devout

devout, pious, religious, pietistic, sanctimonious apply mainly to persons, their acts, and their words and mean showing fervor and reverence in the practice of religion.

Devout stresses an attitude of mind or a feeling that leads one to such fervor and reverence

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a devout man, and one that feared God— Acts 10:2

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all those various "offices" which, in Pontifical, Missal, and Breviary, devout imagination had elaborated from age to age— Pater

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Pious emphasizes rather the faithful and dutiful performance of one's religious obligations; although often used interchangeably with devout it tends to suggest outward acts which imply faithfulness and fervor rather than, as does devout, an attitude or feeling which can only be inferred

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pious churchmen

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happy, as a pious man is happy when after a long illness, he goes once more to church— Hichens

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were pious Christians, taking their Faith devoutly. But such religious emotion as was theirs, was reflected rather than spontaneous— H. O. Taylor

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The term often, however, carries a hint of depreciation, sometimes of hypocrisy

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the saying that we are members one of another is not a mere pious formula to be repeated in church without any meaning— Shaw

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a hypocrite—a thing all pious words and uncharitable deeds— Reade

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Religious may and usually does imply both devoutness and piety, but it stresses faith in a God or gods and adherence to a way of life believed in consonance with that faith

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a man may be moral without being religious, but he cannot be religious without being moral— Myers

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they are not religious: they are only pew renters— Shaw

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In its basic meaning pietistic stresses the emotional rather than the intellectual aspects of religion

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in the Catholic Church it [use of the Bible] is threefold, doctrinal, liturgical, and pietistic— New Catholic Diet.

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while probably a very late psalm, it brings to a kind of spiritual climax the pietistic utterances found in earlier parts of the Bible— Baab

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an emotional person with pietistic inclinations that nearly carried him over at different times to the Plymouth Brethren— H. G. Wells

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Often this opposition of the emotional to the intellectual is overlooked and pietistic is used derogatorily of someone or something felt to display overly sentimental or unduly emotional piety

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Gibbon's analysis of the causes of the growth of Christianity was very valuable, because he redressed the balance against a heavy weight of pietistic flapdoodle that passed for ecclesiastical history— Trevelyan

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Sanctimonious has entirely lost its original implication of a holy or sacred character and implies a mere pretension to or appearance of holiness or piety

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a sanctimonious hypocrite

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sanctimonious phrases

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Often it connotes a hypocritical aloofness or superiority of manner

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if it only takes some of the sanctimonious conceit out of one of those pious scalawags— Frost

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Analogous words: fervent, fervid, ardent (see IMPASSIONED): worshiping, adoring, venerating (see REVERE)