Apologetics and Ethnocentrism: Psychology and Religion within an Ideological Surround
Author(s)
Watson, Paul J.
Abstract
Posits that the psychology of religion can be seen as a creation of Enlightenment forms of thought. Within this framework, researchers presumably use an unbiased rationality and a value-free empiricism to develop a progressively more objective psychology of the religious self. Recent critiques of the Enlightenment (e.g., A. MacIntyre, 1988) have suggested that all forms of rationality are biased and that all empiricism is theory-laden. Within a post-Enlightenment frame of reference, researchers can offer favorable and thus “apologetic” analyses of the religious self, whereas more unfavorable research programs can be described as “ethnocentric.” A sensitivity to such “biases” might be promoted by placing the psychology of religion within an ideological surround (i.e., by understanding that it rests on somewhat nonempirical, normative, and sociological assumptions).
