Within the depth-psychology and psychology-of-religion corpus, 'religion' emerges not as a settled category but as a contested, multidimensional phenomenon whose definition shapes every downstream inquiry. Pargament's sustained treatment — the most comprehensive in the library — identifies two foundational traditions: the substantive, which locates religion's distinctiveness in its orientation toward the sacred, the divine, and the supernatural; and the functional, which defines it by its engagement with ultimate issues of significance, meaning, and coping. His synthesis argues that neither tradition alone suffices: religion is the search for significance through the sacred. From this fulcrum, the literature ramifies into debates about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation (Allport, Batson), religion as orienting system, and religion's role in constructing, preserving, and transforming significance under stress. Benveniste's philological analysis adds etymological depth, tracing religio to relegere — reflective scruple and returning attention — rather than the Christian-imposed religare (binding obligation), a tension that illuminates religion's dual character as both inward disposition and social constraint. The Jungian strand, represented by Papadopoulos, treats religious symbols such as the Trinity as maps of psychological individuation. Across all voices, a central tension persists: whether religion is most honestly understood as projection, coping resource, meaning-system, or encounter with genuinely transcendent reality.
In the library
22 passages
According to one perspective, the sacred is what makes religion distinctive. Religion is uniquely concerned with God, deities, supernatural beings, transcendent forces… According to a second perspective, religion is distinguished by its special function in life rather than by a divine entity.
Pargament frames the foundational definitional debate as substantive (sacred) versus functional (ultimate issues), establishing the conceptual poles around which the entire psychology of religion organizes itself.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis
religio 'religious scruple' was originally a subjective attitude, an act of reflection bound up with some fear of a religious kind… the interpretation of the word by 'religare' 'to tie, bind', which was invented by the Christians, is significant for the renewal of the notion: religio becomes 'obligation'.
Benveniste demonstrates philologically that religion's Latin root denotes reflective inner scruple rather than binding obligation, with the Christian reinterpretation marking a decisive semantic shift toward objective social bond.
Benveniste, Émile, Indo European Language and Society, 1973thesis
'the extrinsically motivated person uses his religion, whereas the intrinsically motivated lives his religion' (Allport & Ross, 1967, p. 434)… Allport's conceptualization of the intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientations and Batson's reformulation remain the most heavily used framework for psychological studies of religion.
Pargament synthesizes Allport's intrinsic/extrinsic polarity — religion as lived end versus instrumental means — and identifies it as the dominant organizing framework in empirical religious psychology.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis
the distinction between the ultimate and the ordinary, the religious and the magical can be overdone… Because they are so intimately linked to God's covenant with the Jewish people, they take on a sacred character. In this sense the daily life of the Jew can be religious in nature.
Pargament argues against over-rigid demarcation of sacred from mundane, showing through Jewish halakhic practice that ordinary activities become fully religious through their covenantal association with the divine.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001thesis
More than 2,000 people were asked why they were religious. The most common answer was that 'religion gives meaning to life'… religious involvement is associated with a greater sense of purpose in life.
Empirical survey data confirms that meaning-making is the primary self-reported function of religion, supporting the functional tradition's emphasis on ultimate significance over doctrinal content.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
The term 'religion' is being used by scholars in an increasingly narrow sense; its meaning is restricted to institutionally based dogma, rituals, and traditions. In contrast, the term 'spiritual' is reserved for an inner, more personal process.
Pargament documents the contemporary scholarly bifurcation of 'religion' (institutional) from 'spirituality' (personal), critiquing the individualist bias that devalues social and communal religious forms.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
God the Father correlates with a state of undifferentiated identification with the unconscious… God the Son correlates with a state in which consciousness differentiates from the unconscious… God the Holy Ghost correlates with a state in which differentiated ego-consciousness begins to reconnect with the unconscious.
The Jungian tradition reads religious doctrine — specifically Trinitarian theology — as a symbolic map of individuation stages, situating religion within the psychology of conscious development rather than external belief.
Papadopoulos, Renos K., The Handbook of Jungian Psychology: Theory, Practice and Applications, 2006supporting
religious paths vary in their importance and embeddedness in peoples' lives. Religion can become an overarching way of life, one that connects the sacred to the daily episodes of living, the past to the present, the present to the future.
Pargament describes the depth of religious embedding as a variable — religion ranges from peripheral coping resource to totalizing life orientation — and maps its integrating function across time and selfhood.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
As one stands face to face with the ultimate realities of life and death, religion and theology tend to come alive. Meaning tends to outstrip symbol and we have to seek for new words to express the new ideas which come surging in.
