Integration: defending it, describing it, doing it.

The extensive literature on the integration of psychology and Christian faith falls into three rough categories: defending integration, describing integration, and doing integration. This article series is a very welcome and capable rearticulation of core themes in the defense and description of the integrative task. After highlighting common themes in the series, I query two key areas where I wish the authors had developed their thinking more explicitly. First, the focus on an undefined "theism" as the religious core rather than Christianity is both puzzling and unsatisfying, as an abstraction like theism seems to have little substance to bring to bear on the integrative task. Second, the linkages in this series between theistic belief and consequences for psychological theory and practice were often implicit, and I argue that more substantive and explicit engagement with thick theological sources holds more promise to advance the integrative task. I close by applying the thrust of the series in rebuttal against contemporary voices of ambivalence about the integrative task.

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This four article series (Reber; Nelson; Slife & Whoolery; Richardson, this issue) is a commendable contribution to the discussion of the relationship between and integration of psychology and religious faith. It is an honor to be asked to comment on the series.

At the risk of losing readers at the outset by sounding like an alliterating preacher, we might think of the extensive literature on the integration of psychology and Christian faith as falling into three rough categories: defending it, describing it, and doing it. Defending integration involves creating intellectual space for a conversation about how to constitute a productive relationship between what so many people think of as separate and wholly incompatible human activities, psychology and religion; a space that establishes some basis for a relationship. In my own writing, this has usually involved establishing how, on the one hand, science is a human phenomenon grounded in metaphysical assumptions that must, in the end, be accepted in faith and often are not religiously neutral, while on the other hand arguing that religion--or more specifically Christianity--is more than ethereal values and significance, but rather makes some assertions about the objective reality of human experience that are cognitively meaningful and that can engage with psychological inquiry. Describing integration includes the many offerings of "models" of integration and other attempts to create taxonomies or classify methods of integration that flow from our religious perspectives. Projects that actually qualify as attempts at doing integration, acting from or drawing on religious faith in dialogue with psychology to add constructively to the body of psychological theory and practice, are less common. The articles in the series focus largely on defending and describing integration.

Defending and Describing Integration

The five authors of our four articles obviously see their arguments as complementary and progressive. The articles by Reber and Nelson are largely preoccupied with defending the possibility of integration. Reber and Nelson, as well as the articles by Slife and Whoolery and by Richardson, summarize problems that plague--and indeed are intrinsic to--secularized approaches to psychology that steadfastly minimize, ignore or evade the phenomenon of religion in human life, but just as importantly that steadfastly minimize, ignore or evade the role of religiously-connected metaphysical assumptions that shape the project of psychological science and practice. In the words of Richardson, psychological "theory and findings are significantly colored by rarely acknowledged and examined assumptions about fundamental matters, like the nature of the world, knowledge, and the good life" (p. 232). In sketching such problems and thus the limits of secular approaches, all the authors defend integration by suggesting a role for religion in understanding the human condition.

Reber offers arguments that a religiously-uninformed psychology inadequately serves our full understanding of the human condition, including arguments that a) exclusion of religion from consideration is often rationalized out of a passionate "resistance to unexamined claims of authority and unquestioned dogma" (this issue); b) unexamined ethical assumptions and values pervade scholarly and professional work in the field; and c) secular psychology ignores key aspects (i.e., religious aspects) of human experience; and d) that "whenever secular psychologists do include religion in their research, they risk transforming the religious phenomena into something other than what they mean to the religious people experiencing them" (Reber, this issue).

As an example of the last point, Reber notes that professional applications of psychology that treat religion in an instrumental fashion, as a tool or procedure for furthering human well-being alone, rip religion out of its grounding (in the minds of many) in a transcendent being. He summarizes: "Without including God, psychologists are not really studying religion as many religious people experience it and they are using psychotherapeutic techniques that have a completely different meaning and purpose than they would have in a religious context. They are studying and applying something else, something vaguely resembling or shadowing religion that has been altered to fit their secular and scientific world-view, but is not properly religion at all" (Reber. Richardson picks up this concern about instrumentalism from another perspective.

