published at all. This volume offers a comprehensive listing and review of over 300 empirically valid measures that makes them easily accessible for scientific use. Belief systems are regarded as a critical factor in the health, both mentally and physically, of most individuals. This book provides a rich array of solidly researched means of assessing religiosity that can provide a scientific basis for psychological, sociological, and medical studies. It will serve researchers and clinicians alikein better assessing beliefs that are essential to an individual's health and behavior.

It makes a contribution to the semantics of everyday religious language and to the cross-cultural study of religion and to many related fields as well, because “spirituality” is evaluated in relation to personality, mysticism, well-being, religious styles, generativity, attachment, biography and atheism.

It makes a contribution to the semantics of everyday religious language and to the cross-cultural study of religion and to many related fields as well, because “spirituality” is evaluated in relation to personality, mysticism, well-being, religious styles, generativity, attachment, biography and atheism.

How has faith developed in the US and German societies across the last decades? In a three-wave longitudinal investigation of faith development, this study presents the changes of worldview and meaning-making that people associate with their religious, spiritual, agnostic and atheist identifications. For almost two decades, research teams in Chattanooga (USA) and Bielefeld (Germany) have invited and re-invited hundreds of people to participate in a personal interview and to answer an extensive questionnaire in order to better understand the reasons and the consequences of their continuity or discontinuity in religious, spiritual, or non-theistic faith.