Navigating the Intersection of Psychology and Theology: Reflections from the First Year of Our Training Programme

BY: Dr. Carissa Sharp | July 22, 2024

If you have read our About us page, you will know that the primary purpose of this grant is to provide training in psychology for 32 theologians and support them to develop their own psychology-engaged theology research. In this first blog post, I thought it would be useful to share a little bit about the goals that we had going into this programme, what psychology-engaged research looks like, and some of the lessons learned from our first year of running the programme.

Using the term "training" has the potential to make it sound like psychology is the more "important" of the disciplines. Let us be clear: in creating this programme, our goal was not to turn theologians into psychologists. It is not that theologians are doing anything "wrong" if they are not engaging with psychology. Rather, our programme was designed to provide theologians an opportunity to equip themselves with background knowledge and methodological tools to help them engage more deeply with psychological research and theory to advance their own research agendas where relevant. That is a key distinction because our aim is bringing these two disciplines into conversation rather than competition.

So, what do those "research agendas" look like? To be honest, when we started this programme, I wasn't entirely sure what kinds of projects our Fellows would want to develop. Would they want to conduct their own empirical psychology research? Would they want to engage with psychological theories in their theological work? So we intentionally left it open for Fellows to pursue their preferred method, and I’m so glad that we made that decision. What we have found so far is that there are many different forms that psychology-engaged theology can take, with every Fellow finding the balance of methodological and theoretical approaches that works for them:

• Some projects are purely theoretical/constructive, engaging with psychological theories but not changing the method used. 
• Some projects use qualitative research designs to help understand how psychology-engaged theological concepts play out in particular communities or contexts.
• Some projects engage in quantitative research, using theological insights to inform the design of the research.
• Some Fellows decided to incorporate both qualitative and quantitative approaches. 
• Some Fellows have used different kinds of innovative methods to connect these two disciplines, including analysis of big data, analysis of autobiographical case studies, artistic analysis, and the development of new methods for investigating particular understudied populations.

We are still only part-way through our programme – our first cohort of Fellows have started their small grant projects, and we are about to start the training programme for our second cohort this month. However, we do have some lessons-learned that we can share when it comes to psychology-engaged theology:

• On the practical side of things: expect the unexpected. When starting to engage in a new research area, there may be unexpected hurdles.  Some of our project Fellows were in institutions that did not have library access to psychology journals or ethics review boards to oversee the empirical research they wanted to conduct. We have had to find creative routes forward (such as pairing with partner institutions) in some cases, but it has been worth the effort!
• Be open to new ideas and new methods in your research. This may sound like a "no brainer" for a training programme, but some people may start out with a particular view of how they want to engage with another discipline, and then find that there are other ways to do this that they had not previously been aware of. Keeping an open mind is essential in any research project, but particularly when working cross-disciplinarily.
• Research can sometimes be a lonely process, particularly when you feel out of your comfort zone, so it’s important to build relationships (or one might even say friendships!) to support your work. Some might call this “networking,” but I know that this term can be a scary one, particularly to those of us who are introverted (I distinctly remember hiding in the toilet for a while at the first conference I attended as a master’s student because I was so overwhelmed). Reframing "networking" as "making friends" was a "eureka" for me – some of my best collaborators are also some of my best friends. In fact, it was these friends who I knew I could call on to be supportive mentors for our fellowship programme. In the first cohort of the training programme, I've seen our Fellows make this same transition to having truly supportive and generative relationships, and I can’t wait to see the incredible work they will encourage each other to pursue in the future.

There is so much more exciting research to come – I have a front-row seat to the amazing work that our Project Fellows are doing, and I can’t wait for them to share it with the world (and here, on this blog). In conclusion, please watch this space!