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

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.  

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.