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Abstract
Retreatants at a Jesuit retreat center were surveyed to determine their levels of religiousness and spirituality. A cross-tabulation was done to compare self-rated religiousness and spirituality with observed categories of religiousness and spirituality. This study found that religiousness and spirituality were not mutually exclusive and suggested a new set of concepts: Spiritual but less religious and Religious but less spiritual. Various dependent variables were used to examine the outcomes of the retreat based on these new concepts as independent variables. A disparity existed between retreatants' self-rated religiousness and spirituality and the empirically observed categories of religiousness and spirituality. Retreatants believed they were more spiritual and religious than they really were. In general, those who were religious benefitted more from the retreat than those who were spiritual.
Religiousness and spirituality have been used interchangeably for most of history and they have been defined in a variety of ways, but most scholars would agree that these concepts are multidimensional and related but not identical (Roof 2003; Wuthnow 2007; Zinnbauer and Pargament 2005). Since the 1950s, spirituality for some has come to mean "spiritual seeking" and religious as "church-centered religiousness" (Dillon and Wink 2007:121). Even more so, spirituality implies something that is internal and/or experiential while religiousness implies something that is external and/or institutionalized (Roof 1999).
Definitions of religiousness and spirituality vary. Some consider spirituality the broader construct while others consider religiousness the broader concept (Zinnbauer and Pargament 2005). Not all scholars are in agreement with these tendencies. Cunningham (2000) contended that religiousness is the broader construct and spirituality is "its pale cousin," and that "Being a member of a religious tradition like Catholic Christianity, in fact, nurtures a person who desires to become more spiritual" (p. 26). Likewise, Jamison (2006) argued that religion has the capacity to nurture the spiritual, to broaden our limited and narrow private lives.
The religious landscape is changing according to Cox (2009:14), from "an expiring Age of Belief into a new but not yet fully realized Age of the Spirit" where spirituality replaces formal or institutionalized religion. The religious landscape is characterized by "the reemergence of spirituality, religious and cultural pluralism, multilayered belief and practice, and transformed selves" (Roof 1993:243). While a spiritual marketplace has developed in the decades since...
