However...

However, this definition is also somewhat inadequate because not all religions are theistic (a term that means believing in a God or deity), and some psychologists - especially those of a psychoanalytic persuasion - emphasize the unconscious rather than the conscious bases of human religiousness. The psychology of religion emphasizes the importance of operationally defining the aspects of religiousness that are being studied (Johnson, Mullins, & Burnham, 1993; Spilka, 1993).

An operational definition is a statement of what a construct is in terms of the procedures or methods used to assess it. For example, the construct of intelligence might be operationally defined in terms of scores on an IQ test. Aggression might be operationally defined as the number of times a person yells or hits in a specified period of time.

There are many ways to operationally define religiousness, including frequency of church attendance, degree of belief in religiously orthodox doctrinal statements (such as statements about the virgin birth, the resurrection of Jesus, the authority of Muhammad, the literality of the Exodus), degree of intrinsic versus extrinsic religious motivation, and degree of spiritual well-being. In one recent study, the link between religion and sexuality was confirmed (Fehring & others, 1998).

In college students, guilt, prayer, organized religious activity, and religious well-being were associated with fewer sexual encounters. Are religion and spirituality the same or different? Some psychologists of religion use the terms religion and spirituality interchangeably (Spilka & McIntosh, 1996). More often, however, spirituality and religion are teased apart (Emmons & Paloutzian, in press; Wulff, 1997). Two contrasts are common (Pargament, 1997).

In the first, religion is defined as the institutional, the organizational, the ritual, and the ideological, whereas spirituality is defined as the personal, the affective, the experiential, and the thoughtful. This contrast includes the idea that an individual can be spiritual without being religious or religious without being spiritual.

A second contrast between religion and spirituality involves reserving the term spiritual for the loftier side of life with spirituality - the search for meaning, for unity, or connectedness, for transcendence, and for the highest level of human potential.