Christopher F. Silver

The Semantics of ‘Spirituality’ and Related Self-Identifications: A Comparative Study in Germany and the USA

Culturally different connotations of basic concepts challenge the comparative study of religion. Do persons in Germany or in the United States refer to the same concepts when talking about ‘spirituality’ and ‘religion’? Does it make a difference how they identify themselves? The Bielefeld-Chattanooga Cross-Cultural Study on ‘Spirituality’ includes a semantic differential approach for the comparison of self-identified “neither religious nor spiritual”, “religious”, and “spiritual” persons regarding semantic attributes attached to the concepts ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ in each research context. Results show that ‘spirituality’ is used as a broader concept than ‘religion’. Regarding religion, semantics attributed by self-identified religious persons differ significantly from those of the spiritual persons. The ‘spiritual’ and the ‘religious’ groups agree on semantics attributed to spirituality but differ from the ‘neither spiritual nor religious’ group. Qualifications of differences and agreements become visible from the comparison between the United States and Germany. It is argued for the semantically sensitive study of culturally situated ‘spiritualities’.

The six types of nonbelief: a qualitative and quantitative study of type and narrative

Extensive research has been conducted in exploration of the American religious landscape; however, only recently has social science research started to explore nonbelief in any detail. Research on nonbelief has been limited as most research focuses on the popularity of the religious “nones” or the complexities of alternative faith expressions such as spirituality. Through two studies, one qualitative and one quantitative, this research explored how nonbelievers’ self-identify. Study 1 (the qualitative study) discovered that individuals have shared definitional agreement but use different words to describe different types of nonbelief. Through thematic coding, a typology of six different types of nonbelief was observed. Those are Academic Atheists, Activist Atheist/Agnostics, Seeker Agnostics, Antitheists, Non-Theists, and the Ritual Atheists. Study 2 explored the empirical aspects of these types related to the Big Five Domain, Ryff Psychological Well-Being, Narcissistic Personality Inventory, Multidimensional Anger Inventory, Rokeach Dogmatism Scale, and intersections related to religious and spiritual ontology.

The Distinction between Authoritarianism and Fundamentalism in Three Cultures: Factor Analysis and Personality Correlates

The goals of the study were to examine whether fundamentalism and authoritarianism could be distinguished by the Big Five factors of personality in American, Romanian and German samples, and to determine whether fundamentalism and authoritarianism could be distinguished by factor analysis in any of the three cultures. The results in all three cultures indicate that fundamentalism and authoritarianism have virtually identical personality correlates. In all three cultures, the two constructs were indistinguishable via exploratory factor analysis and could only be distinguished via confirmatory factor analysis, although direction-of-wording effects dwarfed the differences between fundamentalism and authoritarianism. The findings suggest that researchers should view fundamentalism as religious authoritarianism, and should therefore be cautious when making inferences about religiosity from research on fundamentalism.

“Spirituality” and Mysticism

This chapter explores the relationship between the self-rating as “spiritual” and mysticism as measured by Hood’s Mysticism Scale. The introduction provides an overview of recent attempts to measure “spirituality” psychometrically, of the theoretical and empirical approaches to mysticism and already empirically observed relations between mysticism and “spirituality.” Many scales trying to operationalize “spirituality” lack a solid conceptual background and convincing empirical validity. Citing the work of Stace and James , Hood constructed a scale that provides detailed and measurable descriptions of mystical experiences , the Mysticism Scale. Since the Mysticism Scale measures varieties of personal experiences of unity with some kind of transcendence, it proves to be an excellent measure for what many people today call “spirituality.” This can be shown empirically by utilizing the three factor solution of the M-Scale , identified as introvertive, extrovertive, and interpretive mysticism, in structural equation models exploring the relationships between mysticism and self-rated “spirituality” as well as self-rated “religion.” This chapter concludes by arguing that “spirituality” may be the product of experiences that can be described in terms of mysticism.

New Kadampa Buddhists and Jungian psychological type

Building on previous studies on Canadian Anglicans and Catholics, this study examines and discusses the psychological type profile of 31 adherents to New Kadampa Buddhism. Like Anglicans and Catholics, Buddhists preferred introversion (I). Like Anglicans who preferred intuition (N) and unlike Catholics who preferred sensing (S), Buddhists displayed a preference for intuition (N). Unlike Anglicans and Catholics who both preferred feeling (F), Buddhists displayed a balance between feeling (F) and thinking (T). Like Anglicans and unlike Catholics, Buddhists preferred the Apollonian temperament (NF) over the Epimethean temperament (SJ). These data are discussed to interpret the psychological appeal of New Kadampa Buddhism.

