Multidimensional measurement of religiousness/spirituality for use in health research in cross-cultural perspective

This article explores difficulties that arise when culture is factored into the attempt to develop methods for both describing and measuring religiousness or spirituality as variables in health research. The author uses a report titled Multidimensional Measurement of Religiousness/Spirituality for Use in Health Research published by the John E. Fetzer Institute to raise questions about the extent to which basic ideas associated with the study of Judeo-Christian religions are meaningful in contexts such as Japan, India, or China. Using a combination of ethnographic data from his own fieldwork in Japan and ethnographic literature focused on other cultures, the author argues that as an analytic category "religion" is problematic because basic elements of that category, such as faith or the notion of the transcendent, have been developed in terms of a predominately Christian or Western theological framework that is not necessarily appropriate for research in non-Western cultural contexts.