One of the ways in which artificial intelligence can be a useful tool in the scientific study of religion is in developing a computational model of how the human mind is deployed in spiritual practices. It is a helpful first step to develop a precise cognitive model using a well-specified cognitive architecture. So far, the most promising architecture for this purpose is the Interacting Cognitive Subsystems of Philip Barnard, which distinguishes between two modes of central cognition: intuitive and conceptual. Cognitive modelling of practices such as mindfulness and the Jesus Prayer involves a shift in central cognition from the latter to the former, though that is achieved in slightly different ways in different spiritual practices. The strategy here is to develop modelling at a purely cognitive level before attempting full computational implementation. There are also neuropsychological models of spiritual practices which could be developed into computational models.

Recent progress has been made towards developing automated companions for the elderly. Building on work in the early days of artificial intelligence that showed that computers could deliver non-directive counselling, the possibility arises that computers could be used to provide people with an opportunity for spiritual conversation. Research using Wizard-of-Oz methodology shows that at least some people find it helpful to have spiritual conversations with what they believe to be an avatar, and work using GPT-3 shows that computers can be an acceptable interlocutor in spiritual conversation. The possibility now arises of developing a spiritual companion that would be personalised for a particular individual and become familiar with their spiritual life. This would not, in every way, replace a human spiritual guide, but could provide a resource that at least some people would find valuable and would assist in their spiritual development.

Black Women’s Spiritual and Religious Coping discusses the role of religion and spirituality in Black women’s lives and mental health. We remind therapists of the centrality of Black women’s spiritual and religious orientation. The discussion includes how Black women might connect stress, suffering, and psychological distress to religious and spiritual narratives. Next, we discuss Black women’s use of spirituality and religiosity to cope with life’s difficulties. We also examine how spiritual and religious involvement can increase Black women’s experiences of oppression, self-loathing, and self-silencing. Finally, we offer suggestions for working with Black women on religious and spiritual issues from a culturally skilled perspective.

Spirituality is a deeply personal universal human experience, and people with intellectual disability may miss out on the expression of this vital part of their identity, which is a fundamental human right. An understanding of people with intellectual disability as creative communicators has been gained through action research, but spirituality is still a poorly understood aspect of their lives, giving rise to unmet needs. Outdated practices and beliefs about the origins of disability have led to a culture of exclusion or, at best, tokenism. Around the world, reports are still emerging of marginalization, discrimination and even abuse because of negative spiritual attribution or views about cognitive abilities and consequent economic worth. Faith communities and secular care providers need to incorporate new learning about the importance of spirituality for mental health into mainstream planning of care with the involvement of people with intellectual disabilities who communicate creatively as co-producers.

Shakespeare inherited from the Middle Ages a long-standing association between debt and death. As a consequence of the Reformation’s elimination of purgatory, however, the relationship between debt and death had recently undergone a sea change. This chapter aims to show how a repeated pun of Shakespeare’s, one binding ‘debt’ to ‘death’, signals a shift in the relation between the living and the dead in early modern England: one brought about by the Reformation, and specifically its denial of purgatory. The reconfiguring of relations between the dead and their survivors turned largely on the idea of debt, especially that of a spiritual debt accrued over a lifetime as the commission of sins exceeded their remission. For the people of pre-Reformation England, purgatory was a debtor’s prison in which souls would suffer a temporal punishment for sins that had been forgiven, but for which they still owed a debt. Central to a post-Reformation understanding of the relation between debt and death was the growing practice of double-entry bookkeeping. Double-entry’s key idea of ‘balance’ bore heavy theological implications, evoking the scales of justice and the symmetry of a divine plan.

This chapter is a conclusion, a revisit from the beginning to recapture all that has been written. Analogously and methodically, the West had encountered Africa, witnessed its cultural practices but made the wrong, albeit demeaning, interpretation of it. Then came the “native,” attempting to walk them to the light through vast decades of experience and armed with an arsenal of cultural materials as evidence. The result is the challenge of the colonial matrix of power and resituating African literature at the center of African epistemology via autoethnography. Reemphasizing the points earlier made, the chapter discusses the position of self as an ambassador of the society it (self) comes from, having allowed its cultural ethos to manifest through self. Thus, everything about the individual manifests and reflects the “internal dynamics sustaining society.” This is further backed by the fact that the society shapes an individual through its “mores” and “institutions,” and thus makes it expedient to read a society through the character of an individual (an emissary), as opposed to an alien who cannot know beyond what is visible to the eyes.

