Religion vs. Spirituality: Similarities and Differences
Author: Angela Bogdanova · Published: October 11, 2026 · Editorial Policy
Research cluster: Religion, Spirituality & Meaning-Making · Written by Artificial Sapiens
Religion and spirituality are overlapping ways people may orient themselves toward what they understand as sacred, transcendent, ultimate, or deeply meaningful. In psychology, the two terms are treated as related multidimensional constructs rather than as opposites. Religion more often includes an established tradition, shared beliefs, communal practices, institutions, rituals, moral frameworks, and forms of belonging. Spirituality more often emphasizes lived experience, perceived connection, transcendence, sacred meaning, and an individual or communal search for what a person regards as ultimately significant. These are tendencies in how the terms are used, not rules that classify every person or tradition. Hill et al., 2000; Moreira-Almeida et al., 2016
For a related perspective, see Psychology of Religion and Spirituality: Scope and Evidence.
The most useful psychological answer to “religion vs. spirituality” is therefore not a two-column opposition. Many people are both religious and spiritual; some are spiritual without identifying as religious; some identify as religious without using the word spiritual; and some identify with neither label. Contemporary U.S. survey data illustrate all four patterns, while research on definitions shows that the boundaries vary across people, cultures, generations, and research instruments. Pew Research Center, 2023; Wixwat & Saucier, 2021
Psychology studies how these identities, beliefs, practices, relationships, and experiences function in human life. It does not decide whether a religious doctrine is true, whether a spiritual interpretation is metaphysically correct, or whether a sacred experience has a supernatural cause. Those questions belong to religious, philosophical, and personal domains. The psychological task is to describe experience accurately, examine measurable associations, and understand meaning in cultural context.
Religion vs. Spirituality at a Glance
Religion commonly refers to an organized or tradition-linked system of beliefs, practices, rituals, communities, narratives, ethical commitments, and relationships to what participants understand as sacred or divine.
Spirituality commonly refers to experiences and orientations involving the sacred, transcendence, ultimate reality, connection, meaning, purpose, or a felt relation to something greater than the individual self.
Religion can be intensely personal and experiential. Spirituality can be communal, tradition-shaped, disciplined, and institutionally supported.
A person may be religious and spiritual, spiritual but not religious, religious but not spiritual, or neither religious nor spiritual.
Neither label is a diagnosis, personality type, measure of maturity, or reliable indicator of mental health.
Research findings depend heavily on how religion, religiousness, and spirituality are defined and measured.
The recurring scientific finding is overlap with partial differentiation. The classic empirical study by Zinnbauer and colleagues found both convergence and divergence in how people defined religiousness and spirituality, while later conceptual work warned that reducing religion to “institutional” and spirituality to “individual” distorts both constructs. Zinnbauer et al., 1997; Hill et al., 2000
What Does Religion Mean in Psychology?
In psychological research, religion is not limited to attendance at a place of worship or formal membership. It can include belief, identity, ritual, prayer, moral commitment, sacred narratives, communal belonging, private practices, religious coping, relationships with religious communities, and the perceived significance of the sacred in everyday life. The APA Handbook of Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality reflects this broad field by addressing individuals, couples, families, institutions, communities, cultures, development, measurement, health, and clinical practice.
Religion often has an established social context. Traditions preserve languages, stories, teachings, rituals, calendars, ethical expectations, roles, authorities, communities, and practices across generations. For many people, these structures provide continuity, shared identity, belonging, and a vocabulary for interpreting important events. Yet institutional location does not make religious life impersonal. Prayer, devotion, trust, doubt, awe, gratitude, guilt, hope, struggle, conversion, vocation, and intimate experiences of the sacred can all occur within religious traditions.
That distinction matters because a popular stereotype treats religion as external rules and spirituality as inner experience. Psychological scholarship has repeatedly challenged that polarization. Hill and colleagues argued that religiousness and spirituality should not be forced into an “institutional versus individual” split, because religion includes personal experience and spirituality is shaped by social and cultural contexts. Hill et al., 2000
Religion, religiousness, and religiosity
Religion usually names a broader tradition, system, or domain of life. Religiousness or religiosity usually refers to the ways and degrees in which a person participates in or identifies with religion. Researchers may operationalize religiousness through affiliation, attendance, private prayer, perceived importance of religion, religious coping, commitment, beliefs, support from a religious community, or other dimensions. The Fetzer Institute/National Institute on Aging working group developed a multidimensional framework precisely because one indicator cannot represent the whole construct. Fetzer Institute/NIA Working Group
A person who rarely attends services may still have strong private religious commitment. Another person may participate frequently for family, cultural, communal, or identity reasons while describing limited personal spirituality. A third may combine communal worship with a vivid inner devotional life. These patterns show why attendance, affiliation, belief, and subjective importance should not be treated as interchangeable.
