A causal theory of spiritual leadership is developed within an intrinsic motivation model that incorporates vision, hope/faith, and altruistic love, theories of workplace spirituality, and spiritual survival. The purpose of spiritual leadership is to create vision and value congruence across the strategic, empowered team, and individual levels and, ultimately, to foster higher levels of organizational commitment and productivity. I first examine leadership as motivation to change and review motivation-based leadership theories. Second, I note the accelerating call for spirituality in the workplace, describe the universal human need for spiritual survival through calling and membership, and distinguish between religion and spirituality. Next, I introduce a generic definition of God as a higher power with a continuum upon which humanistic, theistic, and pantheistic definitions of God can be placed. I also review religiousand ethics-and-values-based leadership theories and conclude that, to motivate followers, leaders must get in touch with their core values and communicate them to followers through vision and personal actions to create a sense of spiritual survival through calling and membership. I then argue that spiritual leadership theory is not only inclusive of other major extant motivationbased theories of leadership, but that it is also more conceptually distinct, parsimonious, and less conceptually confounded. And, by incorporating calling and membership as two key follower needs for spiritual survival, spiritual leadership theory is inclusive of the religious- and ethics and valuesbased approaches to leadership. Finally, the process of organizational development and transformation through spiritual leadership is discussed. Suggestions for future research are offered.

https://iispiritualleadership.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/SLTTheory.pdf

Toward a theory of spiritual leadership

Empirical studies have identified significant links between religion and spirituality and health. The reasons for these associations, however, are unclear. Typically, religion and spirituality have been measured by global indices (e.g., frequency of church attendance, self-rated religiousness and spirituality) that do not specify how or why religion and spirituality affect health. The authors highlight recent advances in the delineation of religion and spirituality concepts and measures theoretically and functionally connected to health. They also point to areas for areas for growth in religion and spirituality conceptualization and measurement. Through measures of religion and spirituality more conceptually related to physical and mental health (e.g., closeness to God, religious orientation and motivation, religious support, religious struggle), psychologists are discovering more about the distinctive contributions of religiousness and spirituality to health and well-being.

http://psych415.class.uic.edu/Readings/Hill,%20Conceptualization%20of%20spirituality,%20AmPsy,%202003.pdf

Advances in the conceptualization and measurement of religion and spirituality: Implications for physical and mental health research.

Psychologists' emerging interest in spirituality and religion as well as the relevance of each phenomenon to issues of psychological importance requires an understanding of the fundamental characteristics of each construct. On the basis of both historical considerations and a limited but growing empirical literature, we caution against viewing spirituality and religiousness as incompatible and suggest that the common tendency to polarize the terms simply as individual vs. institutional or ′good′ vs. ′bad′ is not fruitful for future research. Also cautioning against the use of restrictive, narrow definitions or overly broad definitions that can rob either construct of its distinctive characteristics, we propose a set of criteria that recognizes the constructs' conceptual similarities and dissimilarities. Rather than trying to force new and likely unsuccessful definitions, we offer these criteria as benchmarks for judging the value of existing definitions.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1468-5914.00119

Conceptualizing Religion and Spirituality: Points of Commonality, Points of Departure

The authors relate Big Five personality traits to basic values in a sample of 246 students. As hypothesized, Agreeableness correlates most positively with benevolence and tradition values, Openness with self-direction and universalism values, Extroversion with achievement and stimulation values, and Conscientiousness with achievement and conformity values. Correlations of values with facets of the five factors reveal nuances of the facets and clarify ambiguities in the meanings of the factors. Values and personality traits exhibit different patterns of correlation with religiosity and positive affect. Findings support the idea that the influence of values on behavior depends more on cognitive control than does the influence of traits.

The Big Five Personality Factors and Personal Values

Five studies of university students and their parents were carried out to investigate the relationships among right-wing authoritarianism, various indices of religious orientation, and prejudice. Measures of religious fundamentalism, and religious quest, developed for this research, proved to be psychometrically sound, and were good discriminators between prejudiced and unprejudiced persons, across a variety of different measures of prejudice and authoritarian aggression. Scores on both Religious Fundamentalism and Religious Quest scales also were correlated strongly with right-wing authoritarianism and the Christian Orthodoxy scale, although orthodoxy itself tended not to be correlated with prejudice. Apparently, religious fundamentalism and nonquesting are linked with authoritarianism and prejudice toward a wide variety of minority groups. Possible explanations for these relationships are discussed.

Authoritarianism, Religious Fundamentalism, Quest, and Prejudice

Introduction: The Psychology of Religion in a Changing World. The Formal Beginnings: Three Traditions. The Biological Foundations of Religion. Behavioral and Comparative Theories of Religion. Religion in the Laboratory. The Correlation Study of Religion. The Perspective of Sigmund Freud. Object-Relations Theory and Religion. Erik H. Erikson: Religion in the Human Life Cycle. C. J. Jung and the Analytical Tradition. William James and His Legacy. The German Descriptive Tradition. The American Humanistic Synthesis. Epilogue. Glossary. References. Source Notes. Picture Credits. Indexes.

Psychology of religion : classic and contemporary

The Psychology of Religion The Biological Foundations of Religion Behavioral and Comparative Theories of Religion Religion in the Laboratory The Correlation Study of Religion The Perspective of Sigmund Freud Object-Relations Theory and Religion Erik H. Erikson: Religion in the Human Life Cycle C G Jung and the Analytical Tradition William James and His Legacy The German Descriptive Tradition The American Humanistic Synthesis Epilogue Glossary References Source Notes Author Index Subject Index.

Psychology of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Views

Psychology of religion: Classic and contemporary, 2nd ed.

In an earlier book of theirs called Amazing Conversions (1997), Bob Altemeyer and the late, lamented Bruce Hunsberger reported findings from interviews of university students whose questionnaire re...

David M. Wulff

Papers

Psychology of religion : classic and contemporary

Psychology of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Views

Psychology of religion: Classic and contemporary, 2nd ed.

Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America's Nonbelievers

The psychology of religion: An overview.