Nelson provides helpful and critical summaries of the "key philosophical presuppositions", both metaphysical and epistemological, that shape the contours of contemporary psychological thought and that, in their assertively secular form, challenge religious psychologists. He rightly points back in intellectual history to major scientific figures who saw no deep divide between religion and science and who were scientific pioneers. But Nelson rightly portrays the subtlety of these issues in pointing out, for instance, that Bacon's approach, while allowing for some dialogue between religion and science, simultaneously "undercut the possibility for equal dialogue". He engages the antireligious metaphysical assumptions of materialism and naturalism, and the epistemological and methodological challenge of positivism. Nelson traces the impact of positivism in shaping the contours of modern psychology through John Stewart Mill, Sigmund Freud, and the logical positivists. One of Nelson's most helpful (if brief) discussions is on the "Failure of Logical Positivism" and its replacement today with an operative neo-positivism that retains positivism's classic hostility toward religious modes of knowing while embracing more fulsome discussion of core assumptions and blending elements of classic empirical verificationism with broader methods for ascertaining scientific validity (Nelson, this issue). This neo-positivism seems no more hospitable to religion than its forebears.

Slife and Whoolery continue the work of defending integration. "Therapeutic and experimental methods are frequently viewed as theologically, if not philosophically, neutral to the subject matter they are investigating. This article aims to dispel this common myth" (Slife & Whoolery, this issue). They capably critique objectivism, materialism and reductionism in light of a theistic framework, and effectively rebut the myth of the religious neutrality of the received scientific tradition. If psychological science is not religiously neutral, then a case may be possible for theistic or religious discussants to participate in shaping our understanding of humanity. They conclude rightly that "there is unusual agreement among the observers and commentators of science that we will never escape assumptions and values.... Indeed, even to approach a phenomenon for the purpose of study is already to have decided or assumed: 1) that it is a phenomena, 2) that it deserves study, and 3) that it can be studied" (Slife & Whoolery, this issue). Religious non-neutrality of the psychological establishment helps to justify religious engagement.

It is in their move toward urging a theistic approach to inquiry that Slife and Whoolery begin to move beyond defending the possibility of integration to describing methods for it. Several themes of interest emerge. First, Slife and Whoolery focus on what they take to be a central omission of secular method, that being the capacity to take into account "the activity of God" or the capacity to observe and make sense of "divine influences in the world.". They take as a given that theistic presuppositions would require this, and call for a method which they call "theistic inquiry", a hermeneutical method compatible with such theistic assumptions.

I would question this focus on the "the activity of God." Like these authors, my religious, specifically Christian, understandings of the human person drive me to value an interpretive approach as vital or even central to human understanding, particularly of humanity itself (Van Leeuwen, 1985, made this argument effectively two decades ago). Made in the image of God, humans must not be seen as reducible to material existence, must in some way be seen as capable of meaningful agency, and must be seen as creative and as actively meaning-making such that the search for reductionistic laws to explain human behavior will always be incomplete. The need for interpretive methods seems to me adequately grounded in how theists believe God made humanity, and to have little to do with structuring a method so as to catch God's actions in a methodological net. I would urge Slife and Whoolery to more clearly distinguish between an understanding of "the activity of God" and an understanding of humanity as theists believe God made us, and elaborate why the attempt to develop a method to register God's activity is actually vital. I believe God is indeed active, but I am unsure that any psychological methodology will capture God's activity.