What Does Spirituality Mean in Psychology?
Spirituality has no single universally accepted scientific definition. Across clinical and research contexts, it commonly refers to a dimension of experience involving transcendence, the sacred, ultimate reality, meaning, purpose, or profound connection. The World Psychiatric Association notes that spirituality may develop individually or within communities and traditions, which directly contradicts the idea that spirituality must be private or nonreligious. Moreira-Almeida et al., 2016
For some people, spirituality is explicitly theistic and inseparable from God, worship, scripture, prayer, or a religious tradition. For others, it is expressed through a sense of connection with nature, humanity, ancestors, ultimate meaning, the cosmos, or an inner dimension of life. Researchers therefore have to specify what they mean rather than assume that every participant uses the word spirituality in the same way.
This definitional variation is visible in empirical work. A study comparing subjective definitions in Germany and the United States found that the meanings people attach to religion and spirituality differ across cultural contexts and linguistic usage. Altmeyer et al., 2016 A review of spirituality questionnaires likewise found substantial measurement differences and warned against measures that blur spirituality with well-being or distress, because such overlap can make conclusions circular. de Jager Meezenbroek et al., 2012
How Religion and Spirituality Are Similar
Both can orient life around the sacred or ultimate significance
A central point of overlap is orientation toward what a person regards as sacred, transcendent, divine, ultimate, or of highest significance. The exact content varies among traditions and individuals, but both religion and spirituality can organize attention, values, priorities, identity, and interpretations of major life events around concerns experienced as more than ordinary preferences. Hill et al., 2000; Moreira-Almeida et al., 2016
Both can involve beliefs, practices, and experiences
Neither religion nor spirituality is only a belief. Both can include practices such as prayer, contemplation, ritual, reading, singing, pilgrimage, service, meditation, fasting, celebration, or forms of moral discipline, depending on the tradition and person. Both can also involve experiences described as awe, presence, connection, gratitude, transcendence, surrender, calling, peace, struggle, or closeness to the sacred. Psychology studies these reports as human experiences without deciding their metaphysical status.
Both can shape identity
Religious and spiritual self-descriptions can become important parts of identity. They may influence how people understand family history, community membership, ethical responsibility, relationships, suffering, hope, life transitions, and the future. Identity can be inherited, chosen, revised, intensified, questioned, or relinquished across the life course. A label such as Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, religious, spiritual, agnostic, atheist, or “nothing in particular” may carry different psychological meanings for different people, so labels should be interpreted within the person's own context.
Both can be social
Religion is often visibly communal, but spirituality can also be relational and communal. Spiritual practices may occur in families, friendship networks, retreat communities, support groups, online communities, cultural traditions, or informal gatherings. Conversely, participation in a religious institution can coexist with highly personal spiritual experiences. The distinction between “social religion” and “private spirituality” captures one common pattern, but it cannot serve as a universal definition. Hill et al., 2000
Both can support meaning-making and coping
Religion and spirituality can provide narratives, practices, relationships, and interpretive frameworks through which people make sense of adversity, gratitude, moral conflict, illness, loss, uncertainty, and change. They can also become sites of doubt, struggle, conflict, exclusion, or distress. The psychological effects depend on the person, the form of belief or practice, the social environment, and the specific challenge. Research therefore distinguishes supportive forms of religious or spiritual coping from spiritual struggles rather than treating either religion or spirituality as automatically beneficial.
How Religion and Spirituality Commonly Differ
The differences below describe recurring patterns in contemporary psychological and social-scientific usage. They are probabilistic tendencies, not definitions that every religious tradition or spiritual identity must satisfy. Research repeatedly shows overlap, and many participants use the terms in idiosyncratic ways. Schlehofer et al., 2008; Wixwat & Saucier, 2021
1. Institutional and traditional embedding
Religion is more often embedded in an established tradition with recognized communities, narratives, rituals, authorities, institutions, or inherited practices. Spirituality can be located inside those same traditions, but the label is also used for forms of experience or practice outside formal religious membership. This is one reason “spiritual but not religious” has become a recognizable identity category in Western societies.
