A. Timothy Church
Publications
Church, A. T. (2024). Religion versus Secular Humanism: What the Psychological and Social Sciences Can Tell Us. United Kingdom: Hypatia Press.
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In today’s contentious climate, we continue to see a seemingly unbridgeable divide between people who find their answers in religion and those who are indifferent or even hostile to it. For many of its critics, religion is irrational, divisive, and a major contributor to prejudice, intolerance, and violence. In this book, I examine the relative merits and viability of religion versus secular humanism as alternative life stances, drawing on evidence from the psychological and social sciences. Among the questions asked:
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Are there plausible naturalistic (vs. religious) explanations of the origins, evolution, and functions of religion?
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What are the beneficial and harmful effects of religion and can the benefits be adequately achieved via secular means?
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Can secular humanists live moral, meaningful, and fulfilling lives, or is the fully secular life deficient in some way?
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Can psychological science show us how to live meaningful and fulfilling lives, with or without religion?
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As much of the world secularizes, is religion likely to persist? Should it?
Overall, available evidence suggests that secular humanism—as a moral, meaningful, and fulfilling life stance—is capable of replacing religion, but probably won’t. Rather, humanism will remain a viable—and for many people, preferable—alternative that co-exists with religion into the foreseeable future. Evidence-based proposals to reduce the religious-secular gap are also offered.
Church, A. T. (Ed.) (2017). The Praeger Handbook of Personality across Cultures (3 volumes). Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO/Praeger.
In this three-volume Handbook, prominent scholars from diverse countries review the status of research on personality across cultural contexts. Volume 1, titled Trait Psychology across Cultures, focuses on the cross-cultural study of dispositional traits. Chapters address the extent to which the structure of personality traits is universal versus culture-specific; the accuracy or meaningfulness of trait comparisons across cultures; trait consistency and validity across cultures; the situations across which traits are manifested; and methodological issues dealing with bias and equivalence in cross-cultural personality research. Volume 2, titled Culture and Characteristic Adaptations, focuses on the relationship between culture and other important aspects of personality, including the self, emotions, motives, values, beliefs, and life narratives, as well as aspects of personality and adjustment associated with bilingualism/biculturalism and intercultural competence. Volume 3, titled Evolutionary, Ecological, and Cultural Contexts of Personality, focuses on evolutionary, genetic, and neuroscience perspectives on personality across cultures and ecological and cultural influences and dimensions. The Handbook is unique in bringing together in a single resource the diverse topics and theoretical perspectives in the study of personality across cultures.
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