Spiritual but not religious?

More and more people describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious”. They step away from organised religion but still speak of meaning, transcendence and inner change, and Pew Research Center surveys now treat them as a substantial group. Writers such as Sam Harris argue that what religion offers, from moral seriousness to spiritual experience, does not need God. Others reply that once God is removed, meaning and morality become personal preference. The paper reviews research from psychology, sociology and philosophy to weigh the two sides.

On experience, the evidence is fairly clear. Researchers increasingly define spirituality as self-transcendence and meaning rather than belief in God. Studies of mindfulness, awe and other self-transcendent experiences, by Yaden and colleagues and by Keltner and Haidt, find these states among religious and non-religious people alike, and Piff and colleagues link awe to more helpful behaviour towards others. Work going back to Viktor Frankl, and Park's review of research on meaning-making, shows that a sense of meaning helps people cope with suffering whatever their worldview.

The harder questions concern community and foundations. Durkheim saw religion as the glue of social life, and Norenzayan links belief in morally concerned “big gods” to large-scale cooperation. Alain de Botton proposes borrowing religion's rituals and consolations without its beliefs, and the review finds this works in part. Practices are easy to take up alone; lasting communities, passed on across generations, are much harder to build without a shared account of reality. John Gray argues that many atheists quietly replace God with progress or politics, and Nietzsche warned that the real crisis comes when inherited values erode. The authors sort spirituality without God into five types, from meditation-based practice to a “tragic” acceptance of suffering with no hope of salvation.

Their conclusion separates two levels. As experience and practice, spirituality without God is real and can help people. Whether it can supply a binding basis for morality and lasting communal authority is, the authors say, still philosophically contested, and they call for long-term studies comparing religious and secular communities.