THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION, 9(1) 17-24 Copyright 1999 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ine

COMMENTARY

Religion and Spirituality? The Roles of Sanctification and the Concept of God
Robert A Emmons and Cheryl A Crumpler
Department of Psychology University of California, Davis

In our reply to Pargament, we focus on 2 mam themes that are vital to a discussion of religion and spirituality (a) the multiple meanings of the term sanctification and (b) the importance of inquiring into people's implicit beliefs about the nature of God We advocate using the term sacralization to refer to sanctification in the external sensethe sanctification of objects, places, or personsand suggest that sanctification refers to an inner process of transformation whereby persons are made pure or holy Second, the importance of inquiring into people's implicit beliefs about the nature of God is vital in the study of psychology and religion, because we believe this issue may he at the heart of the debate surrounding definitions of religion and spirituality In his article, Pargament (this issue) has made a significant conceptual advance that is inspiring, far-reaching, and likely to influence the agenda of the psychology of religion and spirituality for some time Achieving clarity in conceptual terminology would seem to be essential for scientific progress and the establishment of a cumulative knowledge base In broadening the domain of the sacred to encompass the diverse meanings of spirituality while placing boundary conditions around an all too amorphous and inclusive construct, Pargament has accomplished no small feat Positing a search for the sacred as the common ground between religion and spirituality ought to at least assuage if not completely satisfy those who would prefer that spirituality and religion have nothing to do with each other Coming as it does fiom
Requests for reprints should be sent to Robert A Emmons, Department of Psychology, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616-8686, USA E mail raemmons@ucdavis edu

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one of the foremost contributors to the psychology of religion, the article commands respect and deserves serious consideration from those committed to a scientific understanding of spirituality and religiousness We find much to admire in Pargament's thesis The telic approach that underlies Pargament's ends and means of spirituality and religion is congenial with the personal strivings framework of human motivation (Emmons, in press) and, more importantly, with the growing goals revolution in psychology (Austin & Vancouver, 1996) A dynamic view of spirituality and religion centered on goals and purpose offers considerable potential for understanding the influence of the spiritual and religious realm m everyday life To form a coherent response to Pargament, it is necessary to first consider what Pargament is trying to accomplish in his article What are his purposes9 What is he trying to do 7 His overall goal, we think, is to help people think more clearly about the constructs of spirituality and religion by correcting faulty views of the meaning of these terms and offering a new and viable perspective We focus on two main themes in our commentary (a) the multiple meanings of the term sanctification and (b) the importance of inquiring into people's implicit beliefs about the nature of God

THE DUAL MEANINGS OF SANCTIFICATION Pargament defines spirituality as "the search for the sacred" (this issue) In everyday life, sacredness appears in many shapes and forms, from the most magnificent aims to the seemingly most mundane pursuits Almost any facet of life can become sacrahzed through a process of sanctification This being the case, where does one draw the boundaries around the concept of sanctification 7 We are concerned that the term sanctification can become as broad and diffuse as spirituality and thus lose its usefulness as both a theoretical construct and a construct with practical utility It would behoove us to consider the meaning of the concept of sanctification within various faith traditions The term has specific theological meaning, it is not merely a psychological construct At least two distinct usages can be identified (Enckson, 1985), corresponding roughly to an outward and an inward sanctification Sanctification in an outward sense is a formal characteristic of particular objects, persons, and places To sanctify is to set apart from the ordinary or mundane and to dedicate to a particular purpose or use This is the meaning as employed by Pargament According to the Hebrew scriptures, certain vessels from the potter's shop were set aside for use by the priests officiating in the temple and became "holy vessels" (Romans 9 21, New International Version) To avoid confusion, we advocate using the term sacralization to refer to sanctification in the external sense of objects, places, or persons Whereas sacralization is a process of imbuing external objects with sacred qualities, sanctification refers to an inner process of transformation It is a process by

