Religious and spiritual self-defining memories, an exploratory Scottish study

The study is an exploration of the religious and spiritual Self-Defining Memories (SDMs) of forty-nine adults, drawn mostly from the Christian and Pagan communities within Scotland. It sought to establish whether participants reported the existence of these types and categories of memories, and if so, if they were associated with any recognisable analytic themes. It also investigated whether there was any evidence of potential thematic differences/similarities between groups. The study found that most participants gave detailed responses when asked to write about their religious and spiritual self-defining memories, and that the majority of responses could be thematically analysed into three conceptual themes: Theme One, ‘Grouping’; Theme Two, ‘Connection’, and the ‘smaller’ Group Three, ‘Journeying’. With two exceptions, the ‘Christian’ Group’s responses were divided between the first two themes, with the majority (18/30) in Theme One. The ‘Pagan’ Group’s responses, with two exceptions, all displayed the characteristics of Theme Two. The study further sought to relate the findings to the existing body of literature on SDMs, and to ideas of ‘immanence’ and ‘transcendence’, and definitions of ‘religion’ and ‘spiritual’. Further predictions based on these and the pattern of responses, were broadly confirmed. A number of content features of the responses were noted. Evidence from both the process of thematic analysis and the identified themes, supported some of the theoretical findings and positions demonstrated in previous work. Possible difficulties in relation to the study were explored, and suggestions and potential for future work was discussed.

Resource Type

Master thesis

DOI

10.48730/3pn0-gw10

Date Created

2011

Former identifier

833333

Relations

Items

Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Visibility	Actions
	File	2024-03-05	University of Strathclyde