Julie Exline is a Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Stony Brook University in 1997 and has been doing research on spiritual struggles and virtues (e.g., forgiveness, humility) since the late 1990s. She is the Primary Investigator on a grant from the John Templeton Foundation entitled Religious/Spiritual Struggle: Predictors, Pathways, and Potential for Growth and Transformation. She recently served as President of Division 36 of the American Psychological Association (Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality). She also writes a monthly blog for Psychology Today’s website entitled Light and Shadow: Challenges in Religious and Spiritual Life.
In this interview, Dr. Julie Exline discusses what led to her interest in Struggles and some of the background behind the development of the Religious and Spiritual Struggle Scale. She goes on to talk about why the scale includes struggles relevant to both religious believers and nonbelievers and how this work related to some of her current work on god images in both groups.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
The views expressed in podcasts, features and responses are the views of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Religious Studies Project or our sponsors. The Religious Studies Project is produced by the Religious Studies Project Association (SCIO), a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (charity number SC047750).