How does the psychology of religion literature define the terms religiousness, spirituality, faith, and sacred? Despite the growing interest in and recognition of spirituality and religiousness in psychology, these faith constructs remain poorly defined. We conducted a literature review, comparing existing definitions of these 4 constructs, looking for a consensus, and presenting 4 preliminary working definitions based on the literature. We then undertook 3 studies to find out the prototype phenomena being used by peer-reviewed psychology of religion authors when they define these terms. All 3 studies used definitional content analysis, a procedure based on narrative analysis, grounded theory, and Consensual Qualitative Research. Study 1 examined how 34 articles defined the term spirituality. Study 2 examined how 36 articles defined the term religiousness. Study 3 examined how 471 articles defined the terms religiousness, spirituality, faith, and sacred. The results of these 3 studies indicate that these 4 terms are multidimensional, overlapping, and often poorly defined; nevertheless, the basic elements of their meanings can be discerned. Spirituality, religiousness, faith, and the sacred involve 20, 19, 20, and 9 discernible characteristics, respectively. We propose 4 research-based operational definitions for future research. Specifically, we propose that spirituality is a search for or relationship with the sacred; religiousness is ritual, institutional, or codified spirituality which is culturally sanctioned; faith is a synonym for spirituality and/or religiousness; and the sacred is manifestations of the divine, existential meaningfulness, or an ultimate concern as perceived by an individual.

Clients often have spiritual needs. Many mental health counselors argue that spirituality should be included in counseling, whereas others contend that religious issues may be beyond the bounds of counselor competence. Though much counselor opinion on spirituality in therapy has been published, little has been published on client desires. Therefore, this study conducted a literature review of research in mental health counseling to examine client expectations and preferences for addressing religion and spirituality in counseling. This manuscript summarizes one of the largest samples of literature on this topic ever reviewed, spanning 64 peer-reviewed journal articles by 148 different authors in 32 different journals, surveying over 64,000 participants, including 4,697 actual counseling clients. We review client-focused research with 4 themes: expectations about spirituality in counseling, preferences for addressing spirituality in counseling, preferences against addressing spirituality in counseling, and the process of spirituality in counseling. Some clients want counseling to address their spiritual issues extensively and expect this to occur, while others prefer these issues to be addressed in the context of other, more primary issues. Still others prefer spiritual issues not to be addressed at all. Client magnitude of spiritual beliefs, client gender, the match between the client and counselor’s beliefs and values, type of therapy, and counselor openness to spiritual issues may be key factors that influence what clients want to talk about in counseling. It is our hope that clinicians find this review to be helpful in addressing the spiritual concerns of clients—whether religious, spiritual, or secular.

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