Second, Slife and Whoolery bring theism, on the one hand, and interpretive theory and methods on the other into conversation in an interesting way. The presumptive framework of the article, and indeed of the series, is that a theistic worldview demands or requires the adoption of interpretive method to understand the human condition. I am in agreement with this conclusion, but would note nonetheless that this argument is rather more implicit than explicit in the series, and further that the relationship between theism and interpretive method is not self-evident. Support for (and perhaps even an imperative for) interpretive method can indeed be inferred from theism, but the interpretive method is not uniquely drawn from theistic presuppositions. Humanistic assumptions, without any tinge of theism, have seemed to serve quite well as a justification for such methods; Slife and Whoolery, recognizing this, note that "phenomenologists are traditionally a scrupulously secular group, with little room for divinity of any kind," (this issue). It is also the case that theistic religion would seem to demand more in the pursuit of understanding of the human person than just the use of interpretive method. Perhaps the relationship between theism and interpretive theory is neither necessary nor sufficient in either direction. Richardson poignantly argues that "Ontologies have consequences" (this issue), and those consequences include methodological consequences, but the relationships between ontologies and their consequences are often not simple. It was only in rather loose ways that I could conceive of theism, as I understand it, necessarily entailing interpretive inquiry.

Richardson's article is almost entirely dedicated to commending hermeneutical philosophy and method, saying it "might contribute to a more plausible picture of the world and the place of humans in it that would be open to religious claims and meanings .... [and thus give] us insights into what might be the most fruitful kind of interaction between psychology and religion." He also suggests ways in which this approach might challenge the aims and methods of the social sciences. As with Slife and Whoolery, I am inclined to agree but want to press for more explicit connections between the religious commitments and the proposed innovations.

Richardson gives a useful brief introduction to the history of hermeneutical philosophy and method, noting importantly that in the last century a profound shift has occurred away from seeing hermeneutics as a method to an emphasis on "ontological hermeneutics, which aims to clarify the being of the entities that interpret and understand, namely, ourselves" (this issue). Richardson develops an important argument for why positivistic scientific methods can be seen as grounded in a particular conception of the human as a knowing agent, with scientists who adopt this approach rarely doing so reflectively aware of how their self-understandings are driving their method. Again, as he says, "Ontologies have consequences", even if we are not conscious of them.

As an example of the pervasive impact of ontologies, much of contemporary psychological theory takes "a view of human action as largely instrumental maneuvering ... among quite separate, fundamentally self-interested individuals.... It should be obvious that assumptions about inherent self-interest and action as essentially instrumental in character are built into the conceptual ground work of many theories of personality and psychotherapy as diverse as the Freudian metapsychology and cognitive-behavioral therapy, for example" (Richardson, this issue). The author offers the hermeneutical view of the person as an approach that could counter such views. Importantly, he also recognizes that interpretive approaches may still retain this instrumental focus, offering the example of the nonreductive approach to persons of contemporary psychodynamic theory as one example. The important lesson here is that no method will necessarily correct content problems in ontological assumptions. Interpretive approaches may retain an instrumental focus, and reductive-objectivist approaches might find some other basic conception of human motivation.

Richardson defends a kind of critical realism, and in an age that teeters on the edge of skepticism, this important affirmation deserves highlighting. We can know, even if we cannot know finally or perfectly:

Our experience, reflection, and judgment, tested through honest dialogue
with other points of view, leaves us with certain perceptions and
convictions that we take quite seriously and find to be true at any
given moment. We really can't do otherwise, we can't escape working
assumptions and value commitments of one kind or another. I would
contend that in a modern context we have to acknowledge that our
understanding is always perspectival and limited and is bound to alter
as we move toward greater understanding, down a pathway that typically
is marked by both harrowing and happy surprises. But that means only
that there is no final or certain truth, not that there is no truth at
all. To claim that all moral or spiritual beliefs, our own and others',
are utterly relative or without support ... is to pretend once again to
the sovereign status of the punctual self or a version of the modern
'view from nowhere.'" (Richardson, this issue)

Richardson calls for a complex understanding of what it will take to develop a "thick" understanding of the human person:

* To make fuller sense of such findings, we would need to rely on some ontology of

* the human world we found plausible along with some number of thick

* descriptions of human action and experience in this realm, a variety of theoretical

* perspectives or interpretive lenses we believed were (and felt we could defend as)

* illuminating, and, ideally, additional kinds of empirical findings" (Richardson, this issue).

