Some Possible Christian Psychology Research Topics

Christian spirituality

Use of instruments that measure specifically Christian spirituality

The Shepherd’s Scale

The Spiritual Maturity Index

The assessment and formation of the Christian self/identity

Assessment of Christian self-representations

Old self/new self

Created self/Fallen self/Redeemed self

Beginnings of a questionnaire-ELJ

The sense of a good aspect and a bad aspect to oneself

Actual self/Ideal self/Real self

False self/True self

Four self-axes

Redemptive-historicality: Created—Fallen—Redeemed—Perfected

Reality: Actual-Potential-Ideal-Real

Temporality: Current-Future

Authenticity: True-False (degree of depth)

Research on the formation of a distinctly Christian identity

See Dee Reju

Christian Models of Love

Depth of Christian love

  1. Family
  2. Friends
  3. Neighbors/co-workers
  4. Strangers
  5. Weak/poor/unpopular
  6. Enemies

Relation between God-understanding and self-understanding

Christian explanatory-style

To what do Christians attribute their good and evil actions

Relation between aesthetic experience and belief in God

Study of experiences of beauty (in art, nature, human relationships) and one’s awareness of God.

Uniquely Christian development

Developmental stages in Christian self-understanding and God-understanding: Ph 2:12,13

Christian developmental explanatory-style

Stage 1: I do what I do myself

Stage 2: I do my part, and God does his part

Stage 3: God assists me to do what I do

Stage 4: God and I are both fully active

Stages in postformal reasoning among Christians

Some research has been done on undergraduates-ELJ

Bernard of Clairvaux’s “Stages of Love

  1. Love of self for self’s sake

Autocentrism

  1. Love of God for self’s sake

Autocentric theism

  1. Love of God for God’s sake

Simple theocentrism

  1. Love of self for God’s sake

Complex theocentrism

Three kinds of development in relation to the Law

  1. Upon conviction of sin, we are to flee to Christ

Personal agency develops in adolescence, signified by activation of a mature

conscience and conversion to Christ

Any of you have an experience like that?

  1. Young adulthood to middle adulthood “Law-Grace Paradigm Shift”

1st stage of Christian life: Mastering teachings, practices, behaviors: learn God’s law

Old self weakens.

2nd stage of Christian life: Because of remaining sin, there tends to be a gradual falling

back upon self-reliance (unconsciously), that promotes a sense of superiority,

self-righteousness, judgmentalism

Entity theory of Christian life

One comes to identify oneself with the law/loses touch with one’s actual self

The old self/false self “gets religion”. It starts to grow again: Grows by means

of self-deception. Some get stuck here

3rd stage of Christian life: Growing realization of grace based on justification by faith that

undermines old self/false self. New self gets nurtured by the word of God in

Scripture and gospel/meditation and prayer are key

  1. Daily, incremental, ongoing identification with Christ’s life, death, and resurrection

One learns to practice a daily transition from death with Christ to resurrection in Christ

Every day Christians need to die experientially/affectively to the old way of life, and

be raised to walk in newness of life

Study differences between Incremental and Entity Theories (see Carol Dweck, Self-Theories) of the Christian life

The emergence of a mature conscience in adolescence (activated when one knowingly violates one’s moral code whether or not others know about it).

Uniquely Christian Therapy

Testing radical Christian therapy in general (pilot project)

Videotaping Christian counseling across multiple settings and counselors in order to document what actually occurs in a counseling room, and to provide a coding scheme for various types of Christian counseling (e.g., intensity of Christian content, and psychological complexity), to help establish what is high-quality Christian counseling.

Testing distinctly Christian therapy models already being used

  1. Theophostic

See Fernando Garzon

  1. Neil Anderson’s 7-Step model

See Fernando Garzon

  1. Leanne Payne’s model

See Fernando Garzon

  1. Aspects of biblical counseling
  2. Comparing different Christian counseling models

Testing specific Christian therapy strategies

  1. Christ-centered teaching emphasis (on atonement and blessings of union with Christ: justification, adoption, perfection)
  2. Identity in Christ
  3. Adoption
  4. Training of Christian meditation
  5. Training of Christian guided imagery
  6. Training of Christian emotion-focused therapy
  7. Use of the Gospel Repentance cycle
  8. Use of Wolfram Soldan’s Forgiveness model
  9. Use of the Death-Resurrection script

Experience of the Christian God

Qualitative study of how the indwelling Holy Spirit is experienced.

Quantitative/Qualitative study of Christian experience of God in devotions/worship

Qualitative study of the experience of the Trinity

Relation between Perception of God and Others among Christians

Research on relation between God-image and relations with parents/others

Attachment research

See Richard Beck and Angie MacDonald

Impact of Redemption

Timothy Sisemore’s Grace scale

Change from entity to incremental theory of Christiformity

The nature of agape-love

Thesauresis

Research on the relation between divine forgiveness and horizontal forgiveness

See Robert Cheong for theoretical treatment; Wolfram Soldan and Matthias Schlagmuller for some empirical research (faculty at IGNIS, Institute for Christian Psychology, Kitzingen, Germany)

Research on uniquely Christian wisdom

Research on Christian perfectionism and how perfection in Christ impacts that.

Research on uniquely Christian virtues

Agape-love, humility, dependence on and gratitude to God,

Are there unique resources that should facilitate humility among Christians?

Why don’t they?

Find exemplary Christians (“saints”) in some churches and do an indepth qualitative study on what makes them exemplary.

Research on improvisation (Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine)vs. rule-keeping

Understandings of Christians Regarding Christian Teachings

Assessment of the understanding of Christians regarding complex topics like

  1. Trinity
  2. God’s attributes
  3. Image of God
  4. The nature of sin
  5. Substitutionary atonement
  6. Union with Christ
  7. Justification by faith
  8. Men’s and women’s roles

Christian Understandings of Psychopathology

Uniquely Christian forms of psychopathology

Uniquely Christian experiences of shame or guilt

Qualitative

Quantitative

See Stephen Parker

Qualitative study on how the nature of indwelling sin is experienced.

How people overcome their sin and damage (qualitative)

Study what Christians have done to overcome their problems

Study changes over life in growth: Does sanctification actually occur in Protestant

circles.

Christian attitudes towards homosexuals

See Rodney Bassett’s work

P.J. Watson’s Healthy Sin Beliefs scale

Qualitative Studies

Analysis of what the symbolism or direct content of contemporary horror movies suggest

to us about basic human fears and concerns, e.g., possession by demons or aliens,

being a zombie, living off the blood of other humans, fascination with the “dark side,” and so on.

Other dynamics

Twist to any of these studies:

Study gender differences

Study cross-cultural differences (Asian/Western)

High Priority Research Topics

Christian self-structure

Christian Theory of Holiness with Carol Dweck’s self-theory model (entity vs. incremental)

Shame: Christian vs. secular (Tangney)

Stages of law understanding

Justification by faith/Protestant grace

Bernard’s stages of love

Christian men’s relationship with wives