The survey, which profiled about 2,000 American adults in the early months of 2017, found that 18 percent of Americans identify as spiritual but not religious. (By contrast, 31 percent of Americans identify as neither spiritual nor religious.) They tend to skew younger and more educated than religious Americans, with 40 percent holding at least a four-year college degree and 17 percent having some form of postgraduate education. They’re also far more politically liberal than their religious counterparts: 40 percent identify as liberal, compared to 24 percent of the population overall and 27 percent of Americans that are neither spiritual nor religious. [...]
The study found that many “spiritual but not religious” Americans maintain a connection to some sort of organized faith tradition, even if they do not practice it regularly. Just three in 10 religiously unaffiliated Americans ranked as spiritual but not religious, suggesting that most spiritual-but-not-religious Americans maintain links with a more formal religious identity; the largest groups of these identify as mainline Protestant (18 percent) or Catholic (18 percent). [...]
One thing many of my interview subjects had in common, though, was a desire for community, one thing their more solitary ritual practices hadn’t been able to give them. Most said that community was something they missed, and many reported fond memories of a communal aspect to their childhood religions. “I don't tend to like uniformity of practice and belief because that gets a bit culty to me,” said Ribar. “It often means people stop asking questions — that's why I'm shy of organized spiritual community. But I do sometimes long for more people to share things with.”
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