Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2006. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, April 6, 2006
Rick DelVecchio, Chronicle Staff Writer
That's the hopeful gist of the early results of what's billed as the first-ever public conference devoted to the scientific investigation of life-altering developments in the inner life -- changes that take a variety of forms but are known broadly as spiritual transformation.
Scientists and experts on religion and spirituality opened a three-day gathering Wednesday at UC Berkeley to preview 22 studies into the nature of spiritual development in individuals and groups, including people with HIV, cancer patients, adolescents and urban families.
The organizers said the conference is significant because it shows the spiritual dimension is emerging as a rich subject for research in fields such as medicine, psychology and neurology as well as religion.
"It's a subject scientists in a broad set of disciplines have never looked at as a group together," said University of Pennsylvania anthropology professor Solomon Katz, a leading researcher the field.
The conference is co-sponsored by the Philadelphia-based Metanexus Institute on Religion and Science and UC Berkeley's School of Public Health. It's a forum for presenting the initial results of a wide-ranging spirituality research program funded primarily by the John Templeton Foundation.
The research is in its early stages but presenters at the conference said it has produced some intriguing observations on possible links between spirituality and well-being.
Research at the University of Pittsburgh found that spiritual growth was associated with better moods for cancer patients who participated in the study, while lower spiritual well-being was linked to poorer moods.
In another study, HIV patients who believed "God loves me" fared better than those who believed in a judgmental deity.
The HIV study hushed the audience of more than 200 people when chief investigator Gail Ironson of the University of Miami reported her observations. She displayed a chart showing the "God loves me" factor had a powerful statistical association with the progression of HIV-related disease, in contrast to other measures of patients' mood and attitude.
Katz found the results striking but said they are typical of where the research is pointing.
"If God loves you," he said, "you do much better than people who don't have any beliefs."
One observation researchers agree on is that spiritual transformation for most people is a complex and quiet experience. Rarely is it the stuff of miracles and visions. More often it is part of an individual's development and involves positive and negative beliefs mixed together -- the cancer patient, for example, wavering between believing God is loving or unfair.
Presenters said the drama of spiritual experiences in fundamentalist faiths reflects the worship styles of those faiths and is only one way that spiritual transformation is expressed. By contrast, a depressed person may be in the midst of undergoing more profound spiritual change than the euphoric individual, the depression indicating the struggles taking place within.
Most Americans report having had a spiritually transformative experience. These experiences generally mark a new phase in an individual's established religious life, often triggered by a personal crisis such as illness or the death of a loved one.
E-mail Rick DelVecchio at rdelvecchio@sfchronicle.com.
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