Piety and Pragmatism

Dewey presents his study of 'religiosity' without explicitly attending to a significant methodological problem.  According to his Pragmatism, the meaning of any proposition is operational.  But, Piety, traditionally, at least, is a kind of attitude, and, hence, is, as such, meaningless for a Pragmatist such as Dewey.  Thus, to derive, as he does, 'religious' from given instances of 'religion', is question-begging for that orientation.  On the other hand, on the basis of his subsequent exposition of that representation, his operational definition of 'piety' seems to amount to 'continuous promotion of agrarian communal goals'.  However, such a definition is the product, not of a generalization of observed practices, but, of an a priori deduction from the wholistic characteristics that he attributes to the attitude governing 'religious' experience, a procedure which seems contrary to Pragmatist principles.