Institutional Religion, Spirituality and Moral Opinion: Bound or Detached? Manuel Canteras University of Murcia, Spain Lluis Oviedo Antonianum University, Rome, Italy Abstract Scholars have long debated to what extent spiritual perception is related to institu- tional or traditional religion, and how much both categories are linked to moral val- ues. Defining the concept of spirituality already becomes a challenge, as it is ap- plied too broadly. Different theories have been proposed to describe the relation between the three concepts. Recent behavioral and cognitive approaches claim that the adaptability of religious practice is linked to collaborative behavior. In an at- tempt to gain greater insight into the disputed questions, recent results of the Euro- pean Values Survey are examined, and a questionnaire was designed with the aim of quantifying levels of spirituality, moral values, and religious practice. The ques- tionnaire was distributed among students between the ages of 15 and 25 in three different countries (total N= 708). After applying factor analysis the results indicate a distinction between the three realms – religious, spiritual and moral – in secular- ized societies and young cohorts, and support the hypothesis that the possible link between religion and morality is the result of later efforts in some post-Axial reli- gious traditions. Keywords: spirituality, morality, adolescence religion, cognitive study of religion The scientific study of religion will gain greater insight and reach higher scientific standards the more it manages to clarify concepts, to dis- tinguish related terms and to specify levels of relatedness. As an example, students of religion take part in discussions on the distinction and relation- ship between concepts such as religion and spirituality. Another issue at stake is whether or not a convergence exists between religious beliefs and moral values or ideas. We could indeed point to a three-part complex that includes institutional religion, personal spirituality and morality. Our con- viction is that clarification of these concepts depends not only on theoretical endeavor, but also on the effective distinction in the empirical realm. In other words, it would be useless to attempt a distinction that does not oper- ate in the empirical field; by the same token, it would be misleading to as- sociate concepts, when in the real world they can be clearly distinguished.
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Institutional Religion, Spirituality and Moral Opinion:
Bound or Detached?
Manuel Canteras
University of Murcia, Spain
Lluis Oviedo
Antonianum University, Rome, Italy
Abstract
Scholars have long debated to what extent spiritual perception is related to institu-
tional or traditional religion, and how much both categories are linked to moral val-
ues. Defining the concept of spirituality already becomes a challenge, as it is ap-
plied too broadly. Different theories have been proposed to describe the relation
between the three concepts. Recent behavioral and cognitive approaches claim that
the adaptability of religious practice is linked to collaborative behavior. In an at-
tempt to gain greater insight into the disputed questions, recent results of the Euro-
pean Values Survey are examined, and a questionnaire was designed with the aim
of quantifying levels of spirituality, moral values, and religious practice. The ques-
tionnaire was distributed among students between the ages of 15 and 25 in three
different countries (total N= 708). After applying factor analysis the results indicate
a distinction between the three realms – religious, spiritual and moral – in secular-
ized societies and young cohorts, and support the hypothesis that the possible link
between religion and morality is the result of later efforts in some post-Axial reli-
gious traditions.
Keywords: spirituality, morality, adolescence religion, cognitive study of religion
The scientific study of religion will gain greater insight and reach
higher scientific standards the more it manages to clarify concepts, to dis-
tinguish related terms and to specify levels of relatedness. As an example,
students of religion take part in discussions on the distinction and relation-
ship between concepts such as religion and spirituality. Another issue at
stake is whether or not a convergence exists between religious beliefs and
moral values or ideas. We could indeed point to a three-part complex that
includes institutional religion, personal spirituality and morality. Our con-
viction is that clarification of these concepts depends not only on theoretical
endeavor, but also on the effective distinction in the empirical realm. In
other words, it would be useless to attempt a distinction that does not oper-
ate in the empirical field; by the same token, it would be misleading to as-
sociate concepts, when in the real world they can be clearly distinguished.
