The Experience of Feeling Grace in Voluntary Service to the Terminally III

Gowack, Paul; Valle, Valerie A.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4899-0125-5_18

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Grace is a crucial concept in multiple religious traditions, particularly in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but corresponding concepts are found in various branches of Buddhism and Hinduism as well (Betz, Browing, Janowski, Bernd & Jüngel, 2007& Ward, 1998. More specific in Vedanta Hinduism, God is also seen as abundant in mercy with infinite generosity and in Vaishnava Hinduism, the grace of God can be enjoyed by surrendering the self to Lord Vishnu (Emmons, Hill, Barrett & Kapic, 2017;Frenz, 1975 andGowack &Valle, 1998). As the cultural context of the current investigation is mainly influenced by Christianity, we give a more elaborate overview of the development of grace in this tradition.…”

Section: Christian Perspectives On Gracementioning

confidence: 99%

A Lay Definition of Grace: A Quantitative and Qualitative Content Analysis

Schellekens

Dillen

Dewitte

et al. 2020

The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion

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Grace is a central theme in religious traditions but receives only recently attention by psychologists. Conceptualizations of grace seems predominantly constructed within theological and theoretical frameworks, whereas these conceptualizations may be poorly aligned with the definitions of grace of lay persons. This study clarifies the concept of grace and creates a bottom-up definition, based on the understanding of non-experts in a secularized society. A total of 456 Belgian adults (64 % female, mean age = 50.04) provided descriptions of grace in an online survey.A multidisciplinary coding team conducted quantitative and qualitative content analysis (Nvivo). The following themes and categories emerged (1) virtuous qualities: grace is recognized in a multitude of good qualities with forgiveness as the ultimate example;(2) extra-ordinary gift: grace is something you receive unmerited, the nature of the giving goes beyond mere fair exchange; (3) transcendent and immanent setting: grace is encountered in the realm of the divine as well as in human relationships and daily life; (4) profound experience: the giving and receiving of grace entails an articulated personal involvement leading to new beginnings and freedom and (5) profound feelings: the experience of grace is accompanied with positive feelings and states often preceded by negative feelings and states. Distribution of categories by respondent's age, gender and religiosity showed a robustness of underlying characteristics in the definition of grace. However, significant group differences are found: believing and older participants described more often extra-ordinary and transcendent characteristics, whereas non-believers used more referrals to faults and forgiveness. Believing people used more positive feelings and women used more virtuous qualities in describing grace.The importance of further investigating the psychological dynamics of grace and its capacity for enhancing well-being is highlighted.

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Section: Christian Perspectives On Gracementioning

confidence: 99%

A Lay Definition of Grace: A Quantitative and Qualitative Content Analysis

Schellekens

Dillen

Dewitte

et al. 2020

The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, documented aspects of what is known as mystical experience include non-ordinary perceptual changes, deeply positive affect, noetic quality, transiency, spiritual sense, unity, and ineffability (e.g., Gimello, 1978;Happold, 1970;James, 1929;Pahnke & Richards, 1973;Rowan, 1983;Stace, 1960;Underhill, 1911). Studies on specific phenomena related to the transpersonal include topics such as meditative states (Kornfield, 1979), being in a "deep state" (Gifford-May & Thompson, 1994), transcendent awareness (Valle, 1989), being with suffering (Quails, 1998), being with a dying person (West, 1998b), feeling grace in the voluntary service to the terminally ill (Gowack & Valle, 1998), encounters with a divine presence during a near-death experience (West, 1998a), being silent (Marcandonatou, 1998), being unconditionally loved (Matsu-Pissot, 1998), the sacred in everyday life (Adams, 1996), intense spiritual experiences (Thomas & Cooper, 1980), and synchronicity (Hanson & Klimo, 1998).…”

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confidence: 99%