For example, African American Christian spirituality differs from European-influenced Christianity in its tendency to be more experiential and expressive Baker-Fletcher, ; Bridges, ; Hayes, Bridges suggests that African American spirituality can be characterized as that which promotes cultural resilience, affirms self-identity and aids in communalism. African American religious expression draws upon the essence of African spirituality in its transcendent, immanent, and relational nature.
African American churches have pioneered the quest for freedom, civil rights, and community growth and are distinguished by the social activism that is part of the culture of religious practice.
People of African descent have depended on the support of the church community, drawn upon its spirituality, and engaged in a variety of individual and communal religious activities when facing the inhumanity and stress of racism.
Mattis and Jagers offer a relational framework for understanding religiosity and spirituality among African Americans that centers on social relationships. Their framework is grounded in the understanding of spirituality as a fundamentally relational phenomena emerging from the intimate connection between human beings and God. As such, all relationships individual, family, and communal can illuminate the religious and spiritual life of African Americans.
Black theology is conceptualized as a liberation theology that is rooted in an understanding of God and faith from the perspective of the black experience. One of the most revolutionary contributions related to black theology has been this challenging of the pervasive portrayal of God and Jesus as white. In the context of God as Creator, black theology understands blackness as both a reflection of God and the work of God.
Fundamentally, black theology has insisted upon black self-determination and the humanity of black people. In the edition of his classic Black Theology of Liberation originally published in , Cone acknowledges some of the limitations of his early thinking and changed his language to be more gender inclusive.
Numerous research studies have supported the significance of religion and spirituality for black women Banks-Wallace and Parks, ; Chatters et al. Collectively, their work has provided a rich treasure trove for deepening the understanding of the psychological significance of spirituality for African American women. However, it is noteworthy that the traditional African American church has not been a place of equality for women.
This mirrors the rigid gender roles that are commonly proscribed in many dominant Christian religious traditions e. The African American church has long been identified as a change agent, yet institutionalized inequality of women within the church has been a longstanding practice across denominations. The greatest mechanism of gendered discrimination is evidenced by the lack of gender inclusivity within church leadership Baer, ; Barnes, ; Newman, Newman comments on the belief by some African American churchgoers that the word of God must be spoken by a man, which relates to the patriarchy characteristic of the structure of many African American churches.
Gender role subjugation within the African American church parallels the gender role socialization practices enacted in the larger U. These individuals combat intragroup marginalization and are challenged with reconciling their personal beliefs with their sexual orientation.
Despite the strong LGBT presence within many African American congregations in their struggle to affirm their humanity in the context of oppression, there is simultaneously a tendency to hide their sexual orientation. In observing the traditional African American church through a womanist lens, it is important to consider the degree to which the church has played a role in collusion with oppressive ideologies and practices.
Central to womanist theory is the challenging of oppression in any form. However, African American spirituality has maintained an uneasy existence within a frequently sexist and heterosexist church structure.
It is important to consider the intersection of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation in order to maximize the transformative potential of spirituality for women of African descent. This is an important context within which to understand the significance of womanist theory in affirming, validating, and mobilizing the strengths of African American women. It challenges the white supremacy embedded in white feminism, the black patriarchy of the African American church, and the dominance of male voices in Afrocentric theory.
The womanist agenda shares the centrality of liberation and self-determination of black theology, as well as its insistence on the humanity of black people. Most important, it shares the centering of the lived experience of people of African descent as the starting point of all analyses. However, the womanist perspective goes beyond each of these to explicitly claim concern for ALL of humanity, embracing multiple identities and intragroup heterogeneity, as well as an explicit commitment to wholeness and universality.
It is a description filled with passion and love that is grounded in the lived experience of black women. In the first part, she uses words such as courageous, audacious, and willful to highlight the empowered and proactive positioning of a womanist identity. This is consistent with the liberatory theme of black theology. This aspect of the definition particularly affirms African-centered themes of communalism, interdependence, wholeness, and divine inclusiveness.