Boisen, cited by Pargament, articulates the existential threshold condition under which religion becomes most psychologically compelling — the boundary situation where ordinary coping exhausts itself.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Freud (1927/1961) went one step further, asserting that people look to religion for protection not only from the terrors and cruelty of nature, but from human impulse itself… The religions, Freud believed, curb the human appetite.
Pargament summarizes Freud's reductive account of religion as defensive structure against both natural terror and instinctual drives, positioning this as one major interpretive tradition within depth psychology.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Overlooked in this stereotype is the role religion plays in the construction of some events and in the avoidance of others… the world's religions have marked off the most critical junctions of the lifespan, setting them apart from ordinary times and wrapping them in religious garb.
Against the reductive 'religion-as-denial' view, Pargament argues that religion actively constructs life-events and consecrates existential transitions, giving form to the temporal structure of human experience.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Religion, on the other hand, does not divorce itself from critical reflection or evaluation of the observable world. Its focus goes beyond empirical reality, but it remains vitally interested in the connection between metaphysical matters and the immediacies of existence.
Pargament challenges the science/religion binary by showing religion's own engagement with critical reflection and empirical reality, arguing for productive dialogue rather than mutual exclusion.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
attributes of divinity can be attributed to many entities… Any of the very human experiences of the world, from romantic relationships and hero worship to political affiliations and identification with a sports team can also be 'sacralized.'
Pargament extends the sacred's conceptual reach beyond institutional religion to encompass any object or relationship invested with divine attributes, making sacralization a universal psychological process.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Religion is certainly a way of the heart, but the heart is simply one of the ways of religion.
Pargament resists the Romantic reduction of religion to pure feeling, insisting that cognition, action, and relationship are equally constitutive religious pathways alongside emotional experience.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
At their best, religious orientations offer well-integrated, coherent frameworks for living. At their worst, they are fundamentally disorienting, consisting of religious bits and pieces that leave people lost, confused, and headed toward dead ends.
Pargament introduces a normative dimension to religious orientation, arguing that the psychological quality of integration — not doctrinal content — distinguishes beneficial from harmful religious life.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
religions do more than define transgressions; they provide coping mechanisms for reorientation, a return to the right way. Through rituals of purification, the sin, evil, or uncleanliness associated with religious violations are removed, and the individual is reconciled to God.
Pargament frames religious purification rituals as universal coping mechanisms that restore moral and relational integrity, illustrating religion's reparative function across traditions.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Studies of the prevalence of religious coping provide necessary baseline information, but they are difficult to evaluate. At what point would we say that religion is an important part of coping — if 30% turn to religion, 50%, 80%?
Pargament flags the methodological challenge of measuring religious coping prevalence, noting that raw percentages require comparative baselines to become interpretively meaningful.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
within many religious traditions, there is nothing inherently wrong with human desires or contradictory about human and spiritual ends. In fact, the two can be difficult to disentangle.
Pargament challenges the assumption that religion suppresses natural desire, arguing instead that most traditions integrate human and spiritual ends through the sacralizing of ordinary human goals.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Traditionally, people have looked as much to religion in their search for health as they have to medicine… Long before the development of medicine as we know it, shamans were calling on spiritual powers to treat the sick and dying.
Pargament situates religion historically as the primary healing institution across cultures, predating medicine and persisting alongside it, with health-seeking as a fundamental religious motive.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
The intrinsic orientation was closely bound to spiritual forms of coping. Those who were more intrinsic looked to their religion more for spiritual purposes and less for self-development in coping.
Empirical data demonstrate that intrinsic religious orientation predicts spiritually-motivated coping strategies, connecting motivational structure to concrete religious behavior under stress.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting
Interestingly, one meaning of the term 'cope' is an ecclesiastical garb. This definition hints at some important parallels between religion and coping. Neither religion nor coping is trivial.
Pargament notes the etymological overlap between coping and religious vestment as an aside that gestures toward the deep structural parallels between religious and psychological coping frameworks.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001aside
religion has been assessed macroanalytically by global, dispositional, distal indicators: how often the person generally attends religious services or prays, how important religion is to the individual. The applications of religion to concrete life situations have gone largely unstudied.
Pargament critiques the field's over-reliance on dispositional measures of religiosity, identifying the gap between general religious orientation and religion's situational, context-specific expressions.
Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001aside