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which persons are made pure or holy. Sanctification thus refers to moral purity or moral goodness (literally, "saint-like"). The psychological equivalent to sanctification might be something like a striving toward perfection or self-actualization Unlike the first type of sanctification, which is an attribute of external objects, this type of sanctification is an inner process that reflects a spiritual transformation of the entire person. Pargament alludes closely to this position but does not specifically state this. For instance, in his discussion of the sanctification of secular objects, he notes the importance and power that can come from sanctifying one's job or marriage. He states that "the search for meaning, community, self, or a better world are likely to be transformed when they are invested with sacred character" (this issue). While this is quite true, it is also true that a search for the sacred or for significance should involve an internal process that leads through a set of developmental stages, the ultimate goal being union with God This should remain true for the definition of religion as well as spirituality. This idea of religious practices leading one through a developmental process finds accord in almost all traditions and fits well with models of adult development (Levenson & Crumpler, 1996) One of the primary functions of spirituality is to provide the means and ends for how life should be lived. When defining religion and spirituality, every effort must be made not to overlook the individual and the unique internal developmental patterns involved in the religious process. A search for the sacred or a search for significance in ways related to the sacred should involve dynamic change in each individual life, both externally, as Pargament clearly elucidates, and also internally While religious practices may transform the external objects of one's world, the primary teachings of all faiths suggest that it is an internal sanctification that is critical. In the major monotheistic traditions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, the acts involved m the religious traditionsprayer, meditation, service, and a moral lifestyleare designed to lead to personal transformation. For instance, in Islam, practitioners are admonished to pray five times daily, read scripture, lead a morally superior life, seek God's mercy, and purify the self. In addition, the use of mature defenses such as humor, suppression, sublimation, altruism, hope, and asceticism are encouraged so that ultimately one can become annihilated in God, meaning that the person ultimately can become a sanctified vessel through which God may work The daily activities involved in the service of one's life also become sanctified, because during this process one becomes more aware of the sacred in each aspect of his or her life. It is purported m Islam, particularly in the mystical tradition of Sufism, that the process of sanctification takes many years and involves a particular sequence of development in which the self-centered personality characteristics are lost. With a great deal of commitment, sincerity, and a willingness to change, the person sacrifices the limited and immature defenses and begins to lose such characteristics as self-conceit, pride, greed, and anger (Shafii, 1988).

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Sanctification as growth in the spiritual life is not considered by Pargament, yet may prove useful for understanding processes such as spiritual conversions and personality changes in their aftermath The two meanings of sanctification might even be linked m a dialectical process, where a person progressively sanctifies var ious spheres of his or her life (e g , job, personal relationships, goals, and activi ties), eventually resulting in an overall personal sanctification (what some theologians refer to as ultimate sanctification) Presumably, such a bottom-up ap proach to sanctification can be contrasted with a top-down approach in which an overall regeneration of the person (as in "born-again" individuals) leads to shifts in specific aspects of a person's life The distinction between the two meanings of sanctification points to the importance of studying the person and the process of sanctification In our study of spirituality, we must not lose sight of the spiritual lives that people are living The spiritual life is a lifelong process of growth toward holiness and progress toward the ultimate goal of perfection There is a long history of using goal-language metaphorically to depict spiritual growth In devotional writings, spiritual growth and spiritual maturity are viewed as a process of goal attainment, with the ultimate goal being intimacy with the divine For instance, Gregory of Nyssa (Danielou & Musunllo, 1961 ) saw the spiritual life as a race, where spiritual growth for those whom are entered is a never-ending process of striving toward perfection St Teresa of Avila (1979), m her classic The Interior Castle, saw prog ress in the spiritual life as a continuous striving toward greater depth and to the core of one's being, each step moving us closer to a vision of the ultimate Allport (1950) contended that goals that are never quite fulfilled are best able to direct at tention, guide current striving, and maintain unity Religion thus constitutes the most effective form of integration because religious strivings, more than any other, are never fully realized, never completely attained "because religious accom plishment is always incomplete, its cementing character in the personal life is therefore all the greater" (p 93) We rally behind Pargament's vision of a dynamic psychology of religion and spirituality We believe that an expansion of the meanings of sanctification that puts the person and the process at the center can complement the emphasis on sanctification of specific life domains An important agenda for the futuie will be to identify the virtuous ends toward which people strive and how they construe daily opportunities to achieve progress toward these valued ends Virtues are ac quired excellences in the moral domain and have been described as characteristics that "come closer to defining what a person is than any other category of qualities" (Zagzebski, 1996, 135) Many such lists of qualities have been identified, such as "the fruits of the Spint"(Galations 5 22, New International Version)love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-controlor those outlined by Thomas Aquinas (Rickaby, 1986) or Aristotle (trans 1941) in his Nicomachean Ethics

