How Americans Define Spirituality — The Triple Direction of Connection

1. The Word People Reach For

Ask a friend what spirituality means and watch what happens. They pause. They look for words. And then, more often than not, they reach for the same one: connection. "It's feeling connected to something bigger." "It's being connected to myself — my real self." "It's a connection to God, but not through church."

For a long time, that was as far as the conversation went. Spirituality was a word everyone used and nobody could pin down — until December 2023, when Pew Research Center published the first national study in the United States devoted entirely to the question of what spirituality is. Pew surveyed 11,201 American adults, and to the seven in ten who described themselves as spiritual in some way, it put a straightforward question: what does being spiritual mean to you? [1]

The answers drew a map. When people said what was "essential" to being spiritual, three kinds of connection towered above everything else. Three in four named being connected with something bigger than themselves. Seven in ten named being connected with God. Nearly two-thirds named being connected with their true self. By comparison, only four in ten said that following a religious faith was essential to being spiritual [1].

One word, three directions: outward to something vast, upward to God, inward to the self. That is the modern definition of spirituality — not as scholars argue it in journals, but as ordinary people live it. (For the wider story of how this modern, experience-centred spirituality differs from traditional religion, our earlier essay What Is Modern Spirituality? Six Fundamental Differences Between the Spiritual-but-Not-Religious and Traditional Religion traces all six differences in depth.)

2. How Pew Asked — And Why That Matters

Before diving into the three directions, it is worth being precise about how these numbers were born, because their honesty depends on it.

Pew's question was asked of Americans who describe themselves as spiritual in some way — about seven in ten adults, not everyone. The other three in ten — including people who are religious but not spiritual, and people who are neither — were not asked to define a word they do not claim. When you read "74%," the real sentence is: among spiritual Americans, 74%.

Second, the question was a checklist, not an open essay. Pew offered ten possible answers — connection with something bigger, connection with God, connection with the true self, following a religious faith, being open-minded, and several others — and asked which ones felt essential. A checklist can only measure the words the researcher offers. It cannot tell us how people would define spirituality if they wrote the definition themselves.

And third — most important for anyone who reads these numbers with either hope or suspicion — the survey measures what spirituality means to people, not what is true about the universe. It tells us that most spiritual Americans describe their inner life as a life of connection. It does not measure whether the "something bigger" exists, whether God speaks, or whether the true self is a thing to be found. Those are older and deeper questions than any poll can answer — and the poll, wisely, does not pretend to settle them.

What the survey can do is show us the shared language of a culture. And that language is remarkably consistent: three directions of connection, in a stable order of importance [1].

3. Direction One: Something Bigger Than Myself

The most common answer of all — chosen by 74% of spiritual Americans — was "being connected with something bigger than myself." [1]

Notice the word the question itself uses: bigger. Not "God," not "the universe," not "nature" — bigger. It is a container word, and that is exactly why people chose it so often. For some, the "something bigger" is the cosmos, the immensity of stars that makes a crowded mind go quiet. For others it is nature — a forest, an ocean, a mountain range that puts a hard week back into proportion. For others it is humanity itself, or love, or the vast current of life that flows through every generation. And for many, it is simply a mystery: a presence felt but not named, larger than the self and yet somehow in conversation with it.

Spiritual traditions have always pointed past the self toward something vast. What the Pew numbers reveal is how alive that outward gesture remains in a supposedly secular age. More than seven in ten spiritually inclined Americans locate the heart of their spirituality in a connection that faces away from themselves — upward and outward, toward something that dwarfs them [1].

This is also where the practical life of spirituality shows up. When Pew asked meditators why they practised, 22% said their main purpose was a sense of connection — and among them, roughly half were reaching for that "something bigger," the rest for their true self [1]. Even in the most private of practices — eyes closed, sitting alone — the direction of the longing is outward as often as it is inward.

4. Direction Two: God

The second direction is the one with the longest history: God. Seventy percent of spiritual Americans said being connected with God is essential to what spirituality means to them [1].

This number quietly corrects a common caricature. In popular conversation, "spiritual" is often treated as a polite synonym for "ex-religious" — as if the rise of spirituality meant the retreat of God. The data says otherwise. Most spiritual Americans are also religious: in the same 2023 study, 48% of all adults described themselves as both religious and spiritual, and only 22% as spiritual but not religious [1]. For the majority of spiritual people, God is not a relic they left behind. God is one of the three great objects of their connection — and for the religiously observant among them, it is the dominant one. Asked whether connection with God is essential to spirituality, 87% of Americans who are both religious and spiritual said yes [1].

Seen this way, the map becomes more interesting. The three directions are not rival teams. The same person can feel connected to something bigger than themselves, connected to God, and connected to their true self — all at once, all as one life of connection. The directions overlap like Venn circles; most spiritual Americans live in the middle of all three. What has changed is not that God disappeared, but that God now shares the language of the inner life with two other directions — the cosmos and the self — rather than ruling over them alone [1].

5. Direction Three: Your True Self — And the Group That Puts It First

The third direction is the most distinctive feature of the modern map: the self. Sixty-four percent of spiritual Americans said being connected with their "true self" is essential to being spiritual — the self, not as a luxury of introspection, but as an object of spiritual connection in its own right [1].

Here the numbers deliver their most striking plot twist. Among the 22% of Americans who are spiritual but not religious — the fastest-growing spiritual identity of the past generation — the ranking inverts. Connection with the true self jumps to 72%, the single most common answer in the group. Connection with something bigger falls to 62%. And connection with God collapses to 33% — barely half its standing among spiritual Americans overall [1][2].

