and the rise of a universal spirituality

by D. Patrick Miller

 

When 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders stepped away from identifying himself with any organized religion and instead asserted that “My spirituality is that we are all in this together,” he became the first major political figure to associate himself with the growing “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) mindset in America. Sanders thus brought to national attention a cultural minority that, if present trends continue, will not be a minority much longer.

In fact, just a few years later the SBNR phenomenon had a Presidential candidate of its own, in the person of best-selling author and pop spiritual guru Marianne Williamson. Her sudden rise to prominence on the national political debate stage surprised many, and puzzled others who were unfamiliar with Williamson's celebrity within the sizeable social niche of SBNR. Although a longtime political activist, Williamson had been known mostly as a teacher and popularizer of A Course in Miracles, the modern psycho-spiritual teaching published in 1976 that could fairly be called the Bible of the spiritual-but-not-religious movement. (In 2019, the New York Times identified the Course as "an esoteric Bible that has gone mainstream.")

When Williamson criticized President Trump for utilizing fear to achieve political success — and challenged him by saying "I’m going to harness love for political purposes. I will meet you on that field. And, sir, love will win" — she was speaking straight from the SBNR playbook. Although Williamson never figured higher than a few percentage points in primary polls and dropped out of the race in January 2020, she nonetheless brought a new level of recognition to alternative spiritual seeking in the US.

In direct contrast to the steady growth of the “SBNR” perspective is the precipitously rapid decline of organized religion. The accelerating downturn in churchgoing and formal religious affiliation occasionally makes the news when new polls about religion are released, but its full significance has yet to be fully recognized. To listen to mainstream news reports about the continuing influence of the religious right in election campaigns and some hot-button political controversies is to get the impression that mainstream Christianity is, if not more powerful than ever, at least holding steady in its influence. But research data compiled over the last several decades clearly indicate otherwise.

 

The Steady Rise of the "Nones"
Substantial evidence of the dying of organized religion issues from a large survey released in 2015 by the Pew Research Center. Among the findings of their Religious Landscape Study was this information, as reported by Michael Lipka:

"Religious 'nones' – a shorthand we use to refer to people who self-identify as atheists or agnostics, as well as those who say their religion is 'nothing in particular' – now make up roughly 23% of the U.S. adult population. This is a stark increase from 2007, the last time a similar Pew Research study was conducted, when 16% of Americans were 'nones.' (During this same time period, Christians have fallen from 78% to 71%.)"

In 2021, an update released by Pew revealed that the "nones" have risen to 29%, an increase of six points in seven years. The proportion of people identifying themselves as Christian has dropped to 63%, twelve points lower than ten years before. he rate of change to non-religiosity is accelerating because the bulk of current churchgoers is aging out of circulation while younger Millennials and GenZ are staying away from church in droves. According to a March 2021 report by the Survey Center on American Life:

"Generation Z is the least religious generation yet. More than one-third (34 percent) of Generation Z are religiously unaffiliated, a significantly larger proportion than among millennials (29 percent) and Generation X (25 percent). Fewer than one in five (18 percent) baby boomers and only 9 percent of the silent generation are religiously unaffiliated."

As pastor Charles Redfern wrote in 2015 in the Huffington Post,

"Sunday attendance in mainline churches is dropping as fast as a bare-naked skydiver. Turnout in the United Church of Christ has dropped below a million; the Episcopal Church estimates its population at 1.8 million, down from three million in the 1960s; membership in the Presbyterian Church, USA, fell by 46 percent from 1965 to 2005 and the United Methodists have lost 4.5 million in their American churches since 1964. Four thousand churches close each year and 3,500 people leave the Church each day."

 

Factoring in the 'Disconnect'
For the really stark numbers on church attendance, however, you have to go to a source with a vested interest: ChurchLeaders.com, a web resource for Christian pastors which describes itself as "dedicated to resourcing, informing, and connecting a community of church leaders for greater Kingdom impact worldwide."

As the site's Outreach Magazine revealed in a 2018 article entitled "7 Startling Facts: An Up Close Look at Church Attendance in America," the number of people who actually go to church regularly is likely much lower than those who say they do: "Less than 20 percent of Americans regularly attend church — half of what the pollsters report." The report continues:

"Numbers from actual counts of people in Orthodox Christian churches (Catholic, mainline and evangelical) show that in 2004, 17.7 percent of the population attended a Christian church on any given weekend. Another study published in 2005 in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion by sociologists C. Kirk Hadaway and Penny Long Marler — known for their scholarly research on the church — backs up [these] findings. Their report reveals that the actual number of people worshipping each week is closer to [the] 17.7 percent figure — 52 million people instead of the pollster-reported 132 million (40 percent)."

