What It Means To Be ‘Spiritual’ in America
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When Kate McDermott, 70, walks quietly through hills and forests, she said she feels a sense of connection to the universe under the "great blue dome of sky that is everywhere, all the time.
“Spirituality is the gift of being open to everything. We create our own meanings, rituals and sacraments, our own special days and seasons,” said McDermott, of Port Angeles, Wash., who teaches classes in sharing love and friendship through the craft of baking pies.
She told Religion Unplugged, for her there is a spirit to everything including every dog she's ever owned that, she said, “were sent to me by angels.”
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For Mahar Sperling, 25, the gate to spirituality, to “feeling peace, oneness and connection, is through yoga and purifying the mind through exercise, particularly in nature,” he said.
Sperling, the son of a Hindu mother and Jewish father, divides his time between Costa Rica, where he grew up, and Vermont, headquarters of the mind-body-spirit publishing house Inner Traditions where he heads special projects.
He said: “I believe there is more to consciousness than what you see with your eyes. Life without some kind of transcendent ideal, something bigger than yourself, isn't very appealing.”
People like McDermott and Sperling are found coast-to-coast. Nearly 70% of U.S. adults call themselves “spiritual,” or say they are “spiritual but not religious” or that “spirituality is very important in their lives,” according to a new Pew Research study of spirituality.
However, as vast as that tally sounds, no one knows if it signifies that spirituality is soaring — or simply being counted differently, and what people mean when they choose that label.
A change in survey research methodology from the telephone surveys of the past to Pew's American Trends Panel, which respondents reply to online, obviates statistical comparison. And there are no agreed definitions of “spiritual” or “religious.”
According to the report, released on Dec. 7., 27% define “spiritual” by mentioning beliefs or faiths associated with organized religion.
Many (24%) also say the word “spiritual” is about connections, frequently with God but also, in some cases, with one’s inner self. One-in-ten say the term relates to understanding themselves or guiding their own behavior.
Becka Alper, the senior researcher at Pew who led the survey, said the aim is to create a baseline for tracking spirituality trends in the future and to explore its dimensions by asking people who self-identified as “spiritual” about their beliefs, practices and experiences.
A sampling of the findings:
— 83 percent of all U.S. adults believe people have a soul or spirit in addition to their physical body.
— 81% say there is something spiritual beyond the natural world, even if we cannot see it.
— 74% say there are some things that science cannot possibly explain.
— 57% believe that in the afterlife, people definitely or probably can reunite with loved ones who also have died.
— 57% believe animals other than humans can have spirits or spiritual energies.
— 48 percent say parts of natural landscape such as mountains, rivers or trees can have spirits or spiritual energies.
— 45% say they have had a sudden feeling of connection with something from beyond this world.
— 30% say they have personally encountered a spirit or unseen spiritual force.
And God, or gods, have often had little or nothing to do with it, said Rev. Ema Drouillard, of San Francisco, a freelance officiant who offers secular ceremonies for life passages.
“Only once in the last three years have I had a request for a wedding to be religious. But even if you don't say ‘God’ — and I rarely do — God is always there when you are talking about love. Personally, I would call myself religious and a deep spirituality is part of that. Nature is my cathedral,” Drouillard said.
Robert Fuller, emeritus professor of religious studies at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., saw nothing surprising in the Pew survey about invisible connections and unseen forces. He told Religion Unplugged, “Supernaturalism is the real story of human religiosity. It's the default position of the human brain.
“Every new baby is born with the same brain that our cave dwelling ancestors — hardwired to believe in unseen beings and unseen causal agents — before it is programmed to think differently” and living in community calls for social and behavior controls that “organized religion” could impose, he said.
Fuller, who wrote a book two decades ago on spiritual-not-religious ideas, said the last quarter century of statistical surveys documenting more "nones" — people who say they have no religious identification — or who dub themselves as some degree of "spiritual" instead, are necessarily increasing, they are “are simply coming out of the woodwork in public.”
Fuller added: “I don't think we are different than in the past, we are just changing the labels.”
The survey, conducted from July 31 to Aug. 6, 2023, among a nationally representative sample of 11,201 members of the American Trends Panel, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 1.4 percentage points.
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Cathy Lynn Grossman is a veteran reporter who specializes in stories drawn from research and statistics on religion and faith. Her work has been published at USA Today, Publishers Weekly and Religion News Service.