Over the past few months, Barna has been reporting on spiritual openness in America and how churches can welcome spiritually curious people into their midst. But what qualifies someone as spiritually open?

In this piece, an excerpt from our fourth release in the Spiritually Openseries, Barna offers some concrete definitions and starting points to help church leaders identify who is spiritually open and what the Church might have to offer spiritually open non-Christians. You can read the full release exclusively in Barna Access Plus.

32% of U.S. Adults & Teens Are Highly Spiritually Open To take a closer look at what spiritual openness looks like across the population and how its depth might vary, Barna created a four-point scale to place respondents into three categories: high openness, moderate openness and low openness. This scale was based on a combination of factors including: belief in a spiritual or supernatural dimension of life; belief in God or a higher power; positive feelings toward spirituality; and self-described spirituality that is “open,” “exploring” or “curious.” (See the Methodology for more details about this definition and scale.)

The general population roughly splits into thirds across these three levels of spiritual openness, with the plurality falling into a moderate level of spiritual openness.