Religious views on the self
Open-knowledge reference entry

Religious views on the self vary widely. The self is a complex and core subject in many forms of spirituality. Considering the self leads to questions about who we are and the nature of our own importance.
Overview
According to psychologist James Marcia, identity comes from both political and religious views. Marcia also identified exploration and commitment as interactive parts of identity formation, which includes religious identity. Erik Erikson compared faith with doubt and found that healthy adults take heed to their spiritual side.
One description of spirituality is the self's search for "ultimate meaning" through an independent comprehension of the sacred. Spiritual identity appears when the symbolic religious and spiritual of a culture is found by individuals in the setting of their own life. There can be different types of spiritual self because it is determined on one's life and experiences. Another definition of spiritual identity is "a persistent sense of self that addresses ultimate questions about the nature, purpose, and meaning of life, resulting in behaviors that are consonant with the individual’s core values." Another description of mind, body, soul, and spirit is a holism of one inner self being of one whole.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q585212. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Religious views on the self” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.