Religion and Spirituality? The Roles of Sanctification and the Concept of God

In our reply to Pargament, we focus on 2 main themes that are vital to a discussion of re- ligion and spirituality: (a) the multiple meanings of the term sanctification and (b) the importanceof inquiring into people's implicit beliefs about the nature of God. We advo- cate using the term sacralization to refer to sanctification in the external sense-the sanctification of objects, places, or persons-and 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 lie at the heart of the debate surrounding definitions of religion and spirituality.