Deeply Engaged and Strongly Perspectival? The Impasse in the Psychology-Christianity Dialogue and Its Missional Resolution

Christians in psychology tend to do two types of scholarship: (1) deeply engaged, weakly perspectival research, in which the work is done for mainstream audiences but Christian beliefs remain largely implicit, and/or (2) strongly perspectival, relatively disengaged research, in which Christian beliefs are made explicit but the work is done for a nonmainstream, typically Christian, audience. Though both of these types of scholarship are essential, there appears to be a paucity of (3) deeply engaged, strongly perspectival research, in which the work is done for mainstream audiences yet with an explicitly Christian perspective. That this is the case, why it is so, and what we might do about it, is explored in this article.