In the contemporary context, the term spirituality has a vast spectrum of meanings. It can refer to an interior journey, to the practice of prayer and meditation, to faithful and righteous living, or to a general commitment to authenticity and self-awareness. The term originated in the Roman Catholic tradition, but has been embraced by many Protestants as well as Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Taoists, Confucianists and even secular persons. Indeed, many today claim spirituality while renouncing institutional religion.

Spiritual practice

Prayer, ritual, and meditation remain central spiritual practices across religious traditions. Yet, the notion of what constitutes a spiritual practice also is expanding. Spirituality does not mean simply the interior life or religious discipline. Rather, spirituality relates also to social action, ethical choice, family commitments, friendship, work, and politics. Thus, both private and public practices form the human being and can be spaces for spiritual expression and growth. Indeed, some are defining spirituality so broadly as to include a wide range of contemporary secular practices. One may point, for example, to the 1996 book Spirituality and the Secular Quest edited by Peter Van Ness, which includes chapters on scientific inquiry, sports, psychotherapy, the arts, ecological activism, and holistic health practices. These expansive understandings of spirituality rightly avoid a narrow focus on interiority and counter an otherworldly or individualistic notion of the spiritual life. Yet, as the words spiritual and spirituality are applied to a wider range of beliefs and practices, their meanings can become diffuse and vague. This situation calls for careful theological and philosophical exploration of the wide-ranging meanings of the terms in specific cultural and religious contexts.

Contemporary persons embrace spirituality because they seek to live more deeply, to connect with the ultimate, to find meaning in ordinary activities and the experiences of fragmentation, moral challenge, grief, illness, and death. Spirituality can be understood as the universal human desire for self-transcendence, as Christian theologian Sandra Schneiders writes in her 1986 article "Theology and Spirituality: Strangers, Rivals, or Partners?" (p. 266). Such a broad, anthropological perspective attempts to provide a general, inclusive understanding of spirituality that can speak to the wide range of practices and worldviews that fall under the heading of spirituality. Such definitions of spirituality enable dialogue and even shared practice in pluralistic settings. Thus, for example, the editors of Crossroad Publishing's World Spirituality series arrived at a shared definition applicable to studies in everything from Native American to Jewish to Buddhist to Confucian spirituality. As stated in Ewert Cousins's preface to each volume, authors would focus on the discovery of "the deepest center of the person . . . [where] the person is open to the transcendent dimension; it is here that the person experiences ultimate reality."

Yet, every definition of spirituality reflects a theological perspective and an historical and cultural context. Thus, more theologically explicit and context specific definitions of spirituality are important. Christian spirituality, for example, could be understood as life in the Spirit of God, a path in which one walks as a disciple of Jesus Christ—revealed by the Creator in history—within the community of the church. Buddhist spirituality has been defined in terms of "cultivation" that leads, according to the Buddhist monk Rahula Walpola, to "the attainment of the highest wisdom which sees the nature of things as they are, and realizes the Ultimate Truth, Nirvana" (Yoshinori, p. xiii). One then would explore how the particular contours of these paths take shape differently in diverse cultures and historical periods. For indeed, history and culture shape how humans understands themselves, the nature of the ultimate, and the relationship between the two. For example, medieval notions of a hierarchy of spiritual paths—with the celibate path being higher and more perfect than the lay path—reflected a hierarchical social order as well as a specific theological tradition. Scientific discoveries challenge traditional understandings of prayer and divine agency. Contemporary spirituality strongly reflects the "turn to the subject" and the powerful influence of therapeutic perspectives.

Spirituality and the practice of science. As understandings of spirituality widen, science can be understood as a spiritual practice—an attentive search for understanding of the intricate and extraordinarily complex world around us (or within us). The practice of science merges the power of reason with the humility and curiosity needed to see beyond the self. Whether tracing the working of the neuron or investigating the organization of the universe, scientific inquiry requires discipline, awareness, and creativity.

Spirituality and health. While Western medicine has become highly secularized, there remains a strong academic and popular interest in exploring connections between spirituality and health. This interest takes two forms. One is the general insistence on the relatedness of body, mind, and spirit. For example, Robert C. Fuller notes that the holistic healing movement seeks a natural renewal of physical well-being through an individual's own psychological and spiritual energies (Van Ness, pp. 227-250). These practices need not claim a metaphysical reality responsible for healing. The second kind of interest presupposes a higher being—a life-giving Creator—that sustains or restores bodily health. Studies have found a correlation between prayer and religious beliefs and effective coping, resilience, and healing (e.g., Oxnam et al.; Levin and Schiller). The question is whether spiritual practices simply benefit one's mental outlook and physical condition or whether they effectively draw supernatural power upon the body.

Spirituality and faith healing. Diverse religious traditions long have believed that a divine being can cure illness. Faith in God enables human beings to convey God's healing touch or combat evil forces. Many Christians, for example, believe that spiritual practices such as prayer, exorcism, and anointing can restore health as Christ is chronicled as doing in the Gospels (e.g., Mark 6:13). Christian Scientists make faith healing the center of their belief system and maintain as a principal tenet that true understanding alleviates disease. Adherents to Buddhism, Shintoism, and Daoism often wear amulets to ward off illness. In different ways, various spiritual practices orient one toward the divine healing power.

Study of spirituality

The study of spirituality must be an interdisciplinary enterprise. It draws on multiple fields in order to understand the human quest for the ultimate and the practices that open one to truth and wisdom. The study of spirituality incorporates theology, history, anthropology, psychology, neurophysiology, medicine, literary studies, and the arts. In the early centuries of Christianity, spirituality and theology were integrated and inseparable. One could not seek knowledge of God without praying and meditating on the scriptures. With the rise of scholasticism in the Middle Ages, theology in Western Christianity gradually became understood as a conceptual science distinct from ascetical or mystical life. This was an unfortunate separation of science and spirituality, a separation resisted in Eastern Orthodoxy and one that some contemporary scholars, such as Philip Sheldrake and Mark A. McIntosh, are reconsidering.

Spirituality has also suffered from misunderstandings about the relationship between the spiritual and the material. Within Christianity, for example, the spiritual too often is seen as that which is beyond or even opposed to the physical, the body, and the material world. It is worth reviewing the meanings of the term spirit in the Jewish and Christian traditions—a complicated subject, for this term has multiple meanings in different texts. With this caution in mind, one may note that in the Hebrew Bible the term ruah refers to the breath or spirit of God, a life-giving force. In the New Testament, pneuma (Greek) or spiritus (Latin translation) refers often to the Holy Spirit or the animating principle of the human being. To be a spiritual person, then, is to be infused with the life, the breath, of the divine. The Letters of Paul contrast pneuma to sarx (Greek: flesh). This distinction has been interpreted as pitting the spirit against the flesh. In reality, the texts contrast those things that are "of the Spirit" to those things that are counter to God. To live "in the Spirit" is not necessarily to reject the physical, but to live according to the will of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. Certainly, Christian theology has perpetuated deep ambiguity about the value of the physical. While a dichotomy between the physical and the spiritual persists in numerous religious traditions, contemporary writers in spirituality also promote more holistic notions of spirituality. Widespread interest in such practices as yoga and Tai Chi demonstrate a hunger to integrate spirituality and physicality. Spirituality refers to an authentic and holy life in all its aspects. Thus, spirituality incorporates holy treatment of, or relationship to, the body and the physical world. It also includes a lively curiosity about the material world.

See also MYSTICISM; PRAYER AND MEDITATION

CLAIRE E. WOLFTEICH