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Proudfoot, Wayne, editor, William James and a Science of Religions: Reexperiencing the Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Excellent essays written by several top scholars on the centennial of the publication of James’s classic.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Freud, Sigmund, The Future of an Illusion. New York: Norton, 1989. Love it or hate it, this controversial book by the founder of psychoanalysis has had enormous impact on psychological thinking about religion.Google Scholar

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Frankl, Viktor E., Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. Gripping short volume that shows the connection between Frankl’s existential theory and his experiences in a Nazi death camp.Google Scholar

Becker, Ernest, The Denial of Death. New York: Free Press, 1997. Winner of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize, this monumental volume continues to challenge contemporary readers philosophically and has also sparked considerable empirical research.Google Scholar

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Marantz Henig, Robin, “Darwin’s God,” The New York Times Magazine, March 4, 2007. Brief journalistic introduction to evolutionary and cognitive science perspectives on religion.Google Scholar

Eames, Kevin J., Cognitive Psychology of Religion. Long Grove, IL: Waveland, 2016. Clear overview of recent perspectives on religion based on cognitive science and neuroscience.Google Scholar

Skinner, B. F., Beyond Freedom and Dignity. New York: Bantam, 1971. Agree or disagree, everyone should read this controversial book which touches – sometimes indirectly – on many matters relevant to the psychology of religion.Google Scholar

Oman, Doug, “Spiritual Modeling and the Social Learning of Spirituality and Religion,” in Pargament, Kenneth I., Exline, Julie J., and Jones, James W., APA Handbook of Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality, volume 1 (pp. 187–204). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2013. Presents a social learning model of religion and spirituality.Google Scholar

Bulbulia, Joseph and Schjoedt, Uffe, “The Neural Basis of Religion,” in Krueger, Frank and Grafman, Jordan, editors, The Neural Basis of Human Belief Systems (pp. 169–190). New York: Psychology Press, 2013. What we know at present and what we might learn in the future.Google Scholar

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Newberg, Andrew, Neurotheology: How Science Can Enlighten Us about Spirituality. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. Some argue that Newberg’s pro-religious conclusions go beyond his data, but all students in the psychology of religion should be familiar with the ideas of this prolific researcher and writer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Berger, Peter L., Adventures of an Accidental Sociologist: How to Explain the World Without Becoming a Bore. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2011. Colorful, at times humorous, intellectual autobiography by a leading contributor to theory in the sociology of religion. Challenging but also worth the effort is his classic treatise, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Illustrated edition. New York: Anchor, 1990.Google Scholar

Zeitlin, Irving M., The Religious Experience: Classical Philosophical and Social Theories. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2004. Clear, well-organized introduction to many philosophical, sociological, and anthropological theories of religion.Google Scholar

Stark, Rodney and Finke, Roger, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Presents a rational choice market theory of religion.Google Scholar

Turner, Bryan S., editor, The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016. Compendium of excellent review articles on many topics in the contemporary and classic sociology of religion.Google Scholar

Beckford, James A. and Demerath, N. J. III, editors, The Sage Handbook of the Sociology of Religion. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 2007. Many superb essays, including several on individual religious behavior.Google Scholar

Mirola, William A., Emerson, Michael O., and Monahan, Susanne C, editors, Sociology of Religion: A Reader. Third edition. Philadelphia, PA: Routledge, 2019. Well-selected, up-to-date readings relevant to several chapters in this text.CrossRefGoogle Scholar