Abstract
Our study of the semantics of spirituality (Chaps. 5–9) employs a variety of methods in an effort to explore the binary spiritual/religious. While some have argued for a distinction between spirituality and religion, largely for a priori theoretical perspectives, our research explores the semantics of spirituality using self-report, semantic differential, implicit, and ideographic methods that cut across the etic/emic distinctions. While we did not directly test explicit hypotheses, we did explore distinctions between religion and spirituality based upon our own view that spirituality is not a concept that can be studied in isolation from religion. The full impact of our investigation supports this claim and sustains the conclusion that studying spirituality divorced from religion is not a meaningful way to advance our knowledge of spirituality which is in essence privatized or implicit religion . Furthermore, we conclude that the concept of spirituality can be meaningfully measured as a multidimensional construct of ten lower order factors or facets and three higher order factors that allow for an assessment both vertical and horizontal transcendence that is differentially located within the binary spiritual/religious.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Akyalcin, E., Greenway, P., & Mine, L. (2008). Measuring transcendence: Extracting core concepts. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 40, 41–59.
Ammerman, N. T. (2013). Spiritual but not religious? Beyond binary choices in the study of religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 52, 258–278.
Bellah, R. N., Marsden, R., Sullivan, W. M., Swidler, A., & Tipton, S. M. (1996). Habits of the heart (rev ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press.
Berry, J. W., Poortings, Y. Y., Segall, M. H., & Dasen, P. R. (2011). Cross-cultural psychology: Research and application (3rd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Coleman III, T. J., & Arrowood, R. B., (2015). Only we can save ourselves: An atheists ‘salvation’. In: Bacon, H., Dossett, W., & Knowles, S. (Eds.), Alternative salvations: Engaging the sacred and the secular. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Day, J. M. (1991). Narrative, psychology and moral education. American Psychologist, 46, 167–178.
Day, J. M. (1994). Moral development, belief, and unbelief: Young adult accounts of religion in the process of moral growth. In J. Corveleyn & D. Hutsebaut (Eds.), Belief and unbelief: Psychological perspectives (pp. 155–173). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Dillon, M., & Wink, P. (2007). In the course of a lifetime: Tracing religious belief, practice, and change. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Elkins, D. N., Hedstrom, L. J., Hughes, L. L., Leaf, J. A., & Saunders, C. (1988). Toward a humanistic–phenomenological spirituality. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 28, 5–18.
Fuller, R. C. (2000). Stairways to heaven: Drugs in American religious history. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Gorsuch, R. L., & Miller, W. R. (1999). Assessing spirituality. In W. R. Miller (Ed.), Integrating spirituality into treatment (pp. 47–64). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Greenwald, A. G., & Harder, D. (2003). The dimensions of spirituality. Psychological Reports, 92, 975–980.
Gurven, M., von Rueden, C., Massenkoff, M., Kaplan, H., & Lero Vie, M. (2012). How universal is the big five? Testing the five-factor model of personality variation among forager-farmers in the Bolivan Amazon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Posted online, December 17, 2012. doi:10.1037/a0030841
Hanegraaff, W. (1996). New age religion and western culture. Esotericism in the mirror of secular thought. Leiden: Brill.
Henrich, J., Heine, S. J., & Norenzayan, A. (2010). The weirdest people in the world? Behavioral and Brain Science, 33, 61–135.
Hewitt, M. A. (2014). Freud on religion. Duram, UK: Acumen.
Hood, R. W. Jr., & Chen, Z. (2013). The social sciences and Christian mysticism. In J. Laman (Ed.), The oxford handbook of mysticism (pp. 577–591). New York: Oxford University Press.
Hood, R. W. Jr., & Williamson, P. W. (2008). Them that believe: The power and meaning of the Christian serpent—handling tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hood, R. W., Jr., Spilka, B. Hunsberger, B., & Gorsuch, R. (1996). The psychology of religion: An empirical approach (2nd ed). New York: Guilford Press.
