Spirituality

Central questions

Being “spiritual” has become increasingly popular in the last 30 years. Many in the USA identify as being spiritual: even after a slight decline, still 20% self-identify as “spiritual, but not religious” in 2018. With some delay, we have seen similar developments in many European countries, and in 2018 frequencies of the “more spiritual than religious” vary between 10% (Germany-East), 15% (Germany-West) and 24% (Finland; Slovenia). Despite the popularity of being “spiritual” in parts of the population, there is only some research about the subjective meaning of “spirituality.” Moreover, more attention needs to be directed toward the question what the functional characteristics, the psychological correlates, and the biographical contexts of a “spiritual” self-identification are. Our research offers insights into some of these questions.

Method

The aim of our original Spirituality Study (2009-2012; published in: Streib & Hood, 2016) has been the investigation of the semantics and psychology of spirituality, based on questionnaire data from respondents in Germany (n=773) and the US (n=1,113), and on n=108 personal interviews (Faith Development Interviews, FDI), which yield insights in the religious style and the biographical context of the self-identification as “spiritual.” Thus, one of the unique features of or our research design consists of the triangulation of answers to an online questionnaire and transcripts of personal interviews.

Included in the questionnaire were (a) self-ratings of being “religious,” “spiritual,” or “atheist,” (b) self-identifications of being “more religious than spiritual,” “more spiritual than religious,” “both” or “neither,” (c) semantic differentials (Osgood; contextual), and also (d) the invitation to enter in the questionnaire definitions of “religion” and “spirituality” in free entries. N=1,039 respondents in the US and n=727 in Germany have accepted this invitation in the first survey. This rich database opens a new perspective on the semantics of “spirituality.”

After this first wave of fieldwork in the Spirituality Study, we continued our research into a longitudinal study adding a second and a third wave. The questionnaire was continued with only little changes and, most importantly, continued the questions for religious/spiritual self-identifications, and the invitation to enter definitions of “religion” and “spirituality.” Moreover, the invitation for personal interviews continued. Of course, not all participants continued to participate, and new participants joined in; but a substantial number of participants have participated at least twice and some three times, which constitutes our longitudinal sample. And the longitudinal approach (questionnaire; personal interviews) opens diachronic perspectives on the semantics of “spirituality,” its predictors and outcomes, and the interaction of the “more spiritual“ self-understanding with developmental trajectories.

Findings

How does the “more spiritual than religious” self-identification relate to personality traits, mystical experiences, and other individual characteristics?

• The most recent analysis (Chen et al., 2023) used all of our questionnaire data (n=3,491, including data beyond the Spirituality Study) for a concurrent correlational analysis that found, among some other findings, that openness to experience, one of the Big Five personality dimensions, is significantly higher for the “more spiritual than religious,” corroborating previous analyses that indicated higher means than the norm values for the “more spiritual” group (Streib et al., 2016).

• The longitudinal analysis (Chen et al., 2023) with (n=751) cases for identifying what a “more spiritual than religious” self-identification may predict indicated that mystical experiences and strong agreement to a mystical God image are predicted by a “more spiritual than religious” self-identification. This confirms our previous analyses with cross-sectional samples that showed a strong relation of mystical experiences with self-rated “spirituality” (Streib & Chen, 2021; Streib et al., 2021; Klein et al., 2016). Eventually, these finding suggest that Hood’s (1975) Mysticism Scale is an effective measure to assess self-rated “spirituality,” and our results may even suggest a mutual reinforcing circle between mysticism and spirituality—which can be called the circulus mysticospiritualis¹.

 

What is the meaning of “spirituality” for participants?

• To analyze the free entries with definitions of “spirituality,” a coding procedure has been used that resulted in 44 categories. After reducing these categories by principal component analysis and running a second order PCA, ten dimensions of the semantics of spirituality were obtained that align with three axes (Eisenmann et al., 2016).

• In a longitudinal analysis of all English free-text definitions of “religion” and “spirituality” for three waves of data collection (Chen et al., in press), word frequency approaches showed that “religion” can be best understood as specific organized beliefs, whereas “spirituality” can be defined as relating to personal world and life. A dictionary approach using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) suggested that the definition of religion involved social connections and power, and a mindset of authority, while definitions of spirituality refer to a variety of human experiences and reflected high levels of cognitive complexity. Cohort data suggested a trend that over time definitions of spirituality shifted to focus more on connectedness, personal feelings, and humanity orientation from a previous focus on religious ideas of belief and God.

• Taken together, our investigation of the subjective meanings of spirituality reveal a multiplicity of meanings, but our (and others’) analyses suggest that “spirituality” can be classified under three broad banners: (1) a more religious understanding that associates spirituality with God, Jesus, the Bible, organization, and a system; (2) an understanding of spirituality as connectedness with other humans, the inner or higher self, nature, and the universe, which eventually relates to mysticism; and (3) an understanding that relates spirituality to morality/ethics and an orientation toward humanity.

 

What is the meaning and relevance of “spirituality” in biographical analysis?

• Also, the evaluation of the interviews shows how “spirituality” has a variety of meanings and is experienced in different ways, confirming the variety revealed by semantic analyses. And, interestingly, case studies indicate individual reference not only to religious, but also to secular identities (Keller et al., 2016). The self-identification as “spiritual” may allow “spiritual atheists,” for example, to indicate that they are not without sensitivity for transcendent experiences. “Spirituality” offers to people the option of exploring identity and self-understanding and to express what moves them, what they experience, what they are ultimately concerned with, without forcing them to use the semantics of “religion.”