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Why all the fuss over the meanings of sanctification9 After all, is it not a theological term, and our job is psychology, not theology7 We have two replies First, insomuch as they deal with fundamental questions of human nature and provide prescriptive guidelines for how life should be lived, theologies are also psychologies Second, it is important to get the meaning of theological terms precisely correct when applying them in psychology Lopata (1996) wrote on the widow's sanctification of her dead husband She invoked the term sanctification to depict an "idealization of the deceased" (p 151) or a reconstruction of perfection in the memory of the surviving spouse In her research, sanctification is measured by semantic differential ratings of husbands on adjective pairs of "good-bad," "useful-useless," "honest-dishonest," "kind-cruel," and "friendly-unfriendly " Note that the usage of sanctification here and its measurement resembles neither theologically based meaning described earlier An entire research program has been constructed around the concept of "husband sanctification," a phenomenon that is undoubtedly real but more accurately described with the psychological concept of idealization We thus encourage Pargament and his colleagues to be very clear on the meaning of sanctification, because the concept is likely to be adopted by other researchers (indeed, as we ourselves have done)

CAN WE LEAVE GOD OUT'? It has become standard practice to invoke what may be called the "law of 95" in the opening section in articles on the psychology of religion and mental health The law of 95 refers to the survey research literature finding that approximately 95% of those queried report a belief in God, presumably thus legitimizing empirical research on religion What is often overlooked, however, is that this figure represents those who report a belief in some form of a God, the form of which may vary considerably from respondent to respondent According to Pargament, one of the advantages in viewing spirituality as the search for the sacred is that "we avoid restricting ourselves to narrow or traditional conceptions of God" (this issue) We confess to being confused as to how the sacred can exist without God Divinity, by definition, means of or like God Can one speak of divinity or holiness without God9 Wherein then would these terms derive their meaning7 Pargament does not elaborate further on what he means by traditional or narrow conceptions of God, but he alludes to what in our mind is an extremely important issue how God is implicitly represented in people's consciousness This point ma\ in fact be the crux of the division between defining oneself as religious or spiritual Pargament goes to considerable trouble to discern why differences exist in the definition and association between religion and spirituality In his own research, he found that while most participants defined themselves as both religious and spiritual (74%), almost everyone believed they were spiritual Pargament asks the

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question, to what degree are their views about these processes a projection of their own personal orientations 7 We would further add "and images of God " Although this issue of who and what is God has been divisive since the Middle Ages (Martin, 1930), it may have become even more relevant with the introduction of Eastern philosophies into conceptualizations of religious matters For instance, to Christians, Moslems, and Jews, the primary image of God as personal and as existing apart from God's creation is very different from a Buddhist who does not believe in a personal God but rather the attainment of enlightenment, Oneness, and a state of Nirvana If one abides by a Buddhist perspective, then in a monotheistic culture, one may not identify well with the term religious The term spiritual may feel much less bound to traditional religious ideologies and requirements Why are we taking such issue with this concept 7 We believe that the concept of God may be an important moderator of different effects in the definition of religion and spirituality and perhaps one of the prime reasons for the division of the two terms In addition, conceptions of God and religious identity have important ramifications from a mental health standpoint, both for the client and practitioner (for a discussion from numerous religious perspectives see Koenig, 1998) Years ago, C S Lewis (1994) colorfully expressed the different views on divinity that people hold Men are reluctant to pass over from the notion of an abstract and negative deity to the living God I do not wonder The Pantheist's God does nothing, demands nothing He is there if you wish for Him, like a book on a shelf He will not pursue you An impersonal Godwell and good A subjective God of beauty, truth and goodness, inside our own headsbetter still A formless life-force surging through us, a vast power which we can tapbest of all But God himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed that is quite another matter (pp 321-322) If one views God as either a universal and impersonal force that affects all of nature versus a personal God who responds benevolently to one's prayers, this may influence a variety of mental and physical health variables such as self-esteem and well-being, as well as treatment issues, particularly for individuals who are significantly more involved in their religious practices than the average person (Malony, 1998) Barrett and VanOrman (1996) pointed out that the images held of God may either bias worshipers toward a mature developmental pattern or lead to undesirable concepts of God It is possible that those who embrace New Age "spirituality" or define themselves as spiritual rather than religious may do so because of discomfort with traditional and widely held concepts of God We advocate that researchers in the psychology of religion and spirituality assess the nature of people's implicit beliefs about the nature of God as routinely as they collect information on the frequency of church attendance and other religious activities Even a rudimentary classification of beliefs that distinguishes between a

