Psychological therapies are another focus for entanglement with spirituality. Prayer has caused concern in the literature, particularly in respect of boundary issues arising when clinicians pray with patients, but the nature of prayer is explored here rather as a way of giving attention to things that are most desired. Scientific evidence suggests that prayer is a form of positive religious coping for patients. Mindfulness, with its roots in Buddhism, is widely applied as a secular spiritual intervention that is helpful in a range of mental health conditions. Silence has long been recognised as a significant and meaningful phenomenon within psychotherapy, but also has its place in contemplative spiritual practices. A theme running through these three practices is that of careful attentiveness, in which spiritual and psychological concerns become entangled. Good clinical practice requires careful attention-giving, so there is a sense in which treatment planning in psychiatry can be considered a kind of prayer, understood as careful attentiveness to what is most desired by patients. Examples are drawn from Christian, Islamic and Buddhist spirituality and practice.

Possession states are a complex phenomenon that takes a variety of different cultural and religious forms, which may or may not be associated with a psychiatric diagnosis. A case study demonstrates how demonic attributions may be employed as a form of negative religious coping and may lead to spiritual struggles. It illustrates the importance of understanding theological/religious context of belief in spirit possession and the difficulties of reaching a psychiatric diagnosis when the patient belongs to a faith community that understands such experiences as spiritually determined and not symptomatic of illness. Possession states are considered unusual in the UK and yet they are very common worldwide. Exorcism (or disobsession or spirit release) has in some contexts been proposed as an appropriate (if controversial) psychiatric treatment. While, in appropriate religious/cultural contexts, it can be helpful, there is also evidence that it can be harmful when applied in the wrong way to patients with certain diagnoses. This raises important questions about collaboration with faith leaders, safeguarding those who are vulnerable and not pathologising culturally normative practices.

Chapter 7 reconstructs when post-Roman kings and their officials went to church and considers the significance of church membership in shaping their positions in post-imperial palaces. This is (unsurprisingly) much easier to do for Nicene as opposed to Homoian rulers. Prominent officials accompanied Nicene Burgundian and Merovingian kings to church. Brief glimpses of life in Homoian royal palaces imply the potential participation of Nicene courtiers at regular religious observances. It may be that officials were not expected to go to church with the king; concerns for religious accommodation may have shaped the character of these events and allowed Nicene officials to justify attendance. Those who served the king could also be subject to the local bishop. Yet two episodes of excommunication make clear that the ultimate judgement over the continued standing of royal officials—both in palace and church—remained with the king himself. Post-Roman bishops may have been keen to claim the presence of ‘our people’ in the palace (as Victor of Vita put it). Dependence on the king, commitment to legal procedure, and membership of this separate Christian community seems normally to have trumped the claims of church affiliations even when courtiers and bureaucrats interacted with clerics.

Chapter 5 is the last of three chapters to consider the material production of Dominican liturgical books. This chapter situates the context of the production of the three liturgical exemplars: Rome, Santa Sabina, XIV L 1; London, British Library, Add. 23935; and Salamanca, San Esteban, SAL.–CL.01. It examines the intersection between the Dominicans and the blossoming Parisian book trade, the pecia system of book production, and the relationship between the Dominicans at the Parisian convent of St-Jacques and their neighbouring book-maker, Guillaume de Sens. Close palaeographical and codicological study of the exemplars reveals certain guiding principles that governed the production, within which individual copyists and artists had the freedom to execute and manipulate the contents. Drawing together the three chapters of Part II, this chapter considers the interaction of the various book trades in the making of the exemplars, shedding light not only on the book-making practices of the Dominicans, but also the Parisian book trade more generally.

This chapter argues for the role of collective cognition in creating Roman religious reality. Inauguratio, through which priests were created, was no empty orthopraxic ritual but a means of generating collective belief in order to create socio-religious status and power. Ideally, when Romans judged the ritual of inauguratio efficacious, they collectively believed that Jupiter had sent auspicial signs approving a candidate and that the candidate was therefore a priest. Collective belief was what made the priest a priest, with all the powers and duties concomitant with that status. But the Romans were typically blind to the collective-intentional nature of their social reality. Thus the standard Roman explanation of inauguratio mystifies sacerdotal ontology, holding that priests were priests as a result of Jupiter’s nod. Constitutive beliefs are distinguished from non-constitutive, merely religious beliefs. The Romans’ collectively held constitutive beliefs about sacerdotal status and power actually constituted priests as priests. Although Jupiter’s agency could not be constituted by Roman collective belief, it was a genuine religious belief and part of Roman conceptions of the basis of sacerdotal authority.

