- Most surveys about American religious life ask about institutional belonging, not lived faith and spirituality.
- Although church attendance is falling nationwide, a new Wheatley Institute survey suggests that American faith lives beyond the pew.
- The survey results paint an image not of a people who’ve stopped believing in the divine but of a country having an active but often private relationship with deity — one that happens in sacred spaces like a church, synagogue, mosque or temple, but also in the car, at the bedside or in the heart.
For several decades, the narrative of American religion has had one plot: decline. Pews are emptying, denominations are shrinking and the “nones” — those who claim no religious affiliation — have kept climbing. The assumption is that all Americans are in the middle of losing their faith.
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But a new Wheatley Institute survey suggests that the narrative fails to capture what is truly going on in America. In short, we’ve badly misjudged how faithful this country actually is.
The challenge is that most surveys attempting to measure religiosity in America ask a form of two main questions:
- Are you affiliated with a particular faith?
- Do you attend religious services?
While these are very important questions, they are proxies for institutional belonging, not for whether people are inclining toward God on a personal level. The Wheatley Institute Survey of Lived Religion, a rigorous survey of 2,005 American adults across over 100 questions, was designed to ask a different question: not whether Americans call themselves religious but how they live their faith.
Much of what people do with their faith happens in ordinary moments that a checkbox can’t capture. We asked instead about the texture of belief:
- Do you communicate with God in some way?
- Have you witnessed a miracle?
- What do you want said over your grave?
The answers to this nationally representative survey complicate the decline-into-irreligion narrative considerably.
Faith beyond the pew
Start with interior life. Nearly half of Americans report a spiritual experience within the past month. Fifty-eight percent say they felt God was telling them something during that time, and about a quarter felt it within the past day.
Three in 4 say they’ve witnessed something they’d call a miracle. And when it comes to gratitude, Americans thank God more often than they thank the people around them — 43% do so multiple times a day.
That is not the profile of a people who’ve stopped believing in the divine. It’s the profile of a country having an active but often private relationship with deity — one that happens in sacred spaces like a church, synagogue, mosque or temple, but also in the car, at the bedside or in the heart.
A person can check “none,” skip church and still pray, keep a cross on the wall and see God’s hand in who crossed their path.
This kind of lived faith can also affect day-to-day decisions. One-third of religious Americans changed a decision in the past month based on prayer or a spiritual impression.
Even among those who claim no religion, about 4 in 10 believe the universe guides them toward certain people or events, and nearly one-third say being a child of God or a divine creation is an important part of who they are.
The secret faith of the secular
Much of this kind of lived religion is woven so deeply into daily routines that it rarely registers as “religion” at all. For instance, most Americans we surveyed report displaying religious symbols in their homes. And roughly three-quarters have read a book about religion, faith or spirituality.
Online worship, once a pandemic stopgap, has become routine: About 1 in 4 Americans now watch services online or on television at least weekly.
As you can see, a person can check “none,” skip church and still pray, keep a cross on the wall and see God’s hand in who crossed their path. Ask whether they are religious, and they may say no. Ask how they live, and a different picture emerges.
This is even true among many religious “nones,” a group that many have cited as evidence of creeping secularism. Researchers have long known that most nones still believe in God or a higher power.
What is less appreciated is how far that belief reaches. It turns out “no religion” rarely means “no belief.” Nearly half (46%) of the unaffiliated say certain places or objects can hold spiritual meaning, and only about one-quarter believe death is simply the end.
The rest remain open to something beyond, whether heaven, reincarnation or some other form of continued existence.
Even at the graveside, 29% of religious “nones” say religious elements are at least slightly important at their funerals, and about 1 in 5 still want a member of the clergy to officiate. (That number is 77% among the religiously affiliated).
Leaving a church, it turns out, is not the same as leaving the sacred behind. “None” is answering a question about membership, not necessarily belief. Treating the rise of the unaffiliated as a straightforward measure of secularization is a category error we’ve been making at scale.
What truly defines us
Our survey results also show why Americans still gather at all. In an era when anyone can stream a sermon from anywhere, about 6 in 10 worshippers say they attend for the community — the most common reason, ahead even of the quality of the preaching.
Yet only about half of American Christians attended church last Easter, including 14% of weekly churchgoers. By comparison, Pew has found that about 3 in 4 religious Jews attended a Passover Seder, and 8 in 10 American Muslims fast during Ramadan. American religion is more alive than the headlines suggest, but it is also more varied, and in places thinner, than many might assume.
Given the state of toxic political division within the United States today, arguably the most pointed finding is that of identity. Ask Americans to rank what matters most to who they are, and “child of God,” “son or daughter,” and “parent” sit near the top.
Political party sits dead last, trailing race, gender and nationality. That’s a striking inversion of how the public narrative often runs: Elections, news and social media all but insist that partisanship is the most important identity of the age.
In contrast to that perception, the data suggests that Americans are much more interested in their spiritual and familial identities — something the large majority of Americans have in common. This should give all of us pause when we feel tempted to engage in divisive rhetoric or actions.
Those we see as different or even adversaries likely have the same core identity and priorities we do.
Affiliation still matters
None of this is an argument that religious affiliation has not declined in recent decades or that some congregations aren’t seeing decline in attendance in ways that matter.
Such decline does matter. A large body of research, including the Wheatley Institute’s Religion and Mental, Physical and Social Health reports, links regular participation in a religious community to better mental, physical and social health.
But affiliation and attendance measures aren’t well suited to capture important aspects of the internal religious lives of Americans, including a felt sense of meaning, gratitude and hope that persists among the large majority of Americans.
Don’t miss the faith you can’t see
So what to make of all of this? First, we need to recognize the powerful role faith and belief play in the lives of Americans and the implications that follow. For example, in hospitals, hospices and social services, a patient who marks “religion: none” is often routed past every question that might follow, including whether they would like a chaplain.
Our data suggests that many who might not outwardly seem religious would still welcome spiritual support, especially at the end of life. A brief, invitational question serves them better than an assumption.
Second, journalists and pollsters who equate falling affiliation with a vanishing of faith are telling a story the data doesn’t support.
Third, all of us who play into the idea that our political differences are what define us are gravely mistaken. Americans have not abandoned belief or their commitment to family and community. They pray in the car, see themselves as divine creations and still want a prayer said at the graveside.
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Affiliation may be thin in places, but belief is not.