Liturgical Animals: What Psychology and Neuroscience Tell Us about Formation and Worship

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Notes

James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009).

Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 43.

Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 45.

Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 32.

Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 46–62.

Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 40.

John A. Bargh and Tanya L. Chartrand, “The Unbearable Automaticity of Being,” American Psychologist 54, no. 7 (1999): 462–479.

An answer to this question is given by Steven Quartz and Terrence Sejnowski in the form of a “neural constructivist manifest.” See Steven Quartz and Terrence Sejnowski, Liars, Lovers and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals about How We Become Who We Are (New York: Quill, 2002), 128.

Andrew Meltzoff and Jean Decety, “What Imitation Tells Us about Social Cognition: A Rapprochement between Developmental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience,” Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 358 (2003): 491–500; Andrew Meltzoff, “The ‘Lide Me’ Framework for Recognizing and Becoming an Intentional Agent,” Acta Psychologica 124 (2007): 26–43.

Research on mirroring the neural activity of the actions, sensations, and emotions of others persons is reviewed by Christian Keysers and Valeria Gazzola, “Towards a Unifying Neural Theory of Social Cognition,” in S. Anders et al., eds., Progress in Brain Research 156 (2006): 379–401.

John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss: Vol. I. Attachment (New York: Basic Books, 1969); Vol. 2. Separation: Anxiety and Anger (New York: Basic Books, 1973); Vol. 3. Loss: Sadness and Depression (New York: Basic Books, 1980).

P. K. Kuhl, K. A. Williams, F. Lacerda, K. N. Stevens, and B. Lindblom, “Linguistic Experience Alters Phonetic Perception in Infants by 6 Months of Age,” Science 31 (1991): 606–8.

Warren S. Brown, “Discussion: Seven Pillars of the House of Wisdom,” in A Handbook of Wisdom: Psychological Perspectives, ed. R. Sternberg and J. Jordan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 353–68.

Exploration of the first three points can be found in Brown and Strawn, The Physical Nature of Christian Life, 140–57.

This article is adapted with permission from Warren S. Brown and Brad D. Strawn, The Physical Nature of Christian Life: Neuroscience, Psychology & the Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

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Notes on contributors

Brad D. Strawn

Brad D. Strawn is Evelyn and Frank Freed Professor of the Integration of Psychology and Theology School of Psychology, Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.

Warren S. Brown

Warren S. Brown is professor of psychology and director of the Travis Research Institute at the Graduate School of Psychology, Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.