ABSTRACT
Human beings are active collaborators in their religious faith, not just passive recipients. We bring to worship all that we are. Ritual, worship, and healing, in both traditional and charismatic church contexts, engage us on all levels: physical, emotional, volitional, intellectual, spiritual, and social. This chapter looks at these religious practices from a psychological perspective, asking how they can help or hinder personal and spiritual growth. As in other chapters, this perspective is complementary to (rather than an alternative to) religious accounts of worship, ritual, and healing, which focus on their transcendent dimensions. We take a broad view of ritual, considering it to apply equally well to the unspoken but fixed format of many charismatic traditions as to more formalised liturgy.