2 Manuel Canteras and Lluis Oviedo
First, the distinction between religion and spirituality deserves a more care-
ful assessment. Some analysts point to the difficulty and limited heuristic
use of such a distinction (Hill, Pargament et al., 2000; Musick, Traphagan,
Koenig &Larson, 2000; Hill & Pargament, 2003; Miller & Thoresen,
2003). In many cases both entities – religion and spirituality – overlap and
are hard to distinguish. One attempt goes as follows:
Thus, one is witnessing, particularly in the United States, a polarization of re-
ligiousness and spirituality, with the former representing an institutional, for-
mal, outward, doctrinal, authoritarian, inhibiting expression and the latter rep-
resenting an individual, subjective, emotional, inward, unsystematic, freeing
expression (Hill & Pargament, 2003, 64)
This distinction seems rather conventional, and even less settled after
scientific testing. Recent research tries to take a more nuanced approach,
and to test the heuristic value of “spirituality” as a distinctive dimension
(Piedmont & Leach, 2002;Wink and Dillon, 2002; Roof, 2003; Giordan,
2007; Marler & Hadaway, 2002; De Souza, Engebretson et al., 2007;
Schlehofer, Omoto & Adelman, 2008). Nevertheless, it is worth maintain-
ing the difference in order to measure in what circumstances and to what
extent it applies. This is not a question of ordering our conceptual toolkit,
but of showing to what extent the newly acquired tools are useful and may
be applied to real behaviors and aptitudes.
Some attempts have been made to improve the instruments capable of
testing levels of spirituality as a distinctive dimension or experience1. The
“Spiritual Transcendence Index” (Seidlitz et al., 2002) and the “Spiritual
Transcendence Scale” (Piedmont, 2001) offer good examples – among
many others1 – of this effort at clarifying, and provides reliable tools to bet-
ter define the contours of such a vague label. Self-transcendence seems to
be the other name for spirituality, as a supposed variable to be isolated and
specified in some studies on personality and health (Kirk, Eaves and Mar-
tin, 1999). It is indeed obvious that personality traits are deeply involved in
the ability or aptitude to transcend empirical reality or to project new hori-
zons of meaning; research in that field is therefore amply justified
(Saroglou and Muñoz-García, 2008; Piedmont, Ciarrochi, et. al. 2009).
Available practices already deliver a sense of what “spiritual” may
mean. The 12 steps culture of “Alcoholics Anonymous” inspires a view
1 There are several published attempts at identifying and quantifying levels of spirituali-
ty distinct from standard or institutional religiosity, see: Genia (1991); Hall and Edwards
(2002). For a complete list see the web page of “Search Institute” devoted to “measures
Italy (Sicily, 160 cases), and was collected during the months of January to
May 2008. All three samples share a Catholic background. Furthermore,
two thirds of the cases were students at Catholic schools; the Sicilian sam-
12 Manuel Canteras and Lluis Oviedo
ple comes from a state school. However, the variables of confessional reli-
gion often show high levels of secularization or low religious practice and
commitment among this sample of students.
2.2. Results and analysis
The starting hypothesis points to the independence between the de-
scribed dimensions. Since we are looking for independent factors, factor
analysis with Varimax rotation provides a genuine tool to gather the items
into sets or clusters and to distinguish between distinct realms. It allows the
organizing of the variables in a way that suggests both internal relationships
and separateness of items. This statistical procedure reveals – without prior
assumptions – an internal logic in a set of variables, paving the way for fur-
ther interpretation.
We obtained 8 significant main components:
Religious (2)
o F1 Spirituality
o F2 Confessional religion
Moral (4)
o F3 Social morality
o F4 Personal morality
o F5 Justice (fairness)
o F6 Altruism
Ideological (2)
o F7 Materialism
o F8 Rationalism
The appendix contains the tables with the components of every factor
and their significance levels. These results pave the way to a set of anal-
yses. We attempt to organize the different issues arising from them, espe-
cially those concerning the two main questions we are dealing with: the re-
lationship between spirituality and confessional religiosity on the one hand,
and both religious forms and morality on the other.
a) Spirituality and confessional religion.
As regards spirituality and its independence from institutional religious
beliefs and behavior, the factor analysis shows quite a clear distinction be-
tween both “tendencies” and “experiences”. Spirituality is the first factor: it
gathers 8 of the 11 items that we considered might represent or give content
to the idea of spirituality. Omitted are the two items expressed negatively,
Institutional Religion, Spirituality and Moral Opinion 13
and the ambiguous item that suggested “there is a dark force leading one to
evil”.
The first conclusion is that spirituality, as we have conceptualized it, is
perceived by the present sample of young students in positive terms, never
in negative expressions. Most of the available descriptions of spiritual in-
sight, which could arise apart from institutional religion, are maintained:
ideas of generic transcendence in nature; spiritualism (life after death); be-
ing part of a larger cosmic order; the presence of mysterious positive forces;
and the positive effects of meditation. Obviously, the list does not exhaust
other possible means or forms of spiritual perception, but it offers an initial
guide to its phenomenology.
