Is America Becoming More Spiritual or More Christian? Insights from Pew’s Latest Religious Study
After the turn of the 21st century, demographers and students of American religion watched as the number of people in America who say that they have no religious beliefs in particular — the pollsters call them “nones” — has been increasing. But a recent Pew Research “Religious Landscape Study” suggests that the tide has turned. After 2022, the percentage of Americans who identified as Christian, having for years been on the decline, bottomed out at around 60% and now sits at 63%. That number was 78% as recently as 2007. While many Christians hope this is good news, it is possible the study could indicate an increase in “spirituality” rather than an increase in Christianity.
The causes of this shift are not our primary concern here. Suffice it to say the pandemic likely forced many Americans to consider their mortality in ways the typical busyness of life does not. And, of course, Americans are regularly more religious than many other developed countries in the western world — even those sometimes thought incorrectly to be “more Christian” than America, such as Hungary, so we should not be surprised to see the trajectory of American religiosity has shifted in recent years.
Whatever the cause, American Christians would be incorrect to conclude we are “out of the woods.” An increase in spirituality may indicate, not an increase in orthodox Christian profession and practice, but instead an increase in “spirituality” and “enchantment.”
“Spirituality” is Not Necessarily Christianity
Aggregate data sometimes tell us less about real beliefs and attitudes than does a more intimate knowledge of the content of reported belief. The Pew study shows a significant majority of American adults believe “In God or a universal spirit” or that “There is something spiritual beyond the natural world” — statements that contain no distinctively Christian content but, of course, are compatible with Christian belief.
This is particularly important in light of sobering data from another study (last conducted in 2022) — the “State of Theology” from Ligonier Ministries. It suggests that many people who self-identify as Christians may nevertheless often profess beliefs that depart significantly from what the Church throughout the ages has held to be orthodoxy. For example, a shocking number of American evangelicals believe “Gender identity is a matter of choice” (37%), “God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam” (56%), “Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God” (43%), and “Everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God” (65%).
Similarly, the much-discussed research of Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith suggests the dominant form of 21st-century religion among American teenagers, including evangelicals, is what he calls “moralistic, therapeutic deism.” This form of religion affirms God created the world but is largely aloof from human life, which has as its central goal to be happy and to feel good about oneself and, after life’s end, good people may then go to heaven.
More recently, Smith argues that organized American religion is now in deep decline as increasing numbers of Americans have moved away from institutional religion in favor of a nebulous spirituality characterized by an increasing obsession with “enchantment,” in which people show an interest “in things spiritual, divine, supernatural, magical, or paranormal.” Smith therefore advises that it may be misleading to think in terms of a dichotomy of “religious” and “secular” because “enchantment” is not exactly either of those two. (Often, scholars and public intellectuals sometimes speak also of the need for a “re-enchantment” of the world subsequent to the “disenchantment” of the materialistic project of the Enlightenment.)
To the degree that “enchantment” refers to a belief in something beyond the material world, it is compatible with Christianity. But it need not be. Just as some in the West in the late 19th and early 20th century tried, and failed, to combine a materialist view of reality with the Christian faith, it seems reasonable to suppose some may attempt a similar syncretism of Christianity and non-Christian elements of the amalgam of enchantment.
Making Disciples and Meeting Quotas
All of this suggests the latest Pew data may not actually tell us very much about just how well American Christianity is recovering subsequent to the COVID-19 pandemic. We would do well to remember that the primary mission of the Church is not to meet some quota in a survey result but rather to go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-20). The Pew Religious Landscape Study asks respondents whether they are Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, among other options. By contrast, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” (Matthew 16:13, NIV).
In times of social tension and anxiety, it can be easy to forget the basics. While the zeitgeist may be one of spirituality rather than Christianity, it is good to remember membership in a church community is the Christian’s norm, and we ought not to neglect “to meet together, as is the habit of some” (Hebrews 10:25, ESV). Indeed, the officers of the church are gifts to the people of God, so they can be mature, “no longer [like] children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Ephesians 4:14).
And for their part, church leaders would do well to remember that theirs is a ministerial authority to preach the Gospel and to “preach Christ crucified” (I Corinthians 2:23), for this is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes (Romans 1:16). It is only by preaching that people may believe, and only hearing that people belief (Romans 10:14-15). So let us not be distracted from those basic teachings about what it takes to make a disciple. To the extent that the American Church attends to these basic things can we hope that the number of authentic Christians grows in this land, should God give the increase (I Corinthians 3:6).
Bill Reddinger is Associate Professor of Government in the College of Arts & Sciences at Regent University, where he teaches courses in political philosophy and American politics. His book, Political Thinkers for Our Time, is forthcoming from NIU Press in 2025.
