Perhaps then we should inquire more intensely into the natural human impulse to express gratitude—Gratitude toward nature at large, gratitude towards the whole of which we are a part, perhaps even toward the living Source of all that is. In that intellectual landscape may lie hidden the key to the inner door.”
— Michael Novak, No One Sees God
Overview
Gratitude to God is a very prevalent emotion among people who identify as religious, as well as those who don’t claim a religious affiliation. It is at the core of many religious rituals and is part of the foundation for belief in God. In a recent survey, of those students who believe in God, fully 100 percent said that God was a major source of benefits in their lives (Scheibe, Watkins, & Uhder, 2017). Yet, psychologists know little about fundamental issues concerning the nature, structure, and function of gratitude to God. We envision that this project will begin to fill a gap in knowledge about a foundational form of gratitude and will be poised to make a major contribution to the science of gratitude and to the psychology of religion. One long-term impact of this project is that it will establish the foundations and provide the impetus for the study of other emotions that are commonly directed toward God.
Rationale
Very little research has been reported on gratitude to God, despite the central role that recognizing God’s provision of benefits plays in all major world religions. In contrast, research on gratitude in human social interactions has accelerated in the past decade. Because most people believe in God (Pew Research Center, 2018), investigations into God as a benefactor and gratitude to God as an emotional response to God’s benefaction are needed. Across theistic traditions, God is viewed as the source of all good and this realization highlights the priority of divine goodness over every other created good. The current scientific literature on gratitude toward God is severely limited—as of spring 2019, PsycINFO shows fewer than two dozen scattered empirical articles to date—and such research has been correlational and opportunistic rather than systematic and intentional.
In a large survey of gratitude experiences and expressions commissioned by the John Templeton Foundation, 52 percent of those sampled said that they were regularly grateful to God, and 44 percent of respondents saw gratitude as an expression of love for God or a higher power (John Templeton Foundation Gratitude Survey, 2012). Not surprisingly, people who attend religious services at least once a week were significantly more likely to report feeling gratitude to God and also more likely to have general feelings of gratitude. Sixty-three percent of regular churchgoers express gratitude to God on a regular basis and 75 percent of those who attend religious services once a week agreed with the statement “I have so much in life to feel thankful for.” This smattering of findings suggests that gratitude is relevant to religious and spiritual experience for many people. Given the traditional links of gratitude to religion and spirituality, survey data, and the fact that people frequently feel grateful to non-human agents when they receive benefits (e.g., Teigen, 1997), the topic of gratitude to God (GTG) merits further exploration.
Request for Proposals
The centerpiece of this project is a Request for Proposals (RFPs) that will fund empirical and non-empirical projects on the nature of GTG. Our goal is to employ conceptual and empirical methods to investigate the nature of GTG and to grasp its differences and relations compared to person-to-person gratitude, and more broadly, to illuminate the nature of a fundamental affective process within the psychology of religion.
The main components of this project are:
Four large-scale RFPs for both empirical and nonempirical researchers. This is the central component of the overall project. The project will include a multidisciplinary advisory board spanning the behavioral sciences, philosophy, theology, and religious studies.
A launch conference for project participants that will bring the empirical and conceptual components together in the format of a collaborative workshop in the first year of the project period.
A capstone conference near the conclusion of the project that would involve all project participants.
An empirical research project of a comparison of gratitude to God (GTG) with gratitude to humans (GTH) involving collaborations between Baylor University; the University of California, Davis; and Biola University.
Two special issues of professional journals on the topic of Gratitude to God.