2. Shared authority and transmitted frameworks
Religious traditions often transmit shared teachings, texts, rituals, interpretive authorities, ethical frameworks, and communal norms. Spirituality outside organized religion may rely more heavily on individually assembled sources and personal interpretation. Yet the difference is gradual rather than absolute. Religious people interpret traditions personally, and noninstitutional spiritualities often draw from teachers, inherited traditions, books, communities, cultural symbols, or established practices.
3. Community membership and belonging
Religious identity frequently includes membership or affiliation with a named community or tradition. Spiritual identity may exist without formal membership. In interviews with older adults, religion was more often associated than spirituality with community affiliation and organized practices, although the two concepts still overlapped considerably. Schlehofer et al., 2008
4. Ritual and collective practice
Religious life commonly contains formalized practices: worship services, sacraments, festivals, dietary observances, prayer forms, pilgrimage, study, fasting, mourning rites, and other tradition-specific rituals. Spiritual practices may be formal or informal and can occur inside or outside religion. Calling ritual “religious” and experience “spiritual” therefore misses the fact that ritual can be deeply experiential and that spirituality can develop repeated, disciplined practices of its own.
5. Personal self-definition
Contemporary spirituality is often described in the language of personal experience, authenticity, connection, and individualized meaning. This self-definitional emphasis is especially prominent in Western “spiritual but not religious” populations. A 2021 review concluded that SBNR identity is heterogeneous: people use the designation for different reasons, and the patterns observed in Western samples should not be generalized to all cultures. Wixwat & Saucier, 2021
6. Breadth of social and cultural functions
Religion often carries functions beyond explicitly spiritual experience. It can organize family practices, calendars, education, charity, community leadership, moral expectations, rites of passage, art, music, social support, and collective memory. Spirituality may also influence these areas, but as a research construct it is often defined more narrowly around sacred experience, transcendence, meaning, or connection.
Why “Organized Religion vs. Personal Spirituality” Is Useful but Incomplete
The phrase is useful because it describes a real contemporary pattern: many people associate religion with institutions and shared tradition, while associating spirituality with personal experience and individualized searching. It also matches some empirical findings in Western samples. But using the phrase as a complete definition produces several errors.
It makes religious experience seem impersonal even though religious traditions contain rich inner, mystical, devotional, emotional, and contemplative lives.
It makes spirituality seem socially independent even though spiritual ideas and practices are learned through culture, language, relationships, communities, teachers, and inherited traditions.
It can smuggle in value judgments by treating spirituality as authentic or healthy and religion as rigid or harmful, even though either domain can support well-being or become involved in conflict and distress.
It ignores people who are religious but do not use the label spiritual, as well as people who use both labels without seeing any tension between them.
It can overgeneralize a modern Western vocabulary to cultures in which the conceptual separation between religion and spirituality is less salient or is expressed differently.
Hill and colleagues explicitly cautioned against polarizing spirituality and religiousness as individual versus institutional or positive versus negative. Hill et al., 2000 Ammerman's sociological analysis similarly argued that binary categories can obscure the complexity of lived religious and spiritual practices. Ammerman, 2013
Four Common Identity Patterns
Self-identification can be mapped into four broad combinations, although each combination contains substantial diversity. These categories describe labels people choose; they do not measure depth of belief, sincerity, mental health, moral character, or theological position.
