Is the Term 'Spirituality' a Word that Everyone Uses, But Nobody Knows What Anyone Means by it?

An investigation into what is entailed by the term 'spirituality' among professionals drawn primarily from the big five religious traditions-priests, rabbis, monks, temple presidents, etc.-reveals that while a great deal of difference exists about what is entailed, a basic set of characteristics seems to emerge. Spirituality was not found to be dependent on belonging to a religion, it was more dependent on three criteria: some form of continuous religious or comparable experience, particular maintained effort or practice, and the experience of love. Protestant Christian professionals demonstrated the greatest variety of views; and while differences are shown to exist between the terms 'religiousness' and 'spirituality', the overall view appears to be that the two terms have similar meanings.