Austin Bivolo doesn’t remember what grade he was in when his parents stopped going to church, but he does remember how happy he and his brother were. “We thought, ‘Oh, we don’t have to go to this boring place where we have to be quiet all the time.'”
Now the Boca Raton, Fla., massage therapist “definitely believes in God,” but acknowledges that her concept is “not the typical one.”
“My God is essentially the totality of all reality, all that is conceivable and unthinkable,” says Vivolo, 28. And it’s not in the community of a church but in the silence at the heart of his yoga practice, sometimes at sunrise on the beach, that he seeks to “connect with the ultimate truth of my being.”
Like 28 percent of U.S. adults and 43 percent under the age of 30, Bivolo claims no organized religious affiliation, making him one of the growing number of millions of Americans who identify as “no religion” or “without particular religious affiliation.”
But despite these trends, belief in a spiritual world beyond this world is widespread among Americans, even among those who are not religious, according to a Pew Research Center survey. “Overall, 70% of U.S. adults can be considered ‘spiritual’ in some way because they consider themselves spiritual or say spirituality is very important in their lives,” said the “American Spirituality” report, released in December.
The nationwide online survey, conducted July 31-August 6, found that 48% of U.S. adults identify as both religious and spiritual, 22% as spiritual but not religious, 10% as religious but not spiritual, and 21% as neither. Despite these differing identities, the report found that 83% of adults believe that humans have a soul or spirit in addition to their physical bodies, and 81% say there is an invisible spirituality that transcends the natural world.
Gregory A. Smith, vice president of research at Pew Research Center, said the survey results come against the backdrop of evidence showing that the share of the U.S. population that identifies as Christian has declined in recent decades. While 16% of adults over 65 say they have no organized religion, 43% of 18-29 year-olds like Bivolo identify themselves as such. Another recent analysis of religious trends by Pew Research Center projects that by 2070, between half and a third of the U.S. population will be Christian, down from nine in 10 in the early 1990s.
The Pew Charitable Trusts
“So we wondered,” says Smith, who co-led the survey. “What does that mean? Are we moving toward secularization? That is, toward a worldview with little God or transcendence? “Or is America becoming less religious but more spiritual? So this survey was designed to measure the spirituality of the American public.”
But first the researchers had to consider what exactly “spirituality” is. Spiritus“Breath” is Latin for “breath,” and has connotations of life force. Some people understand it as a practice like prayer or meditation, others as faith, others as an experience of awe, peace, or transcendence. “So we turned that ambiguity on its head and used it to our advantage,” Smith explains.
The survey elicited respondents’ understanding of spirituality rather than asking 11,201 respondents who are members of the Center’s nationally representative American Trends Panel whether they agreed with a pre-canned definition of the term. Many questions asked respondents to identify practices, beliefs, or experiences that they considered to be spiritual and to describe their own understanding of spirituality.
“I think that’s one of the key contributions of this study,” Smith says. Thousands of respondents also took the time to write down a few words or sentences about what the word “spiritual” means to them. The results were a wide range of findings: quantitative, qualitative, statistical and personal.
“To me, spirituality is about being in touch with nature, seeing beauty in everything, feeling the love of Mother Nature, and knowing that there is something greater out there than myself,” one respondent wrote.
“Belief in a supreme being who is the creator and ultimate ruler of the universe and the transience of human existence in this world,” wrote another respondent. “Spirituality is connected to religious things — things that give me freedom from everyday life,” said a third. Bivolo, who was not involved in the survey, defines spirituality as “the science of the invisible.”
Other respondents described spirituality as “something bigger and more creative than science,” “a relationship with God,” “connecting with the Creator,” “living according to the Bible,” and “becoming one with your soul, emotions, feelings and actions.”
The survey also delved into how Americans who described their religion as “no religion” or “nothing in particular” viewed the concept of spirituality. In a separate report based on the survey, “America’s ‘No Religious People’: Who They Are and What They Believe,” released in January, the center’s researchers found that 17 percent of “no religions” identified as atheists, 20 percent as agnostics, and 63 percent as “nothing in particular.”
Most non-religious people believe in God or some other power, although they rarely attend religious services. About half also consider themselves spiritual people. Most say religion does some harm, but many also think it does some good, so they are not uniformly anti-religious. Most non-religious people also say they “reject the idea that science can explain everything.” As a group, non-religious people are less likely to vote and less likely to participate in social activities than religiously affiliated people, but the data shows that atheists and agnostics participate in social life “at rates equal to or greater than religiously affiliated people.”
Roughly half of Americans say they believe that natural elements such as animals, cemeteries, rivers, trees, mountains, etc. have spirits or spiritual energy. However, a closer look at the data reveals some key differences: Half of Evangelicals and two-thirds of Atheists agree that non-human animals do not have spirits, but most Evangelicals believe that only humans have spirits, while most Atheists believe that neither humans nor animals have spirits.
While 54% of adults say they believe in “the God of the Bible,” the data again shows a striking difference: 84% of those who identify as religious and spiritual believe in the God of the Bible, while only 20% of those who are spiritual but not religious share that belief.
“This study really tells us what’s going on behind the scenes when people talk about spirituality,” said Evan Stewart, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the magazine’s editor-in-chief. Sociology of Religion“This kind of polling is extremely useful for establishing basic facts and baselines on the topics we’re studying.”
Pew Research Center began surveying Americans’ religious beliefs and attitudes decades ago. The organization has waded into the murky territory of spirituality before, but this is its deepest investigation yet into the subject. Smith says the “American Spirituality” survey “asked a lot of questions we’d never asked before.”
For the first time, the center surveyed how many adults believe that deceased people can communicate with the living (42% say yes), can assist the living (46%), can harm the living (18%), and can be reunited with other loved ones who have already died (57%).
About 45 percent of survey respondents said they felt a deep sense of wonder at the universe, or a deep sense of spiritual peace and happiness, or a sudden sense of connection with something from “beyond this world.” Three in 10 said they had encountered a spirit or an “invisible spiritual force,” while seven in 10 believe in heaven and six in 10 believe in hell, with an equal number believing in both.
“What surprised me about this survey was the significant proportion of spiritual practices that involved the supernatural,” said John C. Green, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Akron and co-author of the 2020 book. The Rise of Secularism: A New Fault Line in American Politics“Despite the argument that we live in a secular age, this shows that many people are interested in things beyond the material world.”
Green, who has advised the center on religion survey development for many years, said he would like to see future spirituality surveys ask more questions about secular values and explore the spiritual practices of people who identify as nonreligious. “When nonreligious people pray, what are they doing?” he said.
Green, a social scientist, also finds it interesting that “secularism has not yet created the kind of strong community that religion does.” Religious traditionalists tend to lean toward the Republican Party, while nonreligious people who are broadly Democratic tend to be less likely to vote or volunteer. Green wonders whether the growing number of young nonreligious people in America could coalesce into a politically and culturally influential social group in the coming years.
“It will be interesting to see how the next generation solves these things,” he says.
David O’Reilly has been Philadelphia Inquirer.