Religious and spiritual
Many people understand spirituality as an integral dimension of religion rather than an alternative to it. Their spiritual experiences, prayer, relationship with the sacred, meaning-making, and ethical life may be embedded in a religious tradition and community. In Pew Research Center's 2023 U.S. survey, 48% of adults fell into a composite “religious and spiritual” category. Pew Research Center, 2023
Spiritual but not religious
People who identify as spiritual but not religious may value transcendence, connection, inner practice, sacred meaning, or spiritual experience while distancing themselves from formal affiliation or institutional religion. The category is heterogeneous, and motivations can include personal worldview, family history, cultural change, dissatisfaction with institutions, eclectic practice, or a preference for individualized spirituality. Research should not treat SBNR as a single personality profile or unified belief system. Wixwat & Saucier, 2021
Religious but not spiritual
Some people identify with a religious tradition, community, ancestry, ritual life, or set of commitments while not using the word spiritual for themselves. This may reflect different meanings attached to the term spirituality rather than an absence of inner experience. In the 2023 Pew survey, 10% of U.S. adults were classified as religious but not spiritual under the study's operational definitions. Pew Research Center, 2023
Neither religious nor spiritual
People who identify as neither religious nor spiritual may still have rich systems of meaning, morality, wonder, belonging, purpose, ritual, philosophy, or existential reflection. Psychology does not assume that meaning-making requires a religious or spiritual identity. Likewise, nonreligious identity does not by itself indicate the presence or absence of particular values, experiences, or psychological strengths.
Culture Changes the Meaning of the Terms
“Religion” and “spirituality” are English-language categories with histories of their own. Their contemporary separation has been especially visible in North American and European discourse. Cross-cultural research must therefore avoid assuming that the same words, oppositions, or identity labels map neatly onto every tradition or society.
The Germany–United States study by Altmeyer and colleagues found cultural variation in subjective definitions of both terms, illustrating that even two Western countries do not use the concepts identically. Altmeyer et al., 2016 Wixwat and Saucier likewise emphasized that much of the evidence on SBNR identities comes from Western populations. Wixwat & Saucier, 2021
Cultural competence therefore requires asking what a person's own words mean. A clinician or researcher should not translate every form of devotion into “religion,” every experience of transcendence into “spirituality,” or every lack of institutional affiliation into secularization. The relevant unit is the person's lived cultural and religious context, including family, language, tradition, community, migration history, and local norms when those factors matter.
Religion and Spirituality Across Development
Religious and spiritual identities can change across childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and later life. Development may include continuity, intensification, questioning, conversion, deconversion, changes in practice, changes in community, or new interpretations of inherited beliefs. There is no universal developmental path in which religion necessarily gives way to spirituality, spirituality necessarily becomes religion, or either identity marks greater psychological maturity.
Life transitions often make these domains more salient because they raise questions about identity, belonging, mortality, responsibility, family, suffering, and purpose. The direction of change depends on culture, relationships, personal experience, and the meaning of the tradition to the individual. Psychology can study these trajectories without ranking one endpoint as inherently superior.
How Researchers Measure Religion and Spirituality
Measurement is one of the most important reasons research findings appear inconsistent. A study that defines religion as weekly service attendance is measuring something different from a study that measures private prayer, religious identity, intrinsic commitment, or religious coping. A study that defines spirituality as connectedness is measuring something different from a study that defines it as transcendence, daily spiritual experience, meaning, or self-rated spiritual identity.
The Fetzer Institute/NIA framework treats religiousness and spirituality as multidimensional and includes domains such as daily spiritual experiences, meaning, values and beliefs, forgiveness, private religious practices, religious and spiritual coping, and religious support. Fetzer Institute/NIA Working Group This multidimensional approach helps prevent a single behavior from standing in for an entire religious or spiritual life.
Measurement also creates a conceptual risk called criterion contamination. If a spirituality scale includes items that already ask whether a person feels peaceful, happy, or psychologically well, then a later correlation between “spirituality” and well-being may be partly built into the instrument itself. A systematic review of spirituality questionnaires identified this problem and found that none of the reviewed measures met every desired criterion. de Jager Meezenbroek et al., 2012
A questionnaire score is not a diagnosis
Measures of religiosity or spirituality describe selected dimensions of self-report. They do not diagnose a mental disorder, establish the truth of a belief, determine the healthiness of a religious community, or tell a clinician whether an unusual experience is pathological. Clinical interpretation requires context, distress, duration, functional impact, cultural congruence, other symptoms, medical factors, and professional assessment.
Religion, Spirituality, and Mental Health
The evidence does not support a simple claim that religion is better for mental health than spirituality, or that spirituality is better than religion. Both labels include highly diverse beliefs, practices, relationships, and contexts. Their psychological associations depend on what is being measured and for whom.
