 James seems to be right in claiming that there is no emotion type that is distinctive of religion as such. Religious emotions come in the usual types — contrition, gratitude, joy, fear, anxiety, anger, and so forth — and what makes them distinctive of one religion or another is their shaping by the teachings of the religion about God or the transcendent. Emotions are important to adherents of a religion because, like the actions that they sometimes motivate, they are expressions of the moral and spiritual life enjoined by the religion. They constitute an important part of the substance of the religious life. For this reason, teachers of the religion, as guardians and regulators of the life in question, sometimes formulate criteria of genuineness of religious emotions.