Conceptualizing spirituality and religion: where we've come from, where we are, and where we are going.(Report)

Abstract

Within the recent empirical and theoretical literature regarding spirituality and religion, an onomastic and conceptual polarization between the constructs of spirituality and religion exists. This article presents and examines the strong distinction currently being made between the constructs, reviews the voices that question the merits of the polarization, surveys the philosophical evolution of the distinction, and explores the resulting problematic issues that impede empirical research. This article concludes by suggesting that the work of Wilber (1999/2005) offers a nascent convergence of the two constructs and a pathway toward conceptual entelechy.

Key words: Spirituality, religion, counseling, religiosity

Introduction

While research examining spirituality and religiosity in relation to outcomes of physical and mental health is growing, a review of the recent literature reveals a conceptual polarization regarding the constructs of spirituality and religion. The relationship between religion and spirituality as understood by William James (1901/1985) has notably shifted with time as presented by the work of the Summit on Spirituality in 1995 (Miller, 1999). This article notes the shift from James to the Summit on Spirituality and reviews the current conceptualizations that are prominent in the recent literature. This article will then contend that the current conceptualizations are unbalanced and, given the evidence of conceptual and empirical ambiguities both within and outside the profession, unwarranted. The evolution of the current conceptualizations of religion and spirituality will be explored, as well as philosophic assumptions that inform them. Problematic research issues resulting from lack of conceptual entelechy will be identified and a pathway toward conceptual convergence and coherence, grounded in the work of Wilber (1999/2005), will be offered.

Where We've Come From: The shift

William James (1901/1985), the progenitor of the discourse regarding religion and mental health, in his seminal work The Varieties of Religious Experience, presents religion as the feelings, acts, and experiences of individuals in relation to the divine. Religion, according to James, draws significance from a spiritual world that is immaterial and the attainment of union and presence within the spiritual domain is religion's true end. James maintained that religion in its most authentic form is a deep individual experience from which the outcome is the "loss of all worry, the sense that all is well with one, the peace, harmony, the willingness to be" (1901/1985, p. 248). Religion in corporate form was referred to by James as "religious life," and relegated to a secondary status. As summarized by Taylor (2002), for James "the real locus or religion is in individual experience ... that is, in feeling" (p. 7), and we should hesitate from "defining 'religion' in terms of 'church' and thereby dismissing it too quickly, and missing the value of the real thing" (p. 13). Thus, as one reads James, authentic religion is a dynamic, individual experience that encompasses the spiritual domain.