Read those numbers slowly, because they describe a real shift in where people look for the sacred. For the spiritual-but-not-religious, the great journey is no longer primarily outward or upward — it is inward. The true self is where the search begins and where its authority lives. Their belief profile makes the same point from another angle: only 20% say they believe in the God described in the Bible, while 73% say they believe in "some other higher power or spiritual force in the universe." They are not unbelievers; they have simply moved the address of the sacred [2].

The practices follow. Among the spiritual-but-not-religious, 78% spend time "looking inward or centering themselves" at least a few times a month, while only 2% attend religious services weekly or more. And yet — a nuance worth keeping — 45% still claim a religious affiliation, Protestant or Catholic or otherwise, even as they describe their spirituality in the language of the inner life [2].

None of this makes the inward direction a modern invention. The idea that the deepest truth is found within — that the soul is where the divine speaks quietly — runs through centuries of contemplative tradition, in the West and everywhere else. What is new is the proportion: for a large and growing group of Americans, the self is not a station on the way to something higher. It is the destination.

6. Only Four in Ten Tie It to a Faith

The fourth number in Pew's table may be the most quietly revolutionary of all: only 40% of spiritual Americans said that following a specific religious faith is essential to being spiritual [1].

Let the contrast sink in. Connection with something bigger: 74%. Connection with God: 70%. Connection with your true self: 64%. Following a religious faith: 40%. A generation ago, an American asked what spirituality meant would almost certainly have answered in the language of faith, scripture, and worship. Today, faith is the least popular of the four options — still meaningful for four in ten, but no longer the definition.

Sociologists saw this coming. As Robert Wuthnow argued in his landmark study of American spirituality, the centre of gravity in American religious life moved across the twentieth century from what he called a "spirituality of dwelling" — faith anchored in church, parish and inherited tradition — to a "spirituality of seeking": an individual, questing relationship with the sacred, assembled from many sources rather than received from one [3]. Pew's numbers look like the endpoint of exactly that journey: the container of faith has loosened, while the experience of connection — in all three directions — has become the measure [1][3].

Two caveats keep the picture honest. First, decoupling is not hostility: as we saw, most spiritual Americans are also religious, and two-thirds of spiritual adults still describe themselves as at least somewhat religious. Second, the drop of "following a faith" to 40% does not mean faith vanished from American life — it means faith is no longer what people mean when they say "spiritual." The word has become a wider tent, under which the believer and the seeker both stand [1].

7. What These Numbers Can and Cannot Tell Us

By now the map is clear, so let us say plainly what it is and is not.

What it is: a portrait of a shared vocabulary. When three-quarters of a nation's spiritual people describe their spirituality as connection to something bigger, when two-thirds describe it as connection to the self, we are looking at a genuine cultural fact — one that shapes how millions of people choose their words, their practices, and the objects they keep close. Whatever you believe about the metaphysics, the language is real, and it is worth understanding on its own terms.

What it is not: a verdict on whether any of these connections "really exist" in some measurable sense. Pew asked what spirituality means to people; it did not test the cosmos, the divine, or the soul. A person who feels genuinely connected to something bigger than themselves is not refuted by a poll any more than they are confirmed by one. And note what the checklist could not contain: Pew's ten answers did not include "energy," "vibration," or any of the technical vocabulary of modern crystal and energy culture [1]. The survey maps the mainstream language of connection — the directions people point to when they speak — and it would be a mistake to stretch its numbers into claims about beliefs it never asked about.

There is also a discipline worth borrowing from the researchers themselves: the question was asked of spiritual Americans, and the answer is about what the word means to them. Used that way, the numbers are a gift — they let us talk about spirituality without talking past each other, because they show us what people are actually reaching for when they reach for the word [1].

8. Conclusion: A Compass, Not a Verdict

Three directions. Outward to something bigger than the self. Upward to God. Inward to the true self. That is how a nation of seekers — believers and non-believers, churchgoers and meditators alike — now describes the most important connection in their lives.

The beauty of the map is that it asks no one to choose a single direction. The believer who meets God in prayer and the hiker who meets awe on a ridgeline and the journal-keeper who meets herself in the morning quiet are all speaking the same language: connection. If you recognise yourself anywhere on this map — and most people do, in more than one place — you are in good company: you are using the word the way your culture actually lives it.

The directions have always been there, under different names. What the past generation changed is the emphasis and the permission: you may name your own direction, follow it in your own way, and let it change as you change. Spirituality, by the evidence of the largest study ever devoted to it, is not a doctrine to be accepted but a connection to be kept — outward, upward, inward — however it rings most truly for you.

For the full portrait of how this modern spirituality relates to the religious traditions it both draws from and departs from, our essay What Is Modern Spirituality? Six Fundamental Differences Between the Spiritual-but-Not-Religious and Traditional Religion lays out the six differences one by one. And for the meeting point of spiritual practice and healing — where connection becomes a felt part of everyday wellbeing — see The Healing-Spirituality Nexus: A Journey Toward Wholeness in the Modern World.

References

1. Pew Research Center. Spirituality Among Americans. December 7, 2023. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/12/07/spirituality-among-americans/
2. Pew Research Center. Who Are "Spiritual But Not Religious" Americans? December 7, 2023. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/12/07/who-are-spiritual-but-not-religious-americans/
3. Wuthnow, R. After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950s. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.