A STUDY in the United States has found that, despite a decline in religious adherence, most Americans say that they are spiritual and believe in a spiritual realm.
The report, Spirituality Among Americans, published by the Pew Research Center, found that seven out of ten adult respondents were spiritual “in some way”, either because they thought of themselves as spiritual, or said that spirituality was important to them.
Pew asked a nationally representative sample of 11,201 members of its American Trends Panel in the summer about belief in spirits and souls. Eighty-three per cent believed that humans had a soul in addition to their physical body, eight in ten said that they believed in a spiritual realm, and three-quarters said that there were things that could not be explained by science.
Many reported having encounters with spirits, including 38 per cent who said that they felt that they had been communicated with by people who had died, and 30 per cent who said that they had personally encountered a spirit or spiritual force.
Pew said that it was the first time that these questions had been asked in a survey; so it was not possible to say whether the numbers speaking of being spiritual had grown. But previous studies by Pew and others have shown that in the US — in common with many other countries in the West — traditional religious beliefs and practices are in sharp decline.
Pew said: “While Pew Research Center surveys have documented a decline since 2007 in the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian, the evidence that ‘religion’ is being replaced by ‘spirituality’ is much weaker, partly because of the difficulty of defining and separating those concepts.”
It said that there was clearly overlap between what people meant by spirituality and what they meant by religion: 48 per cent of respondents said that they were both spiritual and religious, and 22 per cent said that they were spiritual but not religious.
“These . . . responses illustrate the difficulty of separating ‘spirituality’ from ‘religion’ and suggest that for many Americans, there is no clear dividing line,” the report says.
The survey asked the respondents to explain what “spiritual” meant to them: 74 per cent said that it meant being connected to something bigger, while 70 per cent said that it meant being connected to God. Of these, 27 per cent of people defined spirituality as having beliefs or faiths in line with organised religion, such as belief in God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, elements of Christian theology, or obedience to religious teachings.
The study also asked about life after death. Seven in ten respondents said that they believed in heaven, and more than half agreed that people could be reunited with their loved ones after death.