I’m spiritual but not religious.” You’ve heard it—maybe even said it—before. But what does it actually mean? Can you be one without the other? Once synonymous, “religious” and “spiritual” have now come to describe seemingly distinct (but sometimes overlapping) domains of human activity. The twin cultural trends of deinstitutionalization and individualism have, for many, moved spiritual practice away from the public rituals of institutional Christianity to the private experience of God within. In this conclusion of a two-part series on faith outside the church (read the first part, on those who “love Jesus but not the church”), Barna takes a close look at the segment of the American population who are “spiritual but not religious.” Who are they? What do they believe? How do they live out their spirituality daily?

Two Types of Irreligious Spirituality To get at a sense of spirituality outside the context of institutional religion, Barna created two key groups that fit the “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) description. The first group (SBNR #1) are those who consider themselves “spiritual,” but say their religious faith is not very important in their life. Though some may self-identify as members of a religious faith (22% Christian, 15% Catholic, 2% Jewish, 2% Buddhist, 1% other faith), they are in many ways irreligious—particularly when we take a closer look at their religious practices. For instance, 93 percent haven’t been to a religious service in the past six months. This definition accounts for the unreliability of affiliation as a measure of religiosity.

A sizable majority of the SBNR #1 group do not identify with a religious faith at all (6% are atheist, 20% agnostic and 33% unaffiliated). In order to get a better sense of whether or not a faith affiliation (even if one is irreligious) might affect people’s views and practices, we created a second group of “spiritual but not religious,” which focuses only on those who do not claim any faith at all (SBNR #2). This group still says they are “spiritual,” but they identify as either atheist (12%), agnostic (30%) or unaffiliated (58%). For perspective, of all those who claim “no faith,” around one-third say they are “spiritual” (34%). This is a stricter definition of the “spiritual but not religious,” but as we’ll see, both groups share key qualities and reflect similar trends despite representing two different kinds of American adults—one more religiously literate than the other. In other words, it does not seem as if identifying with a religion affects the practices and beliefs of these groups. Even if you still affiliate with a religion, if you have discarded it as a central tenet of your life, it seems to hold little sway over your spiritual practices.