In the third part, Walker presents a womanist as someone who cherishes and celebrates life in its fullness through her love of music, dance, the Spirit, and herself, regardless of the manifestations of race and gender oppression that attempt to silence and suppress her. A womanist lives life in conscious awareness that she is an expression of the divine. Womanist theory centers relationality and love within a community-centered and collectivist sensibility that stands in defiance of oppression in any form.
It is a way of understanding the struggle for wholeness among women of African descent who refuse to collude with the invisibility of their womanhood or blackness demanded by gender and racial oppression. Womanist theology is a liberation theology that illuminates the power of cultural strengths, connectedness, and proactive participation in the dismantling of race, gender, and class oppression. As such, womanist theology frames spirituality in a manner that does not separate it from the psychological well-being of women of African descent.
It is important to note that writings in womanist theology have been framed predominantly in a Christian religious context Baker-Fletcher, ; Hayes, ; Mitchem, ; Williams, , but this is increasingly being challenged Coleman, , ; Harris, ; Maparyan, Harris correctly observes that Walker did not claim traditional Christianity, and the message of womanism is a more inclusive spirituality. She offers a more complex and nuanced discussion of the womanist perspective that embraces religious pluralism, affirms the wholeness of black women, emphasizes the importance of community, and calls for continued social responsibility with respect to resisting and transforming oppression.
Each principle is associated with several culturally and contextually informed Psychospiritual Strengths and Gifts. This reframing of the VIA character strengths and virtues seeks congruence with shared values and ways of being articulated in both womanist and African-centered perspectives. A significant aspect of PWP is the extension of the VIA conceptualization of individual strengths to add the consideration of collective or cultural strengths.
Each life principle and its associated culturally embedded psychospiritual strengths and gifts are presented in Table 1. It is important to state that the articulation of the PWP framework does not suggest that all of the strengths and gifts exist in every woman of African descent, nor does it suggest that all women of African descent possess these strengths and gifts.
The first womanist life principle affirms the multiple ways of knowing and understanding the world that reflect the lived experience of women of African descent.
Consistent with both feminist and Afrocentric thought is the contention that knowledge is not limited to what we learn in school or through presumably logical and rational thinking processes. This life principle reflects the spiritually infused vitality with which many women of African descent have lived in the world.
This life principle is grounded firmly in the communalism of African-centered psychology and relationality of feminist psychology.
The centrality of connectedness for women of African descent appears in both cultural and womanist sources, but is most significantly rooted in a pervasive spirituality. Balance and Flexibility Positive Womanist Temperance. This life principle emphasizes the importance of harmony between emotional, mental, physical, social, spiritual, and environmental energies.
This principle emerges from the adaptability of women of African descent and African-centered themes of order and balance. Liberation and Inclusion Positive Womanist Justice. This life principle frames justice as wholeness and reflects the universality, inclusiveness, and strong social justice orientation of womanist theory, as well as the liberation emphasis of black theology.
Empowered Authenticity Positive Womanist Courage. PWP provides a structure for identifying, contextualizing, and facilitating strengths that are grounded in the everyday experiences of women of African descent. The significance of spirituality in the lives of women of African descent serves as the organizing and unifying foundation for the articulation of the framework. Spirituality is conceptualized as both an expression and facilitator of wellness.
Thus, the health and well-being of women of African descent is necessarily psychospiritual. The framework is structured according to 6 Womanist Life Principles and 40 Psychospiritual Strengths and Gifts that can organize the development of interventions where both individual and collective strengths can be identified, illuminated, and nurtured.
It is important to note that working with strengths frequently involves the exploration of factors that may block their development or expression.
Among women of African descent some of these factors include internalized oppression, colorism, assimilative identity or rejection of blackness, intimate relationship dynamics, trauma history, and more. It is also very important to recognize that not all African American women connect to a sense of spirituality or religiosity. An African-centered womanist approach may feel unfamiliar or uncomfortable for some women.