Richardson closes with a provocative question: "who or what decides on the terms of this integration?" He rightly argues that it is not as simple as submitting religiously-informed views to critique by naturalistically-grounded standards of verification. "Psychological methods of inquiry cannot serve as an independent test of belief or authenticity, because they derive their force partly from a naturalist ontology and a "disguised ideology" of an individualistic and instrumentalist sort.". "Is there an credible alternative to mutual estrangement or surreptitious domination?... What seems called for, I suggest, is not so much integration as full-blooded argument and dialogue between, on the one hand, the whole package of modern liberal individualist beliefs and institutions, and, on the other hand, religious faith and practice."

ENGAGING THE ARGUMENT: THEISM AND METHOD

I have profiled above what I took as the highlights of the progressive argument through these four fine articles and ending with Richardson's call for dialogue, raising a few specific questions along the way. In my own earlier survey of the relationship of religion and psychology for a broader, nonreligious audience (Jones, 1994), I described three modes in which religious thought could engage psychological thought productively and respectfully, and thus contribute positively to doing integration: a) the critical-evaluative mode where religious suppositions give us a perspective from which to discuss the adequacy of the background beliefs that shape psychological theory and practice; b) the constructive mode where religiously-grounded understandings of the human condition might suggest fruitful new approaches to understanding humanity psychologically; and c) the dialogical mode of mutual influence between religion and psychology. All three modalities for relating psychology and religion were skillfully manifest in this article series. Certain secular assumptions or non-neutral ontologies were effectively described and challenged from the perspective of theistic belief. Potentially productive suggestions for fruitful direction for the advance of theistically-informed theory, research and practice were discussed. The entire series is a model of respectful dialogue. In the spirit of continuing this dialogue, I offer two questions, or perhaps challenges, to the series as a whole.

First, the pervasive appeal of this article series is to "theism" or "theistic faith." I have argued elsewhere (Jones, 2000) that the seemingly universal phenomenon of "religion" is itself a cognitive artifact of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment mindset included a repudiation of tradition (both religious and philosophical authorities), drew from the Scientific Revolution a valuing of empirical observation, aspired to grasp absolute truths of universal scope, and confessed unbounded confidence in the capacity of reason to advance human welfare. With the Enlightenment prejudice in favor of the absolute and universal, and its prejudice against established religious authority and tradition, the search began in the 18th and 19th centuries for "the universal reality or genus ('Religion') which was presumed to be behind the particularistic facade or particular species (what came to be called the 'religions'). The term 'Religion' came to stand for a universal human capacity which was presumed to transcend particular religious institutions and traditions" (Jones, 2000, p. 39). As a Christian, I am a particularist; my faith is real not (first) because of a real and universal human capacity to engage the transcendent, but because God really became man 2,000 years ago and lived, died, and rose again. I suppose I am, then, something of a premodern in placing greater emphasis on the religions rather than "religion." The religions each have distinct substance, while I am unsure that such a thing as "religion" as a universal phenomenon exists except as a sometimes useful abstraction.

So what is theism? It goes undefined in the article series. If we are to understand the impact of theism, what are we to understand it to be? Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism; these monotheistic religions I understand. A particular religion with its sacred scriptures and elaborated traditions can have implications for psychology, but can an abstract entity of theism? I affirm the value of collaboration across faiths, and affirm the value of allegiances of cobelligerents based on common understandings. But if theism is simply belief in a personal and ultimate divine being, I am left unsure that there is any meat on the bones of belief from which to have a dialogue with psychology. Thus, I am unsure why the authors have chosen to frame their contextual commitments in this light, the light of an undefined theism, rather than in terms of particularistic faith.

