The Restlessness of the “Spiritual but Not Religious”

According to a recent article in Psychology Today, those who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” which is over one in five Americans, are at higher risk of mental illness compared to the religious and the non-religious. Two different studies spanning the past couple decades found that those who claim to be “spiritual but not religious” have higher rates of anxiety, irrational fears, general neurotic disorders, and depression.  

Of course, TikTok and YouTube influencers, among others, constantly assure us that looking inside is the sure path to confidence and inner strength. However, expressive individualism—the faith of you be you, follow your heart, be true to yourself—doesn’t deliver what it promises, at least not as well as traditional religious practices do. As it turns out, turning outward and upward is a better path to healthy spirituality than abandoning religion, turning inward, and “finding yourself.” All of the incessant demands for “authenticity” have come at the cost of wholeness.  

In his 1998 book The Way of the (Modern) World: Or, Why It’s Tempting to Live As If God Doesn’t Exist, theologian Craig M. Gay offered a prophetic explanation for what we are now seeing. He argued that practical atheism, not to be confused with philosophical atheism, is a defining feature of modern life. Practical atheism is less about God’s existence than it is about God’s relevance to life. In the modern world of penicillin, airplanes, in vitro fertilization, and the internet, Professor Gay argued that God had become increasingly less relevant, even for people who claimed to believe in God’s existence.  

This view of God necessarily shaped the modern view of the world and of people. Life in the modern technological age was about extending human control and maximizing choice. The world is, in this view, ours for the making.  

Now, however, we’ve given ourselves choices we were never meant to make and responsibility that we were never equipped to bear. We’ve created a world for ourselves that trades image-bearing for gender identity, scoffs at tried-and-true tradition, and doles out meaningless affection and calls it love. The “givens” of creation are gone, and our “freedom” and “control” have become burdens. We took the world on our own shoulders, and it threatens to crush us.  

This is what the “spiritual but not religious” crowd, as the Psychology Today article reveals, found. Seeking control over not just what is seen but what is unseen and liberation from traditional religious practices in search of an “authentic” spirituality left instead the bondage of anxiety and depression. That stands in marked contrast from study after study that finds religious adherents happier and healthier. Religion handed down from past generations is more freeing than the reinvented wheels of modern spiritual imaginations. As members of a community with a rich and storied history, believers can find a stable sense of identity and meaning. Rather than restricting us by limiting our choices, the recognition of certain givens of God, creation, and humanity liberates us from those meaning-making tasks that burden the modern world.

Even better, of course, is that Christianity is not only good in this way, but it is also true. Its description of reality is not only helpful, but also accurate. The vision it offers of humanity as finite creatures with limits, created and not self-made, may be frustrating at times, but it is how we actually are. Even the Christian description of our moral culpability is good, because from it we are pointed to Christ and His forgiveness. These limits are not obstacles to our most authentic and flourishing selves. They are avenues.  

As it turns out, St. Augustine, that great spiritual tourist who eventually found God and truth, was correct when he observed, “Thou has created us for thyself, O God, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in Thee.”