Preface
preface M y interest in the link between wonder and spirituality has many sources. I have been studying the psychologyofreligionformorethanthirtyyearsandhave spent a great deal of time trying to understand the inner causes of religious experience or belief. It was, however, two fairly recent conversations that prompted me to investigate the role of wonder in the origins of human spirituality. The first was an extended conversation I had with Karen Armstrong, the author of several best-selling books on religion. Karen was finishing a book on religious fundamentalism, a project that made her acutely aware of the cultural problems created by religions that believe they possess a monopoly on truth. Karen concluded that we are probably wrong to expect religion to possess truth in the first place. She reasoned that the real purpose of religion has nothing to do with factual truth. Karen ventured that the purpose of religion is instead about ‘‘holding us in a state of wonder.’’ She didn’t elaborate on what she meant by this, but its basic point seemed clear. Religious beliefs and rituals aren’t about truth if by that we mean propositions that can be validated as factual in a way similar to propositions in mathematics or science. Instead, religious beliefs and rituals ought to renew our fundamental sense of mystery concerning the origin and meaning of existence. This observation that religion—at its best—is associated with our sense of mystery and wonder resonated with the basic argument of one of my earlier books, Religion and the Life Cycle. I became curious whether fellow scholars in the field of the psychology of religion had viii preface yet focused attention on the specific emotion of wonder. Imagine my surprise when I consulted the indexes of every psychology book in my personal library and couldn’t find a single reference to wonder. When I turned to books specifically on the psychology of religion I was able to find some entries on awe and mystery, but again none on wonder! It became clear that a book on the connection between wonder and personal spirituality was well overdue. A second conversation that sparked my interest in this topic took place during a debate I organized for students in Bradley University’s Honors Program. The topic of the debate was ‘‘Can an educated person be religious?’’ At one point in the debate a student turned to my colleague, Tom Pucelik, and asked him whether being religious really made any di√erence in a person’s life. Tom paused for a moment and then conceded that someone could go through life without being religious. Many good people do. Tom then added that you can also go through life without love or without art. But if you have ever been in love or been moved by great art, you know that they open up entirely new dimensions to your life. Sure, you can get through life without love or art, but your life wouldn’t have the rich texture that only they can bring. The same, he said, is true of religion . I got to be thinking that this applies equally well to my basic point about the experience of wonder. You can surely get through life without a developed sense of wonder, but you would lack certain sensibilities that enrich the texture of human existence. In many ways this book is a continuation of those conversations. It explores just how and why religion—at its best—holds us in a state of wonder. And although it concedes that you can surely go through life without a developed sense of wonder, it tries to show that a life shaped by wonder has rich textures that it would otherwise lack. A life shaped by wonder, as we shall see, is characterized by intellectual and moral sensibilities that open up the widest possible world of personal fulfillment. ...
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