Chapter 3 considers how evolving demands for uniformity fit into the cultural norms of political institutions in late antiquity. It uses reports on (supposed) pagans, heretics, Jews, and Samaritans in service to sketch out the contours of those demands in practice. While these exemplary stories cannot be used to substantiate the presence of these groups in administration, they can help us understand when and why the perceived divergence of a ruler’s subordinates from his version of correct religion mattered. Their continued service is, in part, a reflection of the continued capacity of rulers and their subordinates to put requirements for religious uniformity to one side. This chapter argues that it was also a result of the precise framing of those requirements. Late ancient laws tended to portray orthodox Christian officials as necessary to ensure laws on correct religion were enforced. It is easy to see how those heterodox officials willing to uphold a Christian political dispensation could continue to serve in political institutions. In that sense, the appointments of non-Christians and heretics should be seen, not as a breach of requirements for uniformity, but a product of their specific contours.

Chapter 8 considers a radically different version of the dynamic explored in chs 6-7: the relationships between provincial governors and Christian communities across the Mediterranean world. For much of this period, these governors were outsiders with short terms of office, who relied heavily on resident office staffs and local grandees. Recent revisionist work on the Christianization of the Roman world has thus stressed the tendency of provincial appointees to prioritise those local elite interests over the demands of bishops and ascetics in the context of religious conflict. As Brent Shaw has put it, the governor could ‘give rather short shrift to a person whom they thought had no standing to intervene in the running of the state affairs over which they had authority’ (Shaw 2015, 58). In this chapter, I seek to modify this picture by suggesting that membership of the church and relationships with provincial Christian communities, institutions, and authority figures played a more significant role for governors than has been appreciated. In this sense, bishops and ascetics were, in fact, amongst the local interest groups whose collaboration these Christian appointees had to pursue.

Contemporary analytic philosophers of religion have tended to focus attention on epistemological questions about the grounds for religious belief, or on analysing the precise cognitive content of claims about God. But there is reason to suppose that the actual practice of religion depends less on intellectual inquiries of this sort and more on a lived tradition of observance, including participation in various kinds of ritual, and public and private acts of worship. This chapter, drawing on some attitudes manifest in the poetry of Horace, examines what may have been a prevalent approach to religion in the educated Roman world, involving conformity to religious praxis, combined with an ironic or sceptical attitude to the existence of supernatural forces, or the power or influence of the gods, in human affairs. Such an attitude certainly has its counterpart in our own contemporary culture, but it is argued that such a stance inevitably creates a certain psychological dissonance in the religious practitioner. Detached orthopraxy alone cannot satisfy our deepest human needs. The chapter concludes with reflections on the intimate relation between praxis and belief in matters of religion.

China had a long tradition of religiously inspired rebellion, and this chapter explores the ways in which folk religion fed into different forms of resistance in the Mao era. Popular protest in the Mao era was greater than has been assumed, but it was socio-economic and small-scale in characters, which did not prevent participants from believing that their protests had the blessing of the gods. It begins by looking at very low-level forms of resistance such as jokes as a way of lampooning authority; it goes on to explore the efforts of spirit mediums and others to stand up to authority in defence of folk religion, especially following the famine (1959–61) when people blamed disaster on the fact that they had denied the change to make sacrifices to the gods. Planned, organized rebellion was rare and was closely tied to the remnants of the redemptive religious societies. The chapter ends by looking at attempts by ordinary people to make themselves emperors and at millenarian risings, notably the Catholic rebellion in the Taiyuan region in 1965.

From the Socialist Education Movement onwards, folk religion specialists – now classed as ‘superstition professionals’ (akin to ‘religious professionals’) -- were targeted for re-education. Spirit mediums were singled out because of their number and their central role in healing. This was the prelude to the Four Olds Campaign inaugurated by the Cultural Revolution in 1966, when religious sites were destroyed and religious specialists came under attack from Red Guards, despite the fact that ‘religion’ was never named as one of the ‘four olds’. Two features of Cultural Revolution politics are explored: the use of iconoclasm – especially in relation to the Confucius Temple in Qufu; and the attempt to ‘revolutionize the environment’, which entailed renaming streets, shops, and consumer items, and painting buildings red. It ends with the fitful Campaign to Criticize Confucius and Lin Biao (1973–6), which engaged the rural and urban populace in a polemical critique of some simple Confucian texts.

Chapter 8 is the third of four chapters to consider one element of the Dominican liturgy, focussing here on the sources and unique characteristics of the Dominican divine office. Drawing on data from previous studies of the office, and in particular of office responsory chants, this chapter positions the Dominican office within a wider network of liturgical traditions. The Dominican office was clearly adopted by the Teutonic Knights, the Crosiers, and in certain Scandinavian dioceses. The source for the Dominican office is less [clear-cut]. Some traits of the Dominican office can also be observed in the advent responsories of the Cistercians and of British cathedrals, and in the responsory verses in office books from Provence; these may either have been sources for the Dominican office, or they may have shared a common source. The chapter concludes by noting distinctive features of the Dominican office and its books, for the purposes of facilitating identification of other Dominican office books.

This chapter explores the worldview of individuals who reject religion but, rather than placing their faith in science (scientism), put it in humanity, embracing the humanities and culture, and affirming that human beings are persons born free and equal in dignity and rights.

The final chapter summarizes, offers concluding remarks, and suggests some challenges that worldview studies will face in the future. It also suggests how we, as reflective individuals, can develop an intellectually and existentially satisfying worldview.