Christian Psychology
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Like Collicutt, Johnson does not view the world-
views of naturalism and theism as being mutually
constitutive. On the contrary, he adamantly opposes
this strong relational approach. With his assertion that
naturalism and theism are “fundamentally incompatible
and even incommensurable” (p. 33), as well as “antago-
nistic” (ibid) worldviews, he reflects the weak relational
position that the two worldviews are independent and
self-contained and are not, therefore, “somehow neces-
sarily reliant upon each other” (ibid). For Johnson, nec-
essary reliance would imply a violation of the boundary
that separates the two worldviews and preserves their
unique core identities. Such a violation would be
“potentially self-destructive” (ibid), argues Johnson, be-
cause it would “lead over time to the dissolution of the
receiving worldview community” (ibid). In this sense,
interdependence is like the concept of co-dependency
in interpersonal relationships, where an individual’s core
identity becomes “necessarily reliant” on others’ percep-
tions and treatment of the person, and the original
integrity of the self is lost. Thus, for Johnson and others
who view relationship in this ab extra way, a worldview
that depends to any extent on other worldviews for
any of the core features that constitute its identity as a
worldview, is not a worldview at all.
Johnson’s weakly relational understanding of
worldview interdependence is echoed by Helminiak’s
(2010) “Trojan horse” (p. 57) and Alcock’s (2009) “Pan-
dora’s box” (p.82) analogies that we addressed in our
initial article. These metaphors conjure up notions of
invasion, infection, and the destruction or dissolution
of the receiving worldview that Johnson fears. Nelson
uses the term “contamination hypothesis” (p. 37) to
describe this weakly relational concern in the terms of
an allopathic model of health. It is weakly relational
because it presumes that worldviews, like physical bod-
ies are first self-contained and uninfluenced by external
agents. Then, “alien worldviews” (Johnson, p. 33) come
along and, like a bacteria or virus, threaten to penetrate
into the boundary of the worldview and damage or
destroy it.
From this
ab extra
point of view, worldview com-
munities have to take preventative action to protect
themselves from contamination, which is one reason
why drawing a strong line of demarcation between nat-
uralism and theism is so important to adherents of the
conventional view. Keeping naturalists and theists on
their own side of the line is supposed to protect natural-
ism and theism from contaminating each other. This
is why the passages from the APA resolution (2007)
we quoted in our initial article are in a “Resolution on
Religious, Religion-Based and/or Religion-Derived
Prejudice” (p. 1). From this weak relational perspective,
faith traditions and psychology can only avoid prejudice
if they respect the profound differences between their
worldviews and if each worldview does not meddle in
the affairs of the other worldview. Otherwise, contami-
nation will inevitably breed prejudice.
Strong relationality.
Freeman and Nelson appear
to understand the relation of naturalism and theism as
one in which the worldviews inevitably have and will
continue to mutually influence each other in many
significant ways. In Freeman’s words, “there is a good
deal more conceptual ‘seepage’ between naturalism and
theism than is generally assumed, and. . . what flies
under the banner of unadulterated naturalism may be
permeated, even if unknowingly, by the very theism it
imagines it has surpassed” (p. 24). Later on, he remarks
on the “profound interdependence” (ibid) of naturalism
and theism and refers to them as “overlapping magiste-
ria” (ibid) in direct contrast to Gould’s (1997) non-
overlapping magisteria conception.
Similarly, Nelson asserts that science and theology
“share areas of interest such as the nature of the human
person and how we can best care for others in need”
(p. 36). He also notes that “a key aspect of describing
worldview is to understand the logico-structural integra-
tion in the system, or “the ways in which the assump-
tions of a world-view are interrelated” (p. 35). Neither
Freeman nor Nelson describe interdependence as being
either avoidable or destructive. On the contrary, as
Freeman points out, their profound interdependence
allows for their comparison in determining which
worldview “is a more adequate lens for understanding
what’s going on in some given case” (p. 24), a point we
will revisit later.
Blind Prejudice
In our initial article, we discussed several problems with
psychology’s efforts to reduce prejudice by keeping the
worldviews separate, including compartmentalization
and worldview superiority. Because several of the replies
continue to press for worldview separability, we will
flesh out our issues with this weakly relational feature
of the conventional view more fully here. Our general
concern is that the fear of contamination and prejudice
that fuels the weakly relational separability assumption
may blind advocates of the conventional view to the
many ways in which the worldviews are in relationship
and exert influence upon each other. As we described it
in our article, for those who assume worldview separa-
bility (i.e., weak relationality):
The influence of these worldviews on each other
will take place outside the compartmentalizing
psychologist’s awareness, leading him or her to
believe that the insights, issues, and interpretations
that arise in one context have nothing to do with
the other. They are assumed to emerge, however
consciously or unconsciously, from within the
worldview itself and not from the relationship
between the different worldviews (p. 12).
In the three sections that follow we discuss three mani-
festations of this blindness that we observed in several
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