Encyclopedia of Religious and Spiritual Development (The SAGE Program on Applied Developmental Science) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0761928839 ISBN 13: 9780761928836

Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc, 2005

Synopsis

The Encyclopedia of Religious and Spiritual Development is the first reference work to focus on the developmental process of religion and spirituality across the human life span. Spiritual development is an important part of human development that has links to identity development, moral development, and civic engagement. This innovative Encyclopedia offers insight into the characteristics of people and their contexts that interact to influence religious and spiritual development over time. Editors Elizabeth M. Dowling and W. George Scarlett provide readers with glimpses into the religious and spiritual developmental trajectories of people from all over the world, from many different religious and spiritual backgrounds.  

Key Features

• Includes short, accessible entries written by leading specialists and theorists from a wide range of disciplines and professions, both within the United States and internationally, to provide a broad, multidisciplinary scope
• Offers entries that are unrelated to religion and religious experiences in order to examine spirituality in the broadest sense that encompasses religion as just one path toward spiritual development
• Explores community-based programs that focus on enhancing spiritual development, as well as the links between spiritual development and positive personal and social development in youth
• Offers reference lists for each entry that enable readers to gain further information related to the topic  

Key Themes

• Leading Religious and Spiritual Figures
• Traditions
• Texts
• Places, Religious and Spiritual
• Practices, Religious and Spiritual Concepts
• Religious and Spiritual Theory
• Supports/Contexts
• Nature
• Health
• Art
• Organizations

The Encyclopedia of Religious and Spiritual Development makes a significant contribution to the research and scholarship looking at the similarities and differences in religiousness and spirituality. It is a welcome addition to any academic library or religious reference collection.  

About this title

About the Authors

Elizabeth Dowing is the Director of Research for The ImagineNations Group, where she is in charge of developing a global survey of young people focused on what they believe needs to happen in their respective countries and the world for the Millennium Development Goals to be met by the target year 2015.  She works with local, national, regional, and international research partners to design and implement effective, sustainable research practices for ImagineNations.  Elizabeth received her Ph.D. in Child Development from Tufts University, where she was a nominee for the Graduate Student Award for Excellence in Teaching and was awarded the Graduate Student Award for Academic Excellence.  She has taught human development courses as an adjunct professor at Tufts University and Boston College.  She was trained in the development and analysis of assessment tools and in research related to the intergration between positive youth development and the promotion of civil society.  Elizabeth is author of numerous publications in leading journals and handbooks of human development.

W. George Scarlett is senior lecturer and deputy chair of the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts University. He received a BA from Yale University, an MDiv from the Episcopal Divinity School, and a PhD (in developmental psychology) from Clark University. He has authored or co-authored six books and co-edited the Encyclopedia of Religious and Spiritual Development (published by SAGE). His second most recent book was Approaches to Behavior and Classroom Management (also published by SAGE). He has been the lead author or co-author of chapters in The Handbook of Child Psychology and The Handbook of Life-Span Development – both leading resources for professionals conducting research on children and adolescents. In addition, he has published numerous articles on a variety of subjects pertaining to children, including articles on behavior management, and he has been on the research teams of several internationally known leaders, including Ed Zigler at Yale (early research on Head Start) and Howard Gardner at Harvard (early research on multiple intelligences). He has served as a consultant to the Cambridge, Somerville, and Lowell Head Start systems in Massachusetts and directed a residential summer camp for children with emotional and behavioural disorders. Currently, he is a regular consultant to reporters and news agencies, communicating to the general public best practices for raising and educating children and youth. At Tufts, in addition to his administrative duties as the department’s deputy chair, he teaches courses on approaches to problem behavior, children’s play, and spiritual development, and writes a column, “Kids These Days,” for Tufts Magazine.

Reviews

This encyclopedia positions itself as part of the scholarship aimed at fostering understanding of religion and spirituality in a pluralistic global society with a focus on the development of religiosity and spirituality. The editors have academic backgrounds in child development and developmental psychology. Scarlett has published extensively on religious and spiritual development.

One hundred and thirty other contributors have written some 265 entries on topics as varied as Thomas Aquinas; the Gaia hypothesis; Mysticism, Jewish; and Teen Challenge (Assemblies of God). The signed entries vary in length, but many are substantial, such as Christian spirituality, Meditation, and Stage-structural approach to religious development. A list for further reading is generally included. The detailed index and the topical guide in the fore matter are essential because, although the titles of many of the entries are straightforward, some are certainly not intuitive--for example, Coping in youth and Healing the children of war. Frequent see also references in the index are helpful. The index has some drawbacks--huge lists of page numbers under topics such as evil or God offer no idea about the context.

The subject headings assigned by the Library of Congress to this work are "Youth--Religious life," "Faith development," and "Youth psychology." Indeed, the most interesting articles are ones, such as Child's God, Differences between religion and spirituality in children and adolescents, and Outcomes, adolescent, that deal with these themes directly; in more general articles, such as those on specific religious traditions or on basic concepts such as Forgiveness, the developmental aspect or the dimension for youth is worked in after basic information is laid out.

On the whole, however, although the information on development of spirituality or religion in children and youth is interesting, many of the other articles seem unnecessary (three pages on Angels, for example). The articles that are very directly focused on spiritual development in youth are academic in tone, but many of the other entries are rather popular and superficial. There is certainly material here for someone looking for research on the topic of spiritual or religious development, but as a reference encyclopedia, it seems of limited interest. Margaret Power
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0761928839
• ISBN 13: 9780761928836
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 552
• Editor: Dowling Elizabeth M., Scarlett W. George