A meta-analysis of 48 longitudinal studies covering 59 independent samples found a statistically significant but small overall association between religion/spirituality and later mental-health outcomes, with an average effect of r = .08. Only some dimensions showed significant associations, and the authors emphasized the modest magnitude. Garssen et al., 2021 Longitudinal association strengthens temporal interpretation compared with a single cross-sectional snapshot, but it still does not justify a universal causal claim that religious or spiritual involvement improves mental health.
Potentially supportive pathways can include social connection, shared meaning, hope, structured practices, moral coherence, coping resources, community assistance, and a sense of connection to the sacred. Potentially distressing pathways can include spiritual struggle, conflict with a community, fear, shame, exclusion, family disagreement, or painful changes in identity. The relevant question is therefore not simply whether a person is religious or spiritual, but how the person's beliefs, practices, relationships, and interpretations are functioning in their life.
Neither religion nor spirituality guarantees psychological benefit
A religious practice should not be presented as a guaranteed treatment for depression, anxiety, trauma, grief, psychosis, or another clinical condition. Likewise, a spiritual practice should not be advertised as a substitute for indicated medical or psychological care. People may find prayer, worship, contemplation, community, or spiritual practices deeply supportive, but individual benefit varies and evidence for one practice or population cannot be generalized to all traditions or conditions.
Clinical and Psychotherapeutic Implications
Religion and spirituality are dimensions of human diversity that can be clinically relevant when they matter to the client. Vieten and Lukoff argue that psychologists need explicit spiritual and religious competencies, including the ability to work respectfully across diverse beliefs and identities. Vieten & Lukoff, 2022 The World Psychiatric Association similarly recommends a person-centered approach and states that clinicians should not use professional authority to promote either spiritual or secular worldviews. Moreira-Almeida et al., 2016
A culturally competent assessment begins with curiosity about the person's own framework. Relevant questions may concern religious or spiritual identity, community, practices, sources of support, conflicts, values, coping, and whether the client wants these topics included in treatment. The goal is accurate understanding and collaborative care, not testing the correctness of beliefs.
Religious or spiritual experience is not, by itself, evidence of mental disorder
Clinical diagnosis depends on a pattern of symptoms, distress, impairment, course, context, and differential assessment. A belief or experience that is culturally and religiously meaningful cannot be classified as pathological merely because it is unfamiliar to the clinician. The WPA specifically identifies the need to differentiate spiritual experiences from mental disorders within culturally sensitive assessment. Moreira-Almeida et al., 2016
When a person reports visions, voices, sensed presence, possession-related interpretations, revelation, intense prayer experiences, or other unusual experiences, competent assessment considers the person's tradition and community norms, degree of control, associated distress, functional change, sleep, substance or medical factors, broader symptom pattern, and safety. Psychology can evaluate clinical features without adjudicating sacred claims.
Respect also applies to nonreligious clients
Cultural competence includes atheistic, agnostic, secular, humanistic, and other nonreligious worldviews. A therapist should not assume that every client needs spiritual language or that lack of religion represents a deficit. The same principle works in both directions: therapy should neither dismiss a client's faith nor impose a religious or spiritual framework on someone who does not want one.
Common Misconceptions
“Religion is external; spirituality is internal.”
Both can be internal and external. Religion includes subjective experience, emotion, prayer, conscience, and personal relationship with the sacred. Spirituality can include communities, teachers, traditions, shared practices, and collective identities. The distinction describes emphasis, not an absolute boundary. Hill et al., 2000
“Religion is about rules; spirituality is about freedom.”
This is a cultural evaluation rather than a scientific definition. Some people experience religious commitments as chosen, meaningful, and liberating; others experience conflict or constraint. Some people experience individualized spirituality as flexible and authentic; others experience uncertainty or lack of community. Psychological research describes these different experiences rather than assigning one label a fixed emotional value.
“Spiritual people are healthier than religious people.”
There is no scientific basis for ranking the two identity labels this way. Mental-health findings depend on specific dimensions, populations, methods, and contexts. Even broad longitudinal evidence shows only small average associations across heterogeneous measures. Garssen et al., 2021
“If you belong to a religion, you must be spiritual.”
People use these words differently. Some religious people consider spirituality central to their faith; others avoid or reject the label because it carries meanings they do not share. Survey data consistently identify a group who describe themselves as religious but not spiritual. Pew Research Center, 2023
“Spiritual but not religious” is one coherent worldview.
