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David Hay

BSc. (Aberdeen), MSc., Ph.D., Academic Dip. Ed., PGCE (Nottingham) Honorary Senior Research Fellow Email: j.d.hay@abdn.ac.uk Telephone: +44 (0)115 9250559

Research and Supervision Interests

I am a zoologist with a longstanding professional interest in the disputed boundary between biological science and the religious and spiritual dimensions of human experience. 

For many years I worked in association with the Religious Experience Research Unit set up in Oxford in 1969 by Professor Sir Alister Hardy FRS, formerly Head of the Department of Zoology in Oxford University. In 1985 I was appointed Director of the Unit and subsequently became Reader in Spiritual Education in Nottingham University.

In returning to my alma mater in the Department of Divinity and Religious Studies I am taking up a scholarly perspective emphasised by Alister Hardy in his Inaugural Lecture as Regius Professor of Natural History in Marischal College, prior to taking up his Chair in Oxford. Later Hardy returned to Aberdeen to present an extended statement of his views as Gifford Lecturer during 1963-64 and 1964-65.

The hypothesis that has guided my research over the past thirty years is that religious or spiritual awareness is biologically natural to the human species and has been selected for in the process of organic evolution because it has survival value. Although naturalistic, this hypothesis is not intended to be reductionist with regard to religion. Nevertheless it does imply that all people, including those who have no religious belief, have a spiritual life.

My practical research has included a number of national and in-depth surveys of reports of religious or spiritual experience in the United Kingdom. During the 1990s I became interested in the experience of young people prior to being socialized into the assumptions of contemporary secular culture and directed a three-year study of the spirituality of young children. Subsequently my investigations moved on to the study of the spirituality of people who have no formal religious connections. I have been able to demonstrate that spiritual experience is extraordinarily widespread in Britain, in spite of the decline of formal religion. I believe my findings have implications for a broader understanding of the psychology and sociology of Western religion and its sources in European cultural history.

Most recently I have become particularly interested in two themes (1) the relationship between spirituality and health and (2) the historical and social processes leading to the suppression or denial of spirituality in contemporary Britain. Currently I am engaged in writing a biography of Alister Hardy.

Selected Publications

Books

• Why Spirituality is Difficult for Westerners, Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2007
• Something There: The Biology of the Human Spirit, London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2006; Philadelphia: Templeton, 2007
• The Spirit of the Child (with Rebecca Nye) [revised edition], London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley, 2006
• Religious Experience Today: Studying the Facts, London: Cassell, 1990
• New Methods in RE Teaching: An Experiential Approach (Ed), London: Oliver & Boyd, 1990
• Exploring Inner Space: Scientists and Religious Experience, London: Penguin Books, 1982

Articles

• ‘Religion under siege: a scientific response’ [Alister Hardy Memorial Lecture, Oxford], Implicit Religion 11 (2), 2008, 143-152
•  ‘Are we naturally religious?’ Theos ThinkTank February 2008
• ‘Music as revelation’, RE Today 25 (1), 2007, 4-5
• (with Helmut Reich & Michael Utsch) ‘Spiritual development: intersections and divergence with religious development', in, Eugene C. Roehlkepartain, Pamela Ebstyne King, Linda Wagener & Peter L. Benson (eds.) The Handbook of Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence, Sage Publications, 2006, 46-59
• ‘Jakosc zycia/jakosc zarzadzania: znaczenie swiadomosci relacyjnej’, Problemy Zarzadzania (Journal of School of Management, Warsaw University, Poland), 1, 2006, 123-136.
• (with Pawel Socha) ‘Spirituality as a natural phenomenon: bringing biological and psychological perspectives together', Zygon, 49 (3), 2005, 589-612
• 'Experience' in, Arthur Holder (ed.) Companion to Christian Spirituality, Oxford: Blackwells, 2005, 419-441
• 'Experience' in, Philip Sheldrake (ed.) Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, London: SPCK, 2005, 295-297
• ‘A biologist of God: Alister Hardy in Aberdeen ', Aberdeen University Review, LX, 3, No. 211, 2004, 209-223
• ‘Quality of life/quality of management: the importance of relational consciousness', European Business Review 16 (4), 2004, 435-445
• 'Why is implicit religion implicit?' Implicit Religion 6 (1), 2003, 17-41
• 'Spirituality and primordial experience', in Arto Kallionemi, Antti Räsanen & Päivi Hilska (eds.), Studia Pedagogica (Helsinki) 30, 2003, 1-14
• 'Nurture, commitment and curriculum' in, Michael A Hayes & Liam Gearon (eds) Contemporary Catholic Education, Leominster: Gracewing Press, 2002, 170-186
• 'The biological basis of spiritual awareness', in Ursula King (ed.) Spirituality and Society in the New Millennium, Sussex Academic Press, 2001, 124-135
• 'The cultural context of stage models of religious experience', International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 11 (4), 2001, 241-246
• 'Spirituality versus individualism: why we should nurture relational consciousness', International Journal of Children's Spirituality, 5 (1), 2000, 37-48
• 'The Religious Experience and Education Project: Experiential Learning in Religious Education', in, Michael Grimmitt (ed.) Pedagogies of Religious Education: Case Studies in the Research and Development of Good Pedagogic Practice in RE , Great Wakering: McCrimmons, 2000, 70-87
• (with Kate Hunt) Understanding the Spirituality of People who Don't Go to Church , Research Report, Nottingham University , 2000
• 'Psychologists interpreting conversion: two American forerunners of the hermeneutics of suspicion', History of the Human Sciences 12 (1), 1999, 55-72
• (With Rebecca Nye & Roger Murphy) 'Thinking about childhood spirituality: review of research and current directions', in, Leslie Francis, William K. Kay & William S. Campbell (eds.), Research in Religious Education , Leominster: Gracewing Press, 1996, 47-71

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