As those data figures are now over fifteen years old, it's safe to assume that actual church attendance is no higher, and probably lower, now.

As Shattuck commented on the disparity between popular poll reports on church attendance and the more detailed investigations by actual church researchers: "Clearly, a disconnect between what Americans say and what they actually do has created a sense of a resilient church culture when, in fact, it may not exist."

 

The Birth of SBNR
Although the phrase "spiritual but not religious" did not enter common parlance until the last ten years or so, the attitude itself is at least three decades old, as evidenced by a remarkable study conducted in 1988 by the magazine Better Homes and Gardens. Although little noted at the time, the survey  on “Religion, Spirituality, and the American Family” has proved to be historically significant not only because BH&G was hardly a voice of the counterculture — but even more so because its survey, conducted in a pre-online era, drew a whopping 80,000 mailed-in responses (far outstripping most public opinion polls) to come up with these findings:

"Some results suggest that respondents’ spirituality is strongest on a personal level. The largest group (62%) say that in recent years they have begun or intensified personal spiritual study and activities (compared to 23% who say they have become closer to a religious organization). 68% say that when faced with a spiritual dilemma, prayer/meditation guides them most (compared to 14% who say the clergy guides them most during such times)….”

Flash forward to 2006, when a Gallup Poll found that the proportion of Americans claiming to be “spiritual, but not religious” had risen from 30% to 40% since 1999. Then, in the spring of 2010, another startling survey was released by Lifeway Christian Resources, the research and marketing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention (again, not exactly a bunch of Zen progressives). Lifeway’s research suggested that 72% of the Millennial generation identified themselves as “more spiritual than religious.”

 

But What Does "Spiritual" Mean Exactly?
The encroaching sea change in American religion may be easier to typify in terms of what is going away rather than what is arriving. After all, we generally know what it means to be "religious." It means going to church regularly (or telling pollsters that you do); it means believing the central myths and tenets of your chosen religion, and at least trying to follow its moral principles and commandments; and it often means endorsing and promulgating a wide range of social and political beliefs that may or may not be directly correlated to Biblical dogma or religious practice.

By contrast, the beliefs and behaviors of the "spiritual but not religious" crowd can be more difficult to identify and classify — and they may encompass a very wide range of ideas, from the merely unconventional to the out-there loopy. And because superstition, hypocrisy, and prejudice  are endemic to the human condition, such unproductive behaviors are just as likely to show up in countercultural spiritual circles as in mainline religion.

Nonetheless, there are some significant and largely irreconcilable divergences between traditional religion and the new spirituality that are easy to recognize. They include:

Five Questions for the Spiritually Inclined
In the end, what matters more than the substitution of one set of beliefs for another is whether any of our beliefs and practices actually serve to transform us. Because whether you believe you are a sinner who must surrender to the saving grace of Jesus, or an innately light-filled "child of God" who's struggling to recognize your inner perfection, the name of the game in religion AND spirituality is positive transformation: changes for the better in our self-awareness, behaviors, and ways of relating.

As a practitioner of SBNR for some thirty-odd (sometimes very odd) years, with a personal focus on the study and practice of the forgiveness-driven Course in Miracles, I've devised five questions to serve as a test of value in following any "spiritual but not religious" quest. Over the years I've periodically reviewed these queries to check my own progress, as well as publishing them in the hope they are useful to others:

First trained as an investigative journalist in environmental politics, D. PATRICK MILLER began writing about spirituality, human potential, and creativity after a seven-year illness initiated his spiritual path. Since that time he has intensively studied A Course in Miracles, the Enneagram system of personality, Jungian depth psychology, shamanism, and other fields of contemporary spirituality. He has also applied spiritual principles and disciplines intensively in his own life, and written about the results. As a magazine and online journalist, Patrick has written over 100 articles for Yoga Journal, THE SUN, Elephant Journal online, and many other media. He is the author of UNDERSTANDING A COURSE IN MIRACLES, a comprehensive review of the history, message, and legacy of a leading SNBR teaching, released in a Second Edition in 2021. Patrick is also the founder of Fearless Books and Literary Services, and provides publishing services to many other writers.

 

                      

 

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