6: Spiritual but not Religious. A conversation with William B. Parsons.

Bill provides an autobiographical landscape of his early training and matriculation. Following his history, we begin exploring the limitations of the various therapeutic worldviews. We discuss how psychology and religion have been interwoven, specifically not the psychology of religion, but psychology and religion. Bill describes how the various psychological models illuminate religion. In particular, he references figures such as William James, Sigmund Freud, Abraham Maslow, and Carl Jung, emphasizing how the psychological worldview of these figures influences their understanding of religion. Bill has a way of challenging any worldview and asking questions about how any particular worldview affects how and what one may “see” as a result. Bill calls his approach dialogical whereby individuals are invited to place all of these psychological technologies, and others, into conversation with each other. He desires to bring to light, what he calls, an Ethnopsychospiritualy a view that incorporates and understands that the personal and cultural wisdom in the various religious traditions is inseparable from each tradition. Looking at the models carefully differing between the projection models of psychospiritualities versus recognizing that there is cultural refraction on the light, although there is an objective light. Through the conversation, there is an undertone of attending to how the worldview we adopt can both expand and limit an individual’s perspective unless each of us is conscious of this fact. Bio: William B. Parsons is Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University. He has written and edited several books, including The Enigma of the Oceanic Feeling (Oxford, 1999), Teaching Mysticism (Oxford, 2011), Religion and Psychology: Mapping the Terrain (Routledge, 2001), Mourning Religion (Virginia, 2008), Freud in Dialogue with Augustine: Psychoanalysis, Mysticism, and the Culture of Modern Spirituality (Virginia, 2013) as well as dozens of essays in multiple journals and books. He has served as Chair of the Department of Religious Studies (Rice University), as Director of the Humanities Research Center (Rice University), as Editor (the psychology of religion section) with Religious Studies Review and is Associate Editor of the International Series in the Psychology of Religion. He has been a Fellow at the Martin Marty Center of the University of Chicago and at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) at Hebrew University. Music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com Learn more about this project at: http://www.thesacredspeaks.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/