Is “Spirituality” Nothing but “Religion”? An Indirect Measurement Approach

While people might distinguish strictly between “spirituality” and “religion” on the explicit level of cognition, it is possible that such differences disappear on the implicit level. Implicit Association Tests (IAT s) provide a reliable and valid indirect procedure to measure implicit cognition. However, IAT s comparing “spirituality” and “religion” have not been used often in research yet. Earlier studies have tried to contrast both concepts either directly in one IAT or have used both concepts as a single category. Thus, in their operationalization they did not take the broadness, vagueness, and partial overlap of both terms into account satisfyingly. For a more valid comparison, in the Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study on “Spirituality,” both “spirituality” and “religion” have been assessed by using the same stimuli and have been contrasted with “atheism ” as a third concept. The results based on a subsample of 104 participants (USA: n = 67, Germany: n = 37) show that the task difficulties were reasonable and that both IAT s proved to be reliable. The general IAT effect s were .33 (USA) and .36 (Germany) for “spirituality” and .26 (USA) and .22 (Germany) for “religion,” indicating a preference for both “spirituality” and “religion” when contrasted with “atheism .” The effect sizes differ in parts significantly between four groups of explicit “spiritual/religious” self-identification in both countries. Explicit “spiritual”/“religious” self-ratings correlate highly significant with the IAT effect s for “spirituality” and “religion.” Although, in general, the IAT scores are also very highly correlated, comparison between the four subgroups revealed that explicit self-rating and implicit attitude towards “spirituality” differ significantly among those who distinguish between their “spirituality” and “religion” on the explicit level.

Design, Methods, and Sample Characteristics of the Bielefeld-Based Cross-Cultural Study of “Spirituality”

The Bielefeld-based Cross-cultural Study of “Spirituality” aims at an in-depth understanding of what people call “spirituality.” For this aim, a multi-method design has been applied. Self-report instruments such as psychometric scales were used with a large sample in Germany and the USA. Our sampling procedure, aiming at capturing the varieties of being “spiritual,” resulted in a sample of 1113 participants in the USA and 773 in Germany. This chapter introduces the instruments which were compiled for our questionnaire, the Faith Development Interview , and the Implicit Association Task which we used with a selected smaller sample. The chapter also describes the construction of “focus groups ,” groups defined according to participants’ self-identification as “spiritual,” as “religious” or as “atheist /non-theist.” These focus groups have been used to structure the sample with respect to positions in the religious field . They were also used for the selection of participants for personal interviews, the Faith Development Interview (FDI), and an experiment, the Implicit Association Test (IAT ). The characterization of the focus groups concludes the chapter.

My hero, my friend: exploring Honduran youths’ lived experience of the God–individual relationship

Extensive social science research has focused on God image and God concept through the lens of attachment theory and the parental relationship. While vast theoretical frameworks exist, the authors suggest that more focused phenomenological research would shed light on adolescent lived experience within experiential descriptive language and provides additional cultural insight into how youth understand and experience God. Twenty-three female Honduran youths in residential care, ages 11 to 19, shared their understanding and experiences of the God–individual relationship using The Lived Experience of the God–Individual Relationship Questionnaire. The study discovered that relationships are complex and evolving between the individual and God. Particularly, the God–individual relationship was found to become more personal and intimate with age. Terms used to describe God’s role in one’s life vs. identity descriptors differed. Finally, youth saw their relationship with God as different than their peers indicating uniqueness to their perceived experience. The implications of the study relate to perceptions of God and to developmental theory of God relationships.

“…if the Universe Is Beautiful, We’re Part of that Beauty.”—A “Neither Religious nor Spiritual” Biography as Horizontal Transcendence

27-year-old Isabella grew up with her parents on the Eastern Coast of the United Sates. She describes her life as “pretty boring” and “normal.” However ‘boring’ and ‘normal’ her life may have appeared to her, it is the worldview that Isabella takes—and has always had by her count—that draws great interest. Typically, many individuals who currently identify as an ‘atheist ’ also used to identify as ‘religious’ in their youth (Silver, 2013). Isabella stands out in this regard, she has never believed in a god or gods. What Coleman, Silver, and Holcombe (2013) have termed as “religio-spiritual frameworks” played no part in Isabella’s worldview. As this chapter shall demonstrate, Isabella was able to ask questions about life, make sense of her environment, and find meaning and purpose not in the confines of a religious or spiritual worldview, but, in a worldview that retained a similar sense of awe, wonder and meaning in the absence of any spiritual or religious structure—a worldview we term as ‘horizontal transcendence .’ This chapter will situate the role of the Faith Development Interview in the context of the ‘faithless ’ while drawing attention to the role of narrative in horizontal transcendence .

The association between different spiritual practices and the occurrence of Exceptional Human Experiences in a non-clinical sample

ABSTRACT The present study aims to analyse the association that different types of spiritual and religious practices have with the occurrence of Exceptional Human Experiences (EHEs) as well as their emotional evaluation. We analysed the relation that meditation, prayer, and ‘other’ spiritual practices, or the lack of them, have with the occurrence of EHEs, which were measured employing the Exceptional Experiences Questionnaire (EEQ). Samples were recruited at psychology departments in the UK and USA. They consisted of n = 301 non-clinical participants, of whom n = 156 were from Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA (average age = 32.3, SD = 13.7); and n = 145 from Northampton, UK (average age = 25.2, SD = 9.8). Results suggest that people who pray experienced fewer experiences of deconstruction/ego loss, psychopathological and visionary dream experiences than other spiritual practice groups. Those who pray also reported more positive mystical experiences than non-practising individuals; whereas individuals with a regular meditative practice experienced more visionary dream experiences, and evaluated such experiences more positively, than those who pray and non- practising individuals. Results suggest that different spiritual and religious techniques are associated with different phenomenological end evaluative patterns of EHEs that can be differentiated from psychopathological experiences.