Christian Psychology
9
one key indicator of this characteristic, which is the
many research method texts psychologists use to edu-
cate and train their psychology students (Slife, Reber,
& Faulconer, 2012). Across the board, these texts teach
students that objectivity is superior to subjectivity, and
many texts regularly and explicitly associate objectiv-
ity with science and subjectivity with faith. Evans
& Rooney (2010), for example, assert that claims of
revelation, such as Noah’s claim that God commanded
him to build an ark, are personal experiences and “the
problem with personal experience is that it is personal
and subjective. There is no way for others to make it
objective” (p. 4). Gravetter & Forzano (2012) add that
the problem with “the method of faith” as “a variant
of the method of authority” is that it “could represent
subjective, personal opinion rather than true expert
knowledge” (p. 8). Faith, then, like other “non-
scientific methods of acquiring knowledge” (p. 16) is
an “uncritical technique” (p. 10) that “tends to rely on
subjective evidence” (p. 25), and as a result lacks the ob-
jectivity of the scientific method, which is “structured so
that the researcher’s biases and beliefs do not influence
the outcome of the study” (p. 24).
The message of psychology’s research texts and
the discipline they represent is clear: faith is subjec-
tive and uncritical and as a result is subject to bias and
error. Science is objective and critical and as a result is
relatively uninfluenced by bias and is relatively free from
error. The implication of this hierarchical arrangement
is not only that objectivity is superior to subjectivity but
also that, consistent with a Comtean positivism, science
is superior to faith.
This means that contexts of science and faith, like
their methods, theories, and worldviews, are arranged
hierarchically with more objective contexts ranked
more highly than subjective contexts. Thus, although
the professor friend’s hat of faith may be superior to his
hat of psychological science within religious contexts,
these contexts themselves are on the subjective side
of the spectrum and as a result are ultimately inferior
to psychology contexts. Recall the different language
Helminiak (2010) uses to describe theism and psychol-
ogy. Theism consists of “metaphysical speculation”
(p.49), “collective superstition” (p.50), and “personal
belief ” (p. 50), all very subjective descriptions. Psychol-
ogy, on the other hand, is “reliable, valid” (p. 50), and
“evidence-based” (p. 47), all very objective descriptions.
In this sense the compartments of faith and psychology
may be separate but they are not equal. Instead, faith
is relegated to the small and usually private realm of
“personal belief ” (p. 47, 50, 56), “personal conception”
(p. 55), “personal opinions” (p. 57), “personal faith” (p.
58), and “personal piety” (p. 62 67),while psychology
enjoys a large very public role as a credible social science
based on “shared evidentiary criteria” (p. 51), “shared
correct understandings” (p. 66), and “scientific open-
ness” (p. 56).
It may be that Helminiak’s (2010) “intent is not
to demean theist belief ” (p. 50), but it is also the case
that he rejects “the claim that theism enjoys a reliable,
valid religious or spiritual source of knowledge on a par
with that of science” (p. 50). For him and the critics
of a theistic approach to psychology he represents, the-
ism and naturalism are not just separable worldviews;
theism is more subjective and personal and is therefore
inferior to more objective, public naturalistic science.
The superiority of objectivity to subjectivity further
implies that objectivity should inform subjectivity. If,
for example, natural scientists claim to have objectively
discovered a law of nature that operates as a regularity
in the world, like the law of gravity, then that law is not
only true for the natural scientists. It is also true for
theists, as it is true for adherents of other worldviews as
well. Similarly, if psychologists claim to have objec-
tively discovered psychological laws that govern human
behavior, then those laws apply not only to adherents of
the psychological view but to all people, including the-
ists. Because the objectively discovered laws are true for
all people, including theists, then theists must accom-
modate the physical and psychological laws into their
worldview. Historically, this accommodation has led to
a reformulation of many theists’ understanding of God’s
relationship to the world (i.e., theology).
As many theists accommodated the Western
privileging of naturalistic concepts discovered through
objective science into their theologies, they redefined
many theistic beliefs and practices in ways that were
adapted to scientists’ truth claims regarding the natural
world. Miracles, for example, are now defined by many
people of faith in terms that relate God’s activity to laws
of nature (e.g., supernatural), such as God suspending
or violating the laws of nature (Helminiak, 2010; Gor-
such, 2002; Bishop, 1993). Such definitions of miracles
are not originally theistic. Actually, the conception of
laws of nature used in these definitions is a fairly recent
invention of the scientific revolution attributed to early
scientists like Galileo and Francis Bacon (Hannam,
2011; Swartz, 2003). However, once physical law
became an objective, scientific truth this significant ac-
commodation in theistic conceptualizations of miracles
was virtually required, as were many other adaptations
in theists’ theologies, beliefs, and practices.
In noting these accommodations it could appear
as if the conventional, separability frame of (or line of
demarcation between) science and religion is being vio-
lated. In the terms of the APA (2007) resolution, one
could argue that psychologists are violating their ethics
because they too are “arbitrating matters of faith and
theology” (p. 2) with their naturalistic reconceptualiza-
tions of religious beliefs and phenomena. When evo-
lutionary psychologists assert that religion is a naturally
occurring byproduct of adaptive cognitive mechanisms
(Atran & Henrich, 2010; Looy, 2005), when God
image researchers refer to God as an “imaginary figure”
REBER AND SLIFE