Honoring the diversity among women of African descent means understanding that the PWP framework should not be applied uniformly and may not always be the most appropriate approach. Within an African-centered frame, the Ubuntu consciousness of interconnectedness emphasizes the inseparability of the individual mind-body-spirit from the mind-body-spirit of others, or from the collective mind-body-spirit of the community and humanity as a whole. Thus, while a Positive Womanist Psychospirituality emerges from the sociocultural context of women of African descent, it is suggested that the psychospiritual strengths and gifts articulated here may also be relevant to women of other historically oppressed groups whose cultures share similar worldview qualities.
Maparyan describes life stories of women from India and Vietnam whose lives exemplify the womanist vision. Such interventions move beyond spirituality as survival and coping with adversity, toward the illumination and magnification of culturally syntonic, psychospiritual strengths and gifts that propel us toward optimal well-being, wholeness, and the highest expressions of both our individual humanness and collective humanity. The soul of womanism is universal, cosmic, and divine. Testimony of hope: African-centered praxis for therapeutic ends.
Journal of Systemic Therapies, 24, 5— Bacigalupe, G. Is positive psychology white psychology? American Psychologist, 56, 82— The limited empowerment of women in Black spiritual churches: An alternative vehicle to religious leadership.
Sociology of Religion, 54, 65— Baker-Fletcher, K. Dancing with God: The trinity from a womanist perspective. If you want to help me out with this project, sign up here! If you are interested in what Our Happiness Journey is all about and when it is going to launch , check that out here! Listen to this episode to find out more on the benefits of learning psychospirituality!
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Sections in this volume include: - personality and social psychology factors and implications - spiritual development and culture - spiritual dialogue, prayer, and intention in Western mental health - Eastern traditions and psychology - physical health and spirituality - positive psychology - scientific advances and applications related to spiritual psychology With chapters from leading scholars in psychology, medicine, physics, and biology, The Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality is an interdisciplinary reference for a rapidly emerging approach to contemporary science.
This overarching work provides both a foundation and a roadmap for what is truly a new ideological age. In a field where there is no current consensus on spirituality, this book provides a much-needed psychologically based definition and ontology that assists helping professionals in formulating their professional identities; developing effective and appropriate training models; furthering their understanding of what spirituality is and is not, from a psychological perspective; and more effectively addressing spiritual issues to support clients.
The authors provide a review of current issues in the area of spirituality, also called the numinous, and provide perspectives that address these concerns in ways that promote a fully scientific understanding of the construct. Ultimately the book provides a concise definition of the numinous that places it squarely in the social sciences.
Psychology of Spirituality Author : Hossain B. Danesh Publisher : Sterling Publishers Pvt. What is the purpose of human life? What is love? What is reality?
What is the secret of happiness? Do we have free will? Is transcendence real? Through case histories, in-depth analyses, and practical examples, the book offers new ways of addressing these and other important questions. This book will address this issue, providing a valuable resource for clinicians that will help translate basic research findings into useful clinical practice strategies. The editors and chapter authors, all talented and respected scholar-clinicians, offer a practical and functional understanding of the empirical literature on the psychology of religion and spirituality of, while at the same time outlining clinical implications, assessments, and strategies for counseling and psychotherapy.
Each concludes with clinical application questions and suggestions for further reading. In fact, it involves a few suggested techniques, which will depend on the counselor. Questioning or Probing. The questioning technique is important in the counseling process. This will help the counselor explore the human and the spiritual sides of the counselee. But then, the counselors, in such a way, must not overuse questioning to the extent that it does not bring the counselee to any possible end or resolution.
Since the counselors deal with clients who are in need of both human and spiritual direction, they should always be filled with positive energy. Positivity is also important, because it helps the counselor lead the counselee to a positive output. As mentioned earlier, the counselor, in the process should either be a parent or an older sibling.
In this case, a family atmosphere must be in place, and humor is an important element to have a good relationship with family members. There are two ways of confronting a counselee in this theory. This is, because excuses are entertained. Second, confrontation is applied in the process of spiritual direction. Talking about resolutions.
In any process of the psycho-spiritual approach, resolution takes a big part in the process. Without a resolution, the whole process collapses. The resolution writing must happen towards the end of the counseling process before the counselee departs. References: Di Villo, L.
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