The term “spiritual but not religious” term has become commonplace over the past decade in reporting demographics related to American religion. According to the most recent data from the Pew Research Institute, reported in December 2023, approximately 22% of Americans can be described this way.
While the idea seems to make sense at first blush, it turns out that “spiritual but not religious” is not straightforward. There are several reasons for this explained in the report linked above:
- It is not a category that people can choose. Rather, it is a category created by asking people four separate questions: “Do you think of yourself as spiritual? Do you think of yourself as religious? How important is spirituality in your life? How important is religion in your life?” The majority of people who answer affirmatively to one of these questions answer affirmatively to all of them (making up 48% of the American population). However, those who choose affirmatively related to spirituality and negatively related to religion are categorized as “spiritual but not religious.”
- What it means to be “spiritual” and “religious” is not defined by the survey. As such, the terms are entirely left to the individual survey-taker to interpret as they wish.
- In many cases, those who described themselves as spiritual, regardless of whether they were religious or not, described spirituality as involving formal religious beliefs. This led Pew reporters to declare, “These open-ended responses illustrate the difficulty of separating “spirituality” from “religion” and suggest that for many Americans, there is no clear dividing line.”
It is this lack of clarity that led Pew researchers to ask a series of new questions to determine what beliefs and practices might differentiate those who are “spiritual and religious” from those who are “spiritual but not religious.” The results are telling. They show that the “spiritual but not religious” hold to spiritual beliefs and practices that allow them to claim personal spirituality without being held accountable to any sort of religious community, set of doctrines, or even to God. It is a spirituality without accountability.
This is most evident in the response to the question of why one should be spiritual, as reported on the table below:
What is most striking about these statistics is that they show the spiritual but not religious (SBNR) respondents to emphasize individual improvement through connecting with themselves, with nature, and with the dead. The one attribute all these responses have in common is that they do not have agency to hold people accountable. A person may desire to be more open-minded or more their “true-self” or to have a better set of beliefs, but they ultimately are their own arbiter for whether they have done these things well. Likewise, a person may spend more time in nature or more time seeking to commune with the dead, but neither nature nor the dead provide a set of beliefs or practices that must be followed.
This contrasts with those who are religious and spiritual. They hold to beliefs that demand accountability. By believing in God, but upholding a living family tradition or religious faith, and by being connected to other living people, they place themselves in a situation where they not only believe, but where they are held accountable to beliefs and practices by something beyond themselves that has agency. They can be corrected, exhorted to do better, and encouraged. The spiritual but not religious have none of this.
Not only do the “spiritual but not religious” seek affirmation for their beliefs in contexts that will not hold them accountable, but they are leery of those who do seek that accountability.
On the left is a table that shows those who are spiritual but not religious are less likely to join any sort of community than even the average U.S. adult. They are much less likely to join a religious community. This shows a higher unwillingness to be exposed to a group of people with agency who could hold them accountable for their beliefs.
On the right is a table that shows that the “spiritual but not religious” are not just uncomfortable joining a religious community, they believe that religion is itself a negative thing. They not only are less likely than the average U.S. adult to view religion as providing benefits for society, they are much more likely to believe that it will cause division and the breakdown of logical thinking. One wonders if the division they worry about is the cognitive dissonance they would personally feel if they were to bring their idiosyncratic self-focused beliefs into conversation with a living, thoughtful communities of faith that hold to well-developed religious doctrines and traditions. Or, if their attempt to paint religion as illogical is a preemptive strike lest their self-focused beliefs were to be brought up for scrutiny in the public eye, much less by a religious community.
Before those who are part of religious communities pat themselves on the back for being more willing to accept the accountability that comes from holding to the discipline and doctrine of a religious tradition, though, there is one more statistic that requires attention:
Where are “spiritual but not religious” people? Nearly half of them are on the membership rolls of our religious communities, with fully a third claiming to be a Christian.
The lack of willingness, and even hostility, to receive accountability from a religious tradition, from family, or even from God, has serious negative implications for society as a whole. It erodes civic engagement, dampens civil discourse, and leads to political quagmires in a democratic republic that is dependent on citizens desiring the common good and being willing to work for it, even when they have to set aside their personal desires to help achieve it. A refusal to come under accountability renders this nearly impossible and causes large numbers of the population to check out of the political process believing that they are engaged in their own good when, in fact, they are undermining the context that allows them to pursue their personal interests.
The fact that some people who are so resistant to accountability are part of our churches is absolutely corrosive. Their presence forces those of us in leadership to make a decision: do we minimize any sort of agency the church has beyond just gathering people for personal improvement or do we insist on the church as a place of relationships that have the agency to speak into how we live? So often, it is much easier to do the former, but that has led us to the plight of the mainline Protestant denominations today.
Perhaps the most important thing we can do is to ask what the “spiritual but not religious” are afraid of? That they recognize the need to look beyond just the physical world for meaning is a good thing. That they are so uncomfortable with anything or anyone else having the agency to speak into what they believe is indicative of fear. What are they afraid will happen? Is it as simple as feeling uncomfortable? Is it the fear of being manipulated or made the fool? If we can learn what kind of fear is behind those who desire “belief but not accountability,” we can offer them a much greater hope and reason for engagement with the larger world than what they can know otherwise.