My second challenge picks up on my earlier comments about implicit reasoning at places in the series. In engaging the substance of real religious traditions, we have the opportunity to engage with deep, thick religious resources. I suspect that the closer we get to real dialogue, the more we need to forthrightly "tip our hands" about our faith commitments. Richardson came the closest of any, in my mind, of taking steps toward "doing integration." However, he discusses theological critique of methods of psychological inquiry without deep engagement with theological assertions, and notably does not turn to theological sources for understanding of the human condition, instead turning to "hermeneutic ontology" (Richardson, this issue).

It was notable to me that though the articles each called for the establishment of theistic religion as an equal partner in the project of understanding and intervening in human life, each of the articles were written without drawing on religious resources per se. I was left wondering, frankly, if this was because the abstract entity of theism had no substance on which to draw. It struck me as possible that theism was being used by the authors as a proxy for some variant of Christianity, but the lack of explicit mining of a tradition left this unclear. Again, I am supportive from my religious, evangelical Christian stance for his project of asserting the value of religious ontologies to a religious psychologist, but I would press for a more explicit discussion with flesh-and-blood religious belief than with an abstracted and always implicit dialogue partner (theism). In summary, I believe integration will be advanced most effectively through deep engagement with real, particular religious resources and through explicit and forceful articulation of how those resources have implications for how we understand our subject matter.

EXTENDING THE ARGUMENT TO THE CONTEMPORARY ANGST ABOUT INTEGRATION

This article series renews again the defense and definition of integration in a welcome rearticulation of the project. This is a good thing, as there are signs that the integration enterprise is faltering. I hear a lot of murmuring about integration. Some is from those who want more complete and exclusively biblical answers to hard questions, but the most disconcerting is coming from the putative center of the integration movement. I will briefly engage church historian Daryl Hart's influential 2001 article in the Christian Scholar's Review, and Douglas and Rhonda Jacobsen's 2004 book Scholarship and Christian faith: Enlarging the conversation.

Hart seems convinced the integrationist project is doomed to failure. He examines the way mainline theologians in the middle of the last century, responding to the spiritual crises of the World Wars and the absence of spiritual values in the university, tried to re-inject theology into the curriculum. They failed; their efforts had little enduring impact on the academy. He suggests that those seeking to do integration have not found a better rationale for Christian scholarship than that argued by these mainline theologians. The seeming power of his critique is based in the supposed historical parallels between the cases, but while his criticisms of the agenda and success of the mainline theologians are cogent, the differences between them and the contemporary integrationist thinkers he is criticizing are substantial and the similarities superficial. The Jacobsens argument is more theological and ecclesial than historical. I will here summarize some parallel themes in their arguments.

First, both Hart and the Jacobsens are offended by the putative theological particularity of the integrationist model, which in the words of the Jacobsens is "at its roots a Reformed (i.e., Calvinistic) vision of Christian scholarship" (p. 25). Hart concurs. This article series has little to offer of relevance to this criticism, so let me simply comment that I find this complaint vacuous because all Christian traditions claim some elements in common, some core of apostolic faith. One such core is a shared belief that the scriptures are God's revealed truth and will. A tradition that has denied that special revelation has any cognitive content that merits primacy among our intellectual commitments (which is the core of integration) seems to me to have departed essential elements of orthodoxy.