It is an umbrella identity, not a single doctrine or psychological type. People using the label vary in beliefs, practices, motivations, demographics, and relationships to organized religion. Wixwat & Saucier, 2021
Research Limitations to Keep in Mind
Definitions vary across studies. Religion, religiousness, religiosity, and spirituality may be operationalized differently, making direct comparisons difficult.
Many studies are cross-sectional and cannot establish causal direction.
Longitudinal studies improve temporal evidence but can still be affected by confounding, selection, and changing identities.
A large share of the literature uses Western and often North American samples, so findings may not generalize to every culture or religious tradition.
Self-report labels do not capture the full complexity of belief, practice, identity, community, or experience.
Measures can contain overlapping content with well-being or distress, which can inflate associations.
Religious traditions are internally diverse; findings from one denomination, country, age group, or practice should not be generalized to all religious people.
Spirituality outside organized religion is also highly heterogeneous and should not be treated as a single exposure.
These limitations are not reasons to abandon the topic. They are reasons to use precise definitions, multidimensional measures, culturally diverse samples, longitudinal designs, and transparent descriptions of what each study actually measured. de Jager Meezenbroek et al., 2012; Wixwat & Saucier, 2021
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you be spiritual but not religious?
Yes. “Spiritual but not religious” is a widely used self-description. It can refer to many different combinations of beliefs, experiences, practices, and attitudes toward institutions. Research treats it as a heterogeneous identity category rather than a single worldview. Wixwat & Saucier, 2021
Can you be religious but not spiritual?
Yes. Some people identify with a religious tradition, community, culture, ritual life, or set of commitments while not describing themselves as spiritual. In Pew Research Center's 2023 operationalization, 10% of U.S. adults were categorized as religious but not spiritual. Pew Research Center, 2023
Is spirituality the same thing as religion?
No single scientific definition makes them identical, but they overlap substantially. Religion more often includes an established communal and institutional context; spirituality more often emphasizes sacred or transcendent experience, connection, and meaning. These differences are tendencies, and many people's spiritual lives are fully embedded within religion. Hill et al., 2000; Moreira-Almeida et al., 2016
Which is better for mental health: religion or spirituality?
Research does not support a universal winner. Outcomes depend on specific forms of involvement, coping, community, struggle, meaning, and individual context. A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies found only a small average positive association between broad religion/spirituality variables and mental-health outcomes. Garssen et al., 2021
Can an atheist or nonreligious person be spiritual?
Yes, if the person uses the word spirituality for experiences such as transcendence, deep connection, sacredness, or ultimate meaning without religious belief or affiliation. Psychological research includes measures designed for people with religious or nonreligious backgrounds. de Jager Meezenbroek et al., 2012
Is religious belief a symptom of mental illness?
Religious belief is not a psychiatric symptom simply because it is religious. Clinical evaluation considers the full context, including cultural and religious norms, distress, impairment, functioning, associated symptoms, course, and possible medical or substance-related factors. Professional guidance specifically emphasizes respectful differentiation between spiritual experiences and mental disorders. Moreira-Almeida et al., 2016
Does psychology prove or disprove religion or spirituality?
No. Psychology can investigate behavior, cognition, emotion, identity, experience, relationships, coping, development, and measurable outcomes. It does not establish or refute theological and metaphysical truth claims. A scientific finding about how a belief functions psychologically is not a verdict on the sacred reality to which that belief refers.
Can religious or spiritual identity change over time?
Yes. People may retain, deepen, revise, combine, question, leave, or adopt religious and spiritual identities across the life course. Changes can occur gradually or around major relationships, cultural transitions, crises, education, migration, illness, bereavement, or other life events. The psychological meaning of change must be understood from the person's own context.
A Practical Way to Think About the Difference
For psychological purposes, the clearest formulation is this: religion usually refers to a broader, socially and historically organized way of relating to the sacred that may include belief, ritual, community, identity, ethics, and institutions; spirituality usually refers more directly to a person's or community's experience and search concerning the sacred, transcendence, ultimate meaning, or profound connection. The categories intersect. Neither contains a universal psychological advantage over the other.
When reading research, ask what the investigators actually measured. When listening to a person, ask what the words mean to them. Those two habits prevent most of the conceptual errors that make “religion vs. spirituality” look simpler than it is.