Religious Experience
and Moral Identity

2013-2014

By Linda Arntzenius

What do a psychotherapist turned theologian, an expert on snake-handling rituals, a scientist with a novelist’s sensibility and a distinguished scholar of human virtue, have in common? The answer has nothing to do with their respective academic disciplines and everything to do with their qualities as individuals. For besides being in residence at the Center of Theological Inquiry for the 2013-2014 Inquiry on Religious Experience and Moral Identity, they are all accomplished listeners, open to dialogue across the disciplines.

While such dialogue is not easy to cultivate, it can bear rich fruit. “Finding common language and shared perspectives with experts in other areas of study is difficult, but I am confident that the particular members of this inquiry will have much to share in relation to the work I’m doing and will help to deepen my understanding and to identify the places where I’m heading down the wrong track,” comments anthropologist Michael Spezio. “The major challenge for me anytime I am in a group of highly creative people, as is the case for this year’s Inquiry, is to find a way to be helpful and relevant so that conversation and understanding grow,” adds Spezio, with characteristic humility.

In addition to being an ordained Presbyterian minister, Spezio is also a novelist. One aspect of his current research is to develop a scientifically and theologically sensitive account of character. “As scientists, we need to be in constant critical mode about our own theories and experiments, and make sure that they connect with and are inspired by questions about meaning, purpose and value,” he says. “Scientific approaches to human valuation perception, decision and action have something to teach us about how we think and maybe about how we should think of human character. And many claims about moral character are based in theories of thought and action that could benefit from being open to the decision sciences.”

Andrea Hollingsworth agrees: “Truly influential ideas draw upon multiple thought forms, both ancient and contemporary; they balance bold creativity with cautious precision; they help to answer perennially pressing, societally relevant questions; and they have implications for a wide range of intellectual traditions. “As a young theologian at a formative stage in her career, Hollingsworth is excited at the prospect of spending a year with experienced and accomplished thinkers whose writings she has engaged with in the past and is building upon in the present. “In particular, Colleen Shantz, Wesley Wildman and Michael Spezio have helped to inspire me and orient my thinking; I can’t wait for the opportunity to get to know them better,” says Hollingsworth, whose 2012 doctoral dissertation draws upon the poetry of John Donne and others to explore ways in which ambiguity mediates the spiritual experience of God. At CTI, Hollingsworth plans to examine the mystical writings of St. Nicholas of Cusa with regard to contemporary theories from neuropsychology.

That other members of the 2013-2014 team share Spezio and Hollingsworth’s willingness to listen is no accident. Rather it is the result of a careful selection process that begins in late fall and comes to fruition the following spring. “A great deal of effort goes into a selection process that is key to the Center’s success; if we get it right, it presents an environment that is hard to match,” says Director William Storrar. Even as discussion on the theme of the current year is getting underway, CTI is planning the following year’s Inquiry. “We look for
scholars who demonstrate intellectual flexibility and empathy, scholars who are willing to live with uncertainty and ambiguity and to be able to tolerate, and even be stimulated by, questions that are not well-formed at the outset,” explains Director of Research Robin Lovin.

Led by theological ethicist Stephen J. Pope and philosopher Robert Roberts, the 2013-2014 scholars area high-energy group with expertise in theology, religious studies, psychology, neuroscience and philosophy. Comprised of eleven scholars at different stages of their careers, including two recent postdoctoral students, its members come from Canada, Germany, Romania, Sweden and the United States and include five women scholars, the largest proportion in residence to date. There is a high degree of overlap in their interests. You might say they have a head start on the enterprise at hand. Senior researchers Pope and Roberts are expecting great synergy during the Center’s weekly colloquia at which individual works-in-progress will be discussed. “We’ll be sharing our findings and learning from each other,” says Roberts. “As a theologian working on human happiness, I look forward to reading the writings of philosophers and neuroscientists on this subject.”

Attention to the perspectives of scholars from other fields is crucial for the sort of dialogue between theology and science that CTI fosters. Friederike Nüssel expresses this import: “Theology is the academic reflection on the Christian faith, its impact on our understanding of the world, on human flourishing and societal challenges. As such it is and always has been an interdisciplinary endeavor relating theological reasoning to the findings of other disciplines and vice versa. Interdisciplinary dialogue may help to discern the manipulative dangers but also the reconciling and morally freeing potential of religious experience.”

Nüssel is no stranger to CTI, which she describes as “the best place I can imagine for my research. From my first experience there, I know how unique and valuable it is to debate research issues with colleagues over a longer period of time without the pressure and often the competitive setting of conference meetings.” As a participant in the 2013-2014 Inquiry, Nüssel will explore the role that narrative plays in human morality, not only on a rational but also on an emotional level. “I hope to draw on findings from different fields, especially psychology, for a better understanding of these processes.”

The 2013—2014 Inquiry is looking at fundamental issues that every human being must address about the role of human emotion in decision-making, about human responsibility, free will, and accountability; how the brain affects the mind; how individual brain physiology affects patterns of thinking; and how individuals are affected by their social circumstances. “Such complex and profound questions at the intersection of psychology, theology and philosophy are not resolved simply,” says Pope, “but we can hope for significant insight.”

Each CTI scholar brings a unique perspective to the discussion. Gordon Burghardt, for example, has long been fascinated by the social rituals he finds at the core of all religions and will be examining documentary video films (including some contemporary serpent wrangling) for evidence that will test hypotheses on ritual and play).

“It’s rare for philosophers, theologians, and scientists to come together like this,” observes Pope, who notes instead the tendency for people to work within their disciplines. “I just finished a study in gratitude and find it amazing what psychologists, as opposed to philosophers, call ‘conceptual analysis.’ It’s instructive to me to see the work of psychologists and I hope that my work will be instructive to them. Psychologists sometimes accuse philosophers of making up definitions and trying to impose them on other people—just working from the armchair without data. That is, of course, a misrepresentation of what philosophers do. Philosophers and theologians have a special role to play in examining conceptual backgrounds to empirical work. CTI is unusual in requiring an interdisciplinary approach.”

It is precisely this approach that is needed for fresh thinking about the “big questions” of human purpose; an approach that is rare in the contemporary academic environment. As Roberts points out, academia has become hyper-specialized over the last 50 years. “Such specialization is needed for the kind of refined advances we see in various disciplines—molecular biologists, for example, can now answer questions that were unanswerable a few years ago—but the cost is a narrowing of perspective and isolation of the disciplines. But when people from different disciplines talk intensively to one another and listen carefully to one another, all involved break out of their comfort zones and start seeing things they never saw before.”

A year at CTI is a “true gift,” says Hollingsworth. “It’s rare to find ample time within which (as well as able and available persons with whom) to enjoy sustained, focused intellectual conversation. I hope to develop my skills as an interdisciplinary thinker and communicator. And given the topics to be probed this year, I look forward not just to intellectual growth but to personal and spiritual enrichment as well.”