Meaning-Making

Abstract An increasingly popular approach to thinking about religion from a psychological perspective is to treat religions as “meaning systems.” A lot of research in the psychology of religion has been conducted within this “meaning systems” paradigm. Such research also demonstrates the positive role religious meaning-making can play in health and resilience, stress and coping, and pro-sociality. The research cited in this book suggests that our embodiment directly impacts our understanding of how meanings are arrived at. This, in turn, affects the ways in which we understand religious meaning-making and moves the concern with justifying the religiously lived life in a more pragmatic direction.