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personal God who can be petitioned through prayer and an impersonal life force that imbues all of nature may prove to be enlightening A survey of undergraduates on our campus found that whereas only 8% held atheistic beliefs (a figure quite close to those reported in national surveys), only one in three held to an image of a personal Creator of the universe who is closely involved with creation A full quar ter of the respondents agreed with the pantheistic statement that there is an imper sonal force that exists within everything and everyone Questions modeled alter those used by the Gallup organization (Rosten, 1975) may prove effective in re search on religion, spirituality, and mental and physical health outcomes For in stance, one question was worded in the following way Which of these statements comes closest to your beliefs7 There is a personal God There is some sort of spirit or vital force which controls life I'm not sure that there is a God of any kind There is no God of any kind (p 339)

CONCLUSION The motivation to write this commentary sprang out of gratitude to Pargament We deeply appreciate his commitment to a scientific psychology of religion and spiri tuality It is unlikely that all psychologists interested in spiritual and religious phe nomena are going to embrace Pargament's definitions or his position on the rela tionship between spirituality and religion From our perspective, this would not necessarily represent a desirable state of affairs Formal and precise definitions have a way of stunting the growth of a discipline Science advances through contro versies and disagreement that stimulate additional research and theory develop ment Openness of meaning is a desiderata for scientific inquiry (Kaplan, 1964) When it comes to defining religion and spirituality, psychologists should be in no hurry to achieve closure on these matters

ACKNOWLEDGMENT Preparation of this manuscript was supported by a grant from the John M Templeton Foundation

REFERENCES
Allport, G W (1950) The individual and his religion New York Macmillan Austin, J ,& Vancouver, J (1996) Goal constructs in psychology Structure, process, and content Psychological Bulletin 120 338-375

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Anstotle (1941) Nicomachean ethics (W D Ross, Trans ) New York Random House Barrett, J L , & VanOrman, (1996) Theeffect of image-use in worship on God concepts Journal of Psychology and Christianity 15 38-45 Danielou, J , & Musunllo, (Eds ) ( 1961 ) From glory to glor\ Texts ft om Gregors of Nyssa s my sti cal writings New York Scnbner Emmons, R A (in press) The psychology of ultimate concerns Mutilation and spirituality in personal it\ New York Guilford Enckson, M J (1985) Christian theology Grand Rapids, MI Baker Kaplan, A (1964) The conduct of inquiry Methodology for behaxioral science Scranton, PA Chandler Koenig, H G (Ed) (1998) Handbook of religion and mental health San Diego, CA Academic Levenson, M R , & Crumpler, C A (1996) Three models of adult development Human De\ el opment 39 135-149 Lewis, C S (1994) The inspirational writings of C S Lewis New York Inspirational Press Lopata, (1996) Widowhood and husband sanctification In D Klass, R Silverman, & S L Nickman (Eds ), Continuing bonds New understandings of grief (pp 149-162) Washington DC Taylor & Francis Malony, (1998) Religion and mental health from the Protestant perspective In H G Koenig (Ed ), Handbook of religion and mental health (pp 203-210) San Diego, CA Academic Martin, E J (1930) A history of the iconoclastic control ersy New York Macmillan Rickaby, J (1986) Aquinas ethicus The moral teaching of St Thomas London Burns and Oates Rosten, L (1975) Religions of America Ferment and faith in an age of crisis New York Simon & Schuster Shafii, M (1988) Freedom from the self New York Human Sciences Teresa of Avila (1979) The interior castle New York Pauhst Press Zagzebski, L (1996) Virtues of the mind New York Cambridge University Press

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