From the Staff of the Center for Spiritual Development
Benson, P.L. (2006). The science of child and adolescent spiritual development: Definitional, theoretical, and field-building challenges. In E.C. Roehlkepartain, P.E. King, L. Wagener, & Benson, P.L. (Eds.) The handbook of spiritual development in childhood and adolescence(484-497) Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Three challenges to the study of spiritual development are: how should we define spiritual development? What theoretical framework will best explain spiritual development and drive research? And how should the field be built? Benson offers architecture for a definition, a theory and for further field development and suggests criteria to help evaluate early attempts.
Stifoss-Hanssen, H. (1999). Religion and spirituality: What a European ear hears. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 9 (1), 25-33.
This article is a response to Pargament’s understanding of the sacred as the common core of both religiousness and spirituality (see Zinnbauer, Pargament, & Scott, 1999, below). The author, who teaches at The Practical Theological Seminary at the University of Oslo, argues that 1) the definition of the concept of spirituality could be more elaborated; 2) the weight that should be given to sacredness and the holy is open to dispute; and 3) spirituality must be seen as a wider, and not as a narrower concept than religion. The Swedish field of study called “empirical view of life studies”, and the work of Jan van der Lans, a Dutch psychologist of religion, who posits a “psychology of meaning-giving behavior” are discussed.
Hill, P.C., & Pargament, K.I. (2003). Advances in the conceptualization and measurement of religion and spirituality: Implications for physical and mental health research. American Psychologist, 58 (1), 64-74.
Many empirical studies link religion and spirituality to physical health. What remains unclear is what it is about religion and spirituality that accounts for these links. This article highlights “some of the advances that have been made in delineating religious and spiritual concepts and measures that are functionally related to physical and mental health” (p.64).
Hill, P.C., Pargament, K.I., Hood, R.W., Jr., McCullough, M.E., Swyers, J.P., Larson, D.B., et al. (2000). Conceptualizing religion and spirituality: Points of commonality, points of departure. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 30 (1), 51-77.
The authors offer a very helpful review of scholarship in the social sciences on the concepts of religion and spirituality. Key definitional concepts that emerge from this study are: 1) a sense of the sacred is central to the experience of both religion and spirituality; 2) both concepts involve a search process; 3) religion may also involve a search for nonsacred goals; and 4) the degree to which the search process is supported by community.
MacDonald, D.A. (2000). Spirituality: Description, measurement, and relation to the Five Factor Model of Personality. Journal of Personality, 68 (1), 156-197.
This article focuses on the development and measurement of a factor model of the expressions of spirituality. This study, involving a total of 20 measures, identifies at least five robust dimensions of spirituality. The measure developed by the author is the Expressions of Spirituality Inventory (ESI).
Smith, C. (2003). Theorizing religious effects among American adolescents. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 42 (1), 17-30.
The author examines religion’s positive, constructive influence in the lives of American adolescents. Nine key factors are identified; they cluster into 3 larger conceptual dimensions—Moral Order, Learned Competencies, and Social and Organizational Ties. The author argues that these factors do not operate independently, but “often together and in combination as mutually reinforcing social processes” (p. 27). The following summary hypothesis is suggested: “The more that these nine influences are present to youth in their religious organizations, and the more youth embrace, and capitalize on these resources, the more religion will positively and constructively influence outcomes in American youth’s lives” (p. 27).
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.
At the time it was conducted, this study was one of the few empirical studies comparing religiousness and spirituality. The researchers draw three conclusions: 1) there is evidence to suggest that the terms ‘religiousness’ and ‘spirituality’ describe different concepts; 2) the two terms, however, are not “fully independent”; 3) although most respondents described themselves as religious and/or spiritual, there was great variation in the definitions of these terms. The case is made that the field of the social scientific study of religion should retain the use of the term ‘religion’ to define the field.
Zinnbauer, B.J., Pargament, K.I., & Scott, A.B. (1999). The emerging meanings of religiousness and spirituality: Problems and prospects. Journal of Personality, 67 (6), 889-919.
The authors examine various definitions of religiousness and spirituality from the psychology of religion literature. The purpose of the article is “to describe the increasingly biased and polarized ways in which religiousness and spirituality are currently understood by psychologists, to explore the implications of this trend, and to propose an alternate way to approach religiousness and spirituality that brings these terms into greater focus” (p. 890). Three ways theorists have polarized religiousness and spirituality are discussed: organized religion vs. personal spirituality; substantive religion vs. functional spirituality; and negative religiousness vs. positive spirituality. An integrative approach to defining these constructs introduces the concept of the sacred, as articulated by Pargament: religion is defined as “a search for significance in ways related to the sacred,” and spirituality is defined as “a search for the sacred.” “As such, spirituality is the heart and soul of religion, and religion’s most central function” (p. 909).
February 2007
