Foreword 1. Prosperity Lost 2. The Age of Irresponsibility 3. Redefining Prosperity 4. The Dilemma of Growth 5. The Myth of Decoupling 6. The 'Iron Cage' of Consumerism 7. Keynesianism and the 'Green New Deal' 8. Ecological Macro-Economics 9. Flourishing - within Limits 10. Governance for Prosperity 11. The Transition to a Sustainable Economy 12. A Lasting Prosperity Appendices References Endnotes

Prosperity without growth : economics for a finite planet

Psychologists' emerging interest in spirituality and religion as well as the relevance of each phenomenon to issues of psychological importance requires an understanding of the fundamental characteristics of each construct. On the basis of both historical considerations and a limited but growing empirical literature, we caution against viewing spirituality and religiousness as incompatible and suggest that the common tendency to polarize the terms simply as individual vs. institutional or ′good′ vs. ′bad′ is not fruitful for future research. Also cautioning against the use of restrictive, narrow definitions or overly broad definitions that can rob either construct of its distinctive characteristics, we propose a set of criteria that recognizes the constructs' conceptual similarities and dissimilarities. Rather than trying to force new and likely unsuccessful definitions, we offer these criteria as benchmarks for judging the value of existing definitions.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1468-5914.00119

Conceptualizing Religion and Spirituality: Points of Commonality, Points of Departure

Empirical research on the determinants of economic growth typically neglects the influence of religion. To fill this gap, this study uses international survey data on religiosity for a broad panel of countries to investigate the effects of church attendance and religious beliefs on economic growth. To isolate the direction of causation from religiosity to economic performance, the estimation relies on instrumental variables suggested by an analysis in which church attendance and religious beliefs are the dependent variables. The instruments are variables for the presence of state religion and for regulation of the religion market, the composition of religious adherence, and an indicator of religious pluralism. Results show that economic growth responds positively to religious beliefs, notably beliefs in hell and heaven, but negatively to church attendance. That is, growth depends on the extent of believing relative to belonging. These results accord with a model in which religious beliefs influence individual traits that enhance economic performance. The beliefs are an output of the religion sector, and church attendance is an input to this sector. Hence, for given beliefs, higher church attendance signifies more resources used up by the religion sector

/pdf/religion-and-economic-growth-across-countries-2fnywf6adq.pdf

Religion and Economic Growth across Countries

Although the positive association between religiosity and life satisfaction is well documented, much theoretical and empirical controversy surrounds the question of how religion actually shapes life satisfaction. Using a new panel dataset, this study offers strong evidence for social and participatory mechanisms shaping religion’s impact on life satisfaction. Our findings suggest that religious people are more satisfied with their lives because they regularly attend religious services and build social networks in their congregations. The effect of within-congregation friendship is contingent, however, on the presence of a strong religious identity. We find little evidence that other private or subjective aspects of religiosity affect life satisfaction independent of attendance and congregational friendship.

/pdf/religion-social-networks-and-life-satisfaction-2ejr9938pp.pdf

Religion, Social Networks, and Life Satisfaction

This article considers the question of whether our field should relabel itself the psychology of religion and spirituality. The meanings of religion and spirituality appear to be evolving. Religion is moving from a broadband construct-one that includes both the institutional and the individual, and the good and the bad-to a narrowband institutional construct that restricts and inhibits human potential. Spirituality, on the other hand, is becoming differentiated from religion as an individual expression that speaks to the greatest of human capacities. Several dangers in these trends are consiciered, including the danger of losing the sacred core of our field. An alternate approach to defining religion and spirituality is presented that preserves the heart of our discipline while encouraging the study of new pathways to the sacred and new meanings of the sacred itself.

The psychology of religion and spirituality? Yes and no.

Peter Berger (1929) is an American sociologist best known for his collaboration with Thomas Luckman in writing The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. That book argues that human reality, and knowledge of it, is a social construct, emerging from the individual or group’s interaction with larger social structures (institutions). Social structures, once widely adopted, lose their history as social constructions (objectivation), and come over time, by the people who live within them, to be deemed natural realities independent of human construction (reification). Berger predicted, in his later book, The Sacred Canopy, near-term all-encompassing secularization of religion, which prediction has proved false, especially in the third world (as Berger himself has acknowledged in his later work, Desecularization).

Berger

Papers

神圣的帷幕 : 宗教社会学理论之要素 = The sacred canopy elements of a sociological theory of religion