Second, both Hart and the Jacobsens reveal in their critiques that they are judging the integrationist project to have failed because it fails to conform to certain procedural virtues that clearly define success for these writers. The Jacobsens suggest that the goal of the Christian scholar should be to "strike up the friendships [with secular scholars] that might lead to mutual respect and cooperation" (p. 24). Any approach to scholarship that is not first premised on an imperative of cooperation is suspect. Hart, similarly, seems to presuppose throughout his article that success means broad acceptance in the academy on the academy's terms. Hart argues explicitly against the integration enterprise because

the prevailing academic culture forbids any form of argument that
resorts to special revelation, again, not simply because of disbelief
but because many of the claims of holy writ cannot be empirically
tested. Control beliefs, whatever they involve, must be the result of
special revelation since by definition they include theological
affirmations. Is it really possible, then, to do scholarship that stems
directly and explicitly from such beliefs in the secular academy?
[Hart's answer to this rhetorical questions is] The secular university
has no way of making sense of Christian scholarship if believers and
non-believers genuinely know differently. (p. 398)

Both authors seem to be manifesting a commitment or instinct that the future of Christian scholarship hinges on being perceived by secular authorities as playing by the rules and doing work acceptable according to the canons of the academy today. The Jacobsens say "Christian scholars will probably need to develop a range of new, less grandiose ways of relating faith and learning that are more attuned to contemporary scholarly practices" (p. 28). Both sets of authors seem to prioritize cooperation and acceptance, and to be averse to conflict with the secular academy.

Third, and at the deepest level, it seems to me that the aversion these authors feel to the integrationist undertaking has to do with the view they seem to take of revelation and its cash value for shaping the scholarly project. Hart's account is laced with a set of confused descriptions of what constitutes the "Christian mind," descriptors that take us in a subjectivist rather objectivist direction. He speaks varyingly of "the effect of faith on epistemology" (p. 393), "the difference faith makes for knowledge" (p. 394), "the difference that regeneration makes on the mind of the believer" (p. 395), and so forth. By focusing on faith rather than belief, Hart stays away from content issues that can actually engage with the ontologies of secular thought.

The Jacobsens more squarely engage the role of religious content and its implication for scholarship, saying

In particular, many non-Reformed Christians, and even some Reformed
Christians, are uncomfortable with the notion that faith supplies the
believer with a full-blown Christian world-view. The issue for them is
not the fact of revelation but the nature of revelation. Is Christian
revelation personal or propositional? Does revelation supply us with a
complete vision of the world, or is revelation more piecemeal, offering
important clues about the origins, meaning, and purpose of the universe
but never spelling things out in fine detail? Do Christians possess
extrafactual knowledge about the world, or is the addition of Christian
revelation primarily a matter of values and attitude? (p. 28).

It is in light of these latter two concerns raised by Hart and the Jacobsens that I so prize the article series here. These authors recognize the need to forcefully challenge the status quo. Knowledge is advanced by dialogue, but dialogue that is sharp, at times hard, and always honest. Making friends, being nice, and playing by the rules may prove advantageous to building a vita and a career, but I appreciate that these five authors are willing to challenge the adequacy of the status quo out of their determined pursuit of truth. By their example and by the substance of their arguments, they provide a substantive rebuttal of the conformist instincts of Hart and the Jacobsens.

But most importantly, this entire four article series does an excellent job of tracing how the world of social science is structured by implicit commitments that are not religiously neutral. Psychological science and practice is guided by worldviews, and our choice is not whether we will fall under such influence but rather which we will allow to shape us. Such worldviews need not be utterly consistent, logical, objective, propositional, or all-encompassing to be fundamental and determinative of the trajectory of our research and practice. The entire trajectory of the article series is one that rightly points out that (repeating a quote from Richardson) psychological "theory and findings are significantly colored by rarely acknowledged and examined assumptions about fundamental matters, like the nature of the world, knowledge, and the good life" (this issue). If this is true, our choice is never whether to do integration, but rather what we will be doing integration with.

