# SpiritRAG: A Q&A System for Religion and Spirituality in the United Nations Archive

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.04395 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.04395/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Jul 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.11401/) (2020)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06180/) (2023)
- [Cultural Alignment in Large Language Models: An Explanatory Analysis Based on Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.12342/) (2023)
- [Randomness, Not Representation: The Unreliability of Evaluating Cultural Alignment in LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08688/) (2025)
- [MODOC: A Modular Interface for Flexible Interlinking of Text Retrieval and Text Generation Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.14623/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [SACRED: A Faithful Annotated Multimedia Multimodal Multilingual Dataset for Classifying Connectedness Types in Online Spirituality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.27331/) (2026)
- [LLM-INSTRUCT at UZH Shared Task 2026: Constraint-Aware Retrieval and Selective Debate for Paragraph-Level Argument Mining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.20430/) (2026)
- [hoBIT: A Profile-Aware Retrieval-Augmented Chatbot for University Academic Advising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.26604/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Religion and spirituality (R/S) are complex and highly domain-dependent concepts which have long confounded researchers and policymakers. Due to their context-specificity, R/S are difficult to operationalize in conventional archival search strategies, particularly when datasets are very large, poorly accessible, and marked by information noise. As a result, considerable time investments and specialist knowledge is often needed to extract actionable insights related to R/S from general archival sources, increasing reliance on published literature and manual desk reviews. To address this challenge, we present SpiritRAG, an interactive Question Answering (Q&A) system based on Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Built using 7,500 United Nations (UN) resolution documents related to R/S in the domains of health and education, SpiritRAG allows researchers and policymakers to conduct complex, context-sensitive database searches of very large datasets using an easily accessible, chat-based web interface. SpiritRAG is lightweight to deploy and leverages both UN documents and user provided documents as source material. A pilot test and evaluation with domain experts on 100 manually composed questions demonstrates the practical value and usefulness of SpiritRAG.