Researchers in the field of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (R/S) have begun to examine if holding specific spiritual beliefs or engaging in shared spiritual activities with another person is tied to relationship quality in marital and parent-child relationships, and the current project extends this line of research to friendships. I could locate no controlled psychological research that has examined the link between specific R/S factors and close friendship quality. The purpose of this investigation was to launch a novel program of research that concentrates on the role of sanctification of friendship and spiritual intimacy between friends and how they were linked to the quality of close friendships amongst college students. This was a cross-sectional study that recruited 634 college students from a university in the Midwest. Prevalence rates were collected and reported. Bivariate correlations showed that higher scores on the Manifestation of God (MG) subscale were associated with greater positivity in friendship (r=.09, p<.05), but not emotional intimacy. Higher scores on the Sacred Qualities (SQ) subscale were correlated with greater emotional intimacy (r=.21, P<.001), and positivity in friendship (r=.20, p<.001). Neither MG or SQ were correlated with negative friendship quality. Greater spiritual intimacy was related to greater positivity in friendship (r=.24, p<.001) and emotional intimacy (r=.3, p<.001), and to less negative friendship quality (r=-.27, p<.001). Hierarchical regressions were conducted to examine the unique effects of each sanctification subscale while controlling for important demographic variables. Greater endorsement of SQ in one's friendship still uniquely predicted higher emotional intimacy (B=.36, p<.001) and positivity in friendship (B=.31, p<.001). Unexpectedly, greater MG.