PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Our study of the semantics of spirituality (Chapters 5-9) employs a va-riety 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.