 The foregoing helps us to answer the question about the importance of religious emotions. Aristotle points out that the character virtues are dispositions of the appetitive (desiring, caring) part of the soul as shaped by logos (see Nicomachean Ethics, Book One, Chapter 13). The three Christian emotions used as examples in this article are episodes that arise out of dispositions of caring shaped by beliefs (each of the emotion-types gives its name to a Christian virtue). The episodes are important, from the viewpoint of the Christian tradition, because they express a character that is attuned to the way things are: to our nature as creatures, to God’s nature as God, to the relations we bear to the goods and evils of life. In an article titled “Why Christianity Works: An Emotion-Focused Phenomenological Account,” Christian Smith appeals to the character of religious emotions in explaining the tenacity of Christianity in the face of various secularizing influences.