James, W. (1920). The letters of William James (Ed. Henry James). Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press.
James, W. (1902/1985). The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Keysar, A. (2007). Who are America’s atheists and agnostics? In B. A. Kosmin & A. Keysar (Eds.), Secularism and secularity: Contemporary international perspectives (pp. 33–39). Hartford, CT: Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture.
Luckmann, T. (1967). The invisible religion: The problem of religion in modern society. New York: MacMillan.
McMinn, M. R., Hatahaway, W. L., Woods, S. W., & Snow, K. (2009). What American psychological leaders have to say about psychology of religion and spirituality. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 1, 3–13.
Piedmont, R. L. (1999). Does spirituality represent the sixth factor of personality? Spiritual transcendence and the five factor model. Journal of Personality, 67, 985–1013.
Rićan, P., Lukavsky, J., Janošová, P., & Stochl, J. (2010). Spirituality of American and Czech students—A cross cultural comparison. Studia Psychologica, 52, 243–252.
Roof, W. C. (1993). A generation of seekers: The spiritual journeys of the boom generation. San Francisco: Harper.
Roof, W. C. (1999). Spiritual marketplace. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Saucier, G., & Skrzypińska, K. (2006). Spiritual but not religious? Evidence for two independent dispositions. Journal of Personality, 74, 1257–1292.
Schmidt, L. E. (2003). The making of modern “mysticism”. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 71, 273–302.
Shweder, R. A., Goodnow, J. J., Hatano, G., LeVine, R. A., Markus, H. R., & Miller, P. J. (2006). The cultural psychology of development: One mind, many mentalities: universalism without the uniformity. In W. Damon (Ed.), Handbook of child psychology (6th ed., pp. 716–792). New York: Wiley.
Spilka, B. (1993, August). Spirituality: Problems and directions in operationalizing a fuzzy concept. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto.
Spilka, B., Hood, R. W., Jr., & Gorsuch, R. (1988). The psychology of religion: An empirical approach. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Streib, H., & Hood, R. W, Jr. (2011). “Spirituality” as privatized experience-oriented religion: Empirical and conceptual perspectives. Journal of Implicit Religion, 14, 433–453.
Streib, H., Hood, R. W. Jr., Keller, B., Csöff, R-M., & Silver, C. (2009) Deconversion: Qualitative and quantitative results from cross-cultural research in Germany and the United States. (Research in Contemporary Religion, Vol. 5). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht.
Taylor, C. (2002). Varieties of religion today: William James revisited. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Whiteley, J., & Loxley, J. (1980). A curriculum for the development of character and community in college students. In L. Erickson & J. Whiteley (Eds.), Developmental counseling and teaching (pp. 262–297). Monterey, CA: Broos/Cole.
Woodhead, L. (2010). Real religion, fuzzy spirituality. In D. Houtman & S. Aupers (Eds.), Religions of modernity: Relocating the sacred to the self and the digital (pp. 30–48). Leiden: Brill.
Yamane, D. (2000). Narrative and religious experience. Sociology of Religion, 61, 171–189.
Yamane, D. (2007). Introduction: Habits of the heart at 20. (Symposium on the 20th anniversary of Habits of the heart). Sociology of Religion, 69, 179–187.
Yinger, J. M. (1967). Pluralism, religion, and secularism. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 6, 17–28.
Zinnbauer, B. J., Pargament, K. I., Cole, B., Rye, M. S., Butter, E. M., Belavich, T. G., et al. (1997). Religion and spirituality: Unfuzzying the fuzzy. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 36, 549–564.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hood, R.W., Streib, H. (2016). “Fuzziness” or Semantic Diversification? Insights About the Semantics of “Spirituality” in Cross-Cultural Comparison (Conclusion). In: Streib, H., Hood, Jr., R. (eds) Semantics and Psychology of Spirituality. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21245-6_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21245-6_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-21244-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-21245-6
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)