As has already been stated, our survey draws a quite clear distinction
between the two dimensions: spiritual and confessional or institutional (alt-
hough not throughout the whole data sample). The second factor, bringing
together the four items which characterize institutional religion, as it is
commonly understood, assigns weights below 0.4 to three items belonging
to the spiritual framework: immortality, influence of mysterious forces, and
their positive effects. Furthermore, the cohort of Italian students gave an
integrated factor including both the spiritual and the confessional items. So,
things appear to be rather more complicated. We can try to offer some ex-
planations.
Firstly, with regards to the general distinction between the two groups
of items, the younger generation could be seen as one able to perform such
an operational distinction, and to conceive some spiritual perceptions or ex-
periences apart from the institutional religious framework. The process of
distinction is rather slow and it may take time to develop into a more stable
pattern. In any case, there are still points of contact and even intersections
between both stated forms. Indeed, the weak presence of the mentioned
“spiritual items” within the confessional factor may be easily understood as
items belonging to traditional Catholic views as well: the soul is immortal;
there is a divine providence affecting human affairs; and grace is a positive
helping force. In other words, it is hard to distil an “essential form” of spir-
ituality clearly distinct from traditional religious expressions. As far as the
Italian exception is concerned, together with the previous reasons, the sam-
ple was collected in a medium sized Sicilian town, where Catholic culture
is still very pervasive, and where there is little chance of distinguishing be-
tween the two aspects. As a result, we could claim that this distinction is
perhaps a dimension or consequence of secularization: as secularization in-
creases, so does the ground for spiritually autonomous forms; a result that
nevertheless requires more empirical evidence, as the aforementioned ESS
survey does not (yet) support this thesis.
14 Manuel Canteras and Lluis Oviedo
An alternative explanation could be that this distinction is a character-
istic trait of the younger stage of religious formation, and a better frame of
interpretation would be developmental religious psychology (Bartkowski,
Xu and Levin, 2008). In broad terms, the ideal of a spiritual experience may
simply belong to teenagers and younger adults, as seems to happen with
other perceptions: illusions or utopian views of society; the huge force of
emotional love and friendship; the individual as central character; the sig-
nificant role of heroism even in moral terms… Common sense tells us that
such idealism fades away with maturity, to make room for more realistic
views, where several factors are deeply interrelated. In our case, the ideal of
spiritual awareness and depth, reached in a personal way, could probably be
followed by a more mature view that might require institutional support as a
condition for a true and healthy spiritual experience. Obviously, the only
way to verify this hypothesis is to broaden the sample, including more ma-
ture people, and to compare their perceptions with those of the younger co-
hort.
It is worth asking how far the results reported here can be understood
in terms of social differentiation, or a further step in the separation of social
or, perhaps “symbolic”, realms (a characteristic trait of modern social evo-
lution). In that case, it would be important to ask about the meaning of such
a hypothetical tendency for the configuration of the whole “religious sys-
tem”, which separates into institutional and non-institutional (personal)
forms (Luhmann, 2000).
b) Religious expressions and moral sense.
The overall main aim of our survey was to ascertain to what extent
moral views are involved in one form of religiosity or another. The most
impressive result of this data is the fact that there is no relationship between
the categories. We register the exception of one spiritual item (meditation is
helpful) weakly present in the sixth factor (altruism, R = 0.31); and the cu-
rious presence of a negative item of spirituality (“I sometimes perceive the dark side of reality that leads to evil”; R = 0.67) in the fourth factor, which
brings together items of personal morality in a negative way. Apart from
this, moral or ideological items do not appear in the spiritual and religious
factors, and spiritual or religious items do not saturate the moral or ideolog-
ical factors. A legitimate conclusion to be derived from the examined sam-
ple is that moral aspects and spiritual or religious perceptions are not related
in principle, and do not follow a common or shared pattern.
However, factor analyses are based on correlations, which only detect
linear relations. In other cases, findings with variables like prejudice and
Institutional Religion, Spirituality and Moral Opinion 15
mental health indicate a curvilinear relationship with religion. In conse-
quence testing for curvilinearity via regression it is important to assess this
alternative form of relatedness. The analysis thus far does not change basi-
cally what we learned from the linear one. As can be seen in table 4, the
percentiles of curvilinear dependence are very low. Even if some of them
are significant, this is due to the fact that the sample is quite large. In gen-
eral it can be concluded that the authentic factors of the applied analysis are