Religion and spirituality among older African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics

(from the chapter) This chapter is a selective review of research on religion and spirituality across three groups of racial and ethnic minority older adults-African American, Asian American, and Hispanic/Latino. We employ a definition of religion similar to Koenig et al. (2012) who indicate that "'religion'... involves beliefs, practices, and rituals related to the sacred.... religion originates in an established tradition that arises out of a community with common beliefs and practices (page 37)." Defining "spirituality" is a more difficult task, given changes over time in its meaning and imprecision in its conceptualization and measurement. Nonetheless, spirituality is important for appreciating those faith traditions with distinctive emphases on transcendent states, as well as the beliefs and devotional practices that focus on explicitly spiritual content. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).