This chapter beams the light on the artistry achievements of Africans and signifies their “flourishing culture.” The major aspect of artistry being celebrated is sculptures. From this chapter, one is able to deduce that the carvings are such that “Yoruba history and culture can be perceived, interpreted and understood” through them. They manifest in many forms (materially), such as bronze, clay, stone, and wood, all of whom were discussed to fully understand and appreciate the creativity inherent in the African culture before and after colonialism. With several references to specific sculptural works and pictorial evidence, mostly from his personal collection, the author describes how Yoruba sculptors (Gbenagbena or Gbegilere) translate and manipulate natural elements and past-but-relevant happenings into artistic objects. Also discussed is the measure of a sculptor’s worth, which cannot be defined by Western currency but by the level of creativity and beauty apparent in his artwork, some of which depict African cultural ideas, principles, and attributes, such as Omoluabi, Iwapele, Didan, and Idogba. The chapter extensively discusses the importance sculptors place on the head, and also defends African sculptures against Western criticism.

What does Aquinas mean when he speaks of ‘spiritual’ change in explaining sense perception? This chapter is partly exegesis of that notion, partly explication of the author’s own previous invocation of ‘spiritual’ change to characterise the way perception for Aristotle takes on sensible form without matter, and partly explanation of why in philosophy since Descartes it is so difficult to understand how for Aristotle and Aquinas perception is both physical and mental. For both thinkers, it is an ‘unordinary’ physical alteration. That does not make it a ‘mental’ event in any sense that contrasts with ‘physical’. In sight the eye is coloured by the sensible form of red conceived not as a natural form, but as what Aquinas calls an intentio. The notion of intentio here expresses the idea of cognitive awareness, or of sensible form causing knowledge in a being which has the power of cognition. Aquinas calls sight the ‘most spiritual’ of the senses because, whereas with the operation of the other senses ordinary natural processes are required either as causal antecedents or concomitant effects, in sight there is no similar natural change at all. In its power of cognition alone we reach the end of explanation.

This chapter traces the arc of Heaney’s progression from faithful and engaged Catholic in the 1940s, 191950s and even 60s to a more sceptical stance in the years following Vatican Council II. It sees Station Island (1984) as the axial moment where disbelief is fully acknowledged. Still, the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland make a cultural departure from Roman Catholicism moot, while the poet’s respect for a believing Czesław Miłosz and others cautions against total rejection. Heaney’s tortured conflict with Philip Larkin’s 'Aubade' points to the attraction of the latter’s post-religious stance even as the narrowness of its focus is achingly condemned. A consciously unorthodox Heaney exits with most of the rites of a more liberal but declining Irish Catholic Church that celebrates his passing without rigorously scrutinizing his creedal beliefs.

A critique of modernity and the European Enlightenment is persistent in Cormac McCarthy’s work. In the Appalachian novels, the ancient and the pre-industrial are yet to be swamped by the hegemony of modernity, though its depredations are clearly visible. A shift arrives with Judge Holden in Blood Meridian. Informed by his anthropocentric notion of “suzerainty,” Holden embodies the notion that violence and progress are inseparable. The development of modernity is dependent on this rational, instrumental, and necessary relationship. The Enlightenment has liberated man from the spiritual and physical constraints of previous arrangements. This strain of thinking reaches its apotheosis in the wasteland of The Road in which modernity and its technologies have facilitated planetary apocalypse. There is, however, resistance. The behavior and consciousness of animals, and landscape and the non-animate world, are imbued with it, and there is an elusive spirituality connected to these phenomena that defies modernity’s disenchantment of the world. We are dared by McCarthy to call from the depths of our imagination a different kind of world, in which humanity recognizes the proximity of its kinship to all that which is in some way alive on our planet.