Posted by I want to make an argument that a lot of the commentary on modern religious life completely misses. It is the argument that the decline of organized religious affiliation in the United States, and much of the developed world, is simply not the same thing as a decline in spirituality. We treat these two trends as if they are identical, and that leads us to draw the wrong conclusions about where society is actually headed.
There is a crucial distinction to be made, and ignoring it does a disservice to the nuanced reality of what people actually believe today. The affiliation numbers are real, and I do not want to pretend they are not. They are worth stating plainly. The Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study is the most comprehensive survey of its kind, and it found that 62 percent of American adults now identify as Christian.
That is down significantly from 78 percent in 2007 . At the same time, the number of people who describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated has surged to 29 percent, up from just 16 percent in 2007 . These are significant shifts, representing millions of people walking away from institutional religion. I do not want to minimize that trend at all. It is a massive cultural change, and it has profound implications for communities and civic life.
But here is where I think we start to get the story wrong. The same research shows something that rarely makes the headlines. Among people who describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, roughly half still say they are at least somewhat spiritual . Large majorities of Americans overall continue to believe in a soul, an afterlife, or something that is beyond the natural world. In fact, as one panel at the New York Encounter recently highlighted, researchers are finding that a staggering 92 percent of American adults hold one or more spiritual beliefs .
So, people are not necessarily abandoning belief; they are abandoning the containers for that belief. One researcher described this phenomenon as a “remarkable” transformation where people are leaving organized religion not for pure secularism, but to pursue spirituality in ways that align with their individual values . That distinction changes the conclusion I think we should draw. If institutional religion were simply being replaced by pure secularism, a complete rejection of belief in anything beyond material existence would tell one story about where cultural values are heading.
That story would be about rationality and science completely winning out over faith. But that is just not what the data shows. What is happening looks more like a decoupling of spiritual belief from institutional membership. People are stepping away from churches, synagogues, and mosques as organizations, but they are still holding on to many of the beliefs those institutions historically provided a structure for.
I take the position that this decoupling is a mixed development, but I lean toward viewing it as a loss more than a gain. I will admit that I struggle with this personally. I see friends who have left the church but still identify as spiritual, and part of me wonders what they have actually lost. Religious institutions have historically provided so much more than just doctrine. They have provided community, ritual, mutual aid networks, and a sense of intergenerational continuity that informal, private spirituality struggles to replicate.
A person who believes in an afterlife but has no congregation, no shared ritual calendar, and no established community around that belief is likely to experience a thinner version of what religion used to offer, even if the underlying belief persists. The sociologist who led the Cornell study on this made a point that really resonated with me. He argued that the move away from organized religion does not reflect a disenchantment with the world, but rather a “re-enchantment through something other than church” .
That sounds positive on the surface, but I have to wonder, can personal enchantment really replace communal solidarity? Pew’s own research on religious switching across dozens of countries shows this pattern is global, not uniquely American . This suggests it reflects something structural about modern life, likely tied to rising individualism and declining participation in civic institutions more broadly, rather than a simple rejection of religious ideas themselves. It is a symptom of a wider atomization of society.
I do not think the answer is a nostalgic longing for institutions as they were. Many people left organized religion for legitimate reasons, including institutional failures that those organizations have not always reckoned with honestly. I think we all know the stories of hypocrisy, judgment, and spiritual abuse that have driven people away. However, I still think society loses something real when belief becomes fully individualized and detached from shared practice.
I would rather see religious institutions adapt to retain people than watch spiritual life become entirely private and atomized. We are seeing some of this adaptation with things like the rise of online communities and smaller house churches, but it remains to be seen if these models can truly replace the deep social fabric of traditional congregations.
References
Pew Research Center, 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, Executive Summary: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/religious-landscape-study-executive-summary/
Pew Research Center, “How Americans See Themselves Spiritually, Religiously”: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/spiritual-and-religious-self-descriptions/
Pew Research Center, “The Religiously Unaffiliated: Switching Into and Out of the Group in 22 Countries”: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/03/26/religious-switching-into-and-out-of-the-religiously-unaffiliated-group/