A cultural psychological reading of Religionpsychologie

Jacob Belzen’s Religionspsychologie (Belzen, 2015) is a fascinating, deeply scholarly written book retracing a century of psychology of religion in Europe and its relation to the rest of the world. It both shows the anchorage of psychology of religion in the debates
taking place around the development of psychology, and in the evolution of Europe since the beginning of the 20th century. In this brief commentary, I highlight the qualities of this work, and especially its ability to retrace the complex human network of relationships that accompanied the development of a scientific society and its publications.
I then suggest two possible ways to complement this analysis. First, as a developmental, sociocultural psychologist, I reflect on the fact that this field of enquiry, that aimed to be inter-confessional, came to be led essentially by scholars of Christian origin or addressing Christianity. Second, observing the diversity of approaches constituting psychology of religion today, highlighted by Belzen, I emphasize the diverse epistemologies grounding these works. I finally argue in favor of a pragmatic stance, which might both guide the field into issues of societal relevance, and allow psychology of religion to contribute to the development of psychology as a whole.