Spirituality Research: Measuring the Immeasurable?

The rising popularity of spirituality is accompanied by a flood of research in numerous disciplines to probe its relationships with health, wellness, and countless other topics. Initially subsumed under religion, especially Christianity, and still overlapping with it, spirituality is increasingly treated as a distinct topic that applies to all religions and to persons who have none with their diverse assumptions, variables, and terminology. Besides issues common to all social and behavioral sciences, spirituality research faces special challenges because of its subject matter. In the context of Christian values, it is immeasurable, yet numerous scales serve the measurement need as its indicators or reflectors. Much more research is needed, ideally with methodological and philosophical precautions to avoid reification, reductionism, and other traps. Because spirituality pervades everything that is human, its study is central to investigations of the essence of human nature.