A group of researchers at the University of Utah has launched a new project aimed at understanding how the brain operates in people with deep spiritual and religious beliefs. The Religious Brain ...

Three thousand years ago, in ancient China, sages stuck red hot pokers into empty turtle shells to study the way cracks developed on the flat side of the shell. Depending on the pattern made by the ...

Religion is on the wane in America—at least that’s the most recent wisdom. It’s something of a surprising claim, however, considering the United States has long been thought of as one of the most ...

In my years of practice, I have had the honor of helping many individuals recognize and heal from religious trauma. As you can imagine, when something so sacred as religion is used in a way by the ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about relationships, personality, and everyday psychology. Many people come to therapy upon the realization that their ...

Since the advent of functional neuroimaging in the early 1990s, the temptation to peek into the brains of people praying, meditating, or speaking in tongues has been irresistible. As is often the case ...

It’s a long word, a neologism, that seeks to capture a cultural transformation that is both historically specific and socially profound, a shift in mentalities and practices cutting to the core of ...

It’s easy to imagine a spacewalk being trippy or even jaw-droppingly frightening, but for one American astronaut it was nothing short of religious. In an interview with Kingsport, Tennessee’s ...

Sometimes it seems that everyone you see under a certain age has a tattoo. It can be an abstract sign, a Celtic knot, a dolphin, a cross or something whose meaning is less apparent. Indeed, a poll ...

Not long ago, a family member sent me a message linking my sexual orientation to painful events in our family history and describing my identity as spiritually disordered and in need of correction.

How we did this The goal of this report is to delve into the religious experiences of Black Catholics. It’s a follow-up to a February 2021 report, “Faith Among Black Americans,” that examined the role ...