Letters
Glossary
by Jeffrey L. Thayne and Edwin E. Gantt
The book defines its terms as it goes. Every one of them is collected here, with a link to where it is used.
A
- AcculturationA description of how you change when you come into sustained contact with a new culture—how much of your heritage you retain, how much of the host…
- ApologizersPeople who engage fully with the world but with low integrity to their faith—those who effectively downplay their beliefs to gain social or…
- AssimilationAn acculturation strategy where you downplay or abandon your heritage culture as you conform to the host culture. You become indistinguishable from…
C
- CompartmentalizationKeeping faith and professional life in separate boxes—acting as a secular psychologist at work and as a believer only in private life. This is a…
- Critical thinkingThe practice of examining the hidden assumptions and cultural worldviews that shape our inquiry. Articulating the pre-empirical assumptions of…
- Cultural eclecticismMixing elements from multiple cultures (or worldviews) at a surface level, such as holidays, customs, and jargon. It can look like integration but…
- Culture-war mindsetAn oppositional stance where one’s primary posture toward the host culture is combat and rebuttal. It often subordinates both scholarship and…
D
H
- Heritage cultureThe “culture of origin” you bring with you—in this letter, your Latter-day Saint faith, covenants, and moral framework.
- Host cultureThe “culture of destination” you are entering—in this letter, the professional and academic world of psychology, with its norms, assumptions, and…
I
- IntegrationAn acculturation strategy where you maintain your heritage culture and also engage deeply with the host culture. You engage in rigorous scholarship…
- Intellectual bilingualismFluency in both the language of scholarship and the language of faith—you are able to move between them without collapsing one into the other.
- IsolatorsPeople with high faith integrity but low engagement with the world—those who retreat, withdraw, or avoid meaningful participation in secular or…
M
N
S
- Self-serving integrationA distorted form of “integration” where you use faith to critique psychology—or vice versa—only in the service of culturally popular ideas, and never…
- SeparationAn acculturation strategy where you preserve your heritage culture by minimizing contact with the host culture; professionally, this looks like…
- Spiritually-affirming pseudoscienceIdeas or practices that feel spiritually or ideologically satisfying but lack serious empirical support. This approach is often adopted when people…
T
U