ABSTRACT
There has been a tremendous amount of research conducted on religious and spiritual constructs in the last 25 years. The weight of this work provides solid support for R/S constructs as useful predictors of a wide array of outcomes. A number of compendia have appeared that attempt to outline and distill this vast literature in ways that are manageable. Volumes appeared to review work done in health (e.g., Koenig, McCullough, & Larson, 2001; Plante & Sherman, 2001), psychiatry (Huguelet & Koenig, 2009), clinical psychotherapy (e.g., Pargament, 2007; Shafranske, 1996; Worthington, Johnson, Hook, & Aten, 2013), and general handbooks that provided a broad spectrum of results across a variety of psychological specialty areas (e.g., Paloutzian & Park, 2013; Pargament, Exline, & Jones, 2013). The last decade has also seen the appearance of two new journals published by the American Psychological Association (APA) to help facilitate the dissemination of psychologically oriented research in this area (Psychology of Religion and Spirituality and Spirituality in Clinical Practice). However, despite such a large research literature, there still are numerous scientific issues that need to be addressed (Piedmont, 2014).
