The relationship between spirituality and religiousness among jewish nurses in Israel

In order to examine the relationship between spirituality and religiousness, 117 Jewish Israeli hospital nurses responded to a multidimensional measure of humanistic spirituality and indicated their identification with one of the four groups of degree of religious adherence common in Israeli society. Discriminant functional analysis indicated that three dimensions of spirituality-Fruits of Spirituality, Transcendent Dimension, and Meaning and Purpose in Life-were highly weighted on the significant discriminant function that differentiated between the groups and ordered them according to their degree of religiousness. Three additional spirituality dimensions-Mission in Life, Material Values, and Sacredness of Life-had slightly lower weights on this function. However, three other dimensions of spirituality-Idealism, Altruism and Awareness of the Tragic-were found be lowly weighted on the discriminant function. These results indicate that while the former aspects of spirituality are strongly associated with religiousness, the latter aspects are to a large degree independent of it.