Each of the dubious rhetorical questions from the Jacobsens quoted above could be challenged, but let me challenge one: their use of the vacuous (if oft employed) dichotomy of personal or propositional. Their question, "Is Christian revelation personal or propositional?", is a straw man, a needless dichotomy. Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical Fides et Ratio, said "What is distinctive in the biblical text is the conviction that there is a profound and indissoluble unity between the knowledge of reason and the knowledge of faith" (II.16.4). Further, "Belief is often humanly richer than mere evidence, because it involves an interpersonal relationship and brings into play not only a person's capacity to know but also the deeper capacity to entrust oneself to others, to enter into a relationship with them which is intimate and enduring" (III.32.1). Note that John Paul sees the interpersonal enriching the knowing process and not counterposed against it, and sees the capacity to know cognitively as complementary to the capacity to know interpersonally. It is not "personal or propositional;" rather, it is personal and propositional.

We could pick apart other aspects of this part of their argument. For instance, the Jacobsens create a false forced choice between revelation providing a "complete vision of the world" or being piecemeal. Knowledge in part can nevertheless be knowledge secure enough on which to organize our thoughts, as Richardson argued so well. If that is not so, then there is no knowledge at all in the world.

The issue is whether we have religious resources, indeed a word from God, that has relevance for our work as scholars. Integrationists agree that revelation does not constitute our disciplines. Scripture does not exhaust what humans know or can know. But if God has spoken and acted, and if his spoken or enacted Word has relevance for our area of academic study, what could possibly be our rationale for ignoring that Word or even suppressing our knowledge of it?

CONCLUSION

The integrative task deserves competent defense and description, and this article series is a welcome rearticulation of many core reasons that the integration movement deserves continued commitment, especially in the face of vocal ambivalence about this vital undertaking. If this article series is taken seriously and has an impact, religious psychologists will take religious phenomena seriously on their own terms, understand better the vital and central role religion plays in the lives of so many, think deeply about the religious implications of the assumptions that guide their theorizing, research, and practice, and begin again to pursue knowledge of the human condition with the creativity and innovation that comes from seeing your subject matter, and indeed your own theories and methods, with new, religiously-informed eyes.

It has been a concern for me for many years that we spend so much time defending and defining integration and so rarely get around to doing it (Jones, 1996). Building on the foundations that have been defended anew here, we can hope that our community of professionals may apply the Christian worldview to reshaping psychological theory, research and practice.

REFERENCES

Hart, D. G. (2001). Christian scholars, secular universities, and the problem with the antithesis. Christian Scholar's Review, 30(4), 383-402.

Jacobsen, D., & Jacobsen, R. H. (2004), Scholarship and Christian faith: Enlarging the conversation. (New York: Oxford University Press).

Jones, S. L. (1994). A constructive relationship for religion with the science and profession of psychology: Perhaps the boldest model yet. American Psychologist, 49(3), 184-199.

Jones, S. (1996). Reflections on the nature and future of the Christian psychologies. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 15(2), 133-142.

Jones, S. (2000). Religion and psychology: Theories and methods. In A. Kazdin (Ed.), Encyclopedia of psychology (Volume 7, pp. 38-42). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, and New York: Oxford University Press.

Nelson, J. M. Missed opportunities in dialogue between psychology and religion. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 34, 205-216.

Reber, J. S. Secular psychology: What's the problem? Journal of Psychology and Theology, 34,193-204.

Richardson, F. C. Psychology and religion: Hermeneutic reflections. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 34, 232-245.

Slife, B. D., & Whoolery, M. Are psychology's main theories and methods biased against its main consumers? Journal of Psychology and Theology, 34, 217-231

Van Leeuwen, M. S. (1985). The person in psychology: A contemporary Christian appraisal. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

AUTHOR

JONES, STANTON L.: Address: Provost's Office, Wheaton College, 501 E. College Ave., Wheaton, IL 60187. Title: Provost and Professor of Psychology. Degrees: B.S., Texas A & M University, M.A., Ph.D., Arizona State University. Specializations: Integration of psychology and Christian faith; human sexuality.

STANTON L. JONES

Wheaton College

Correspondence concerning this article may be addressed to Stanton L. Jones, PhD, Professor of Psychology, Wheaton College 501 E. College Ave., Wheaton, IL 60187. Email: [e-mail]