The researchers behind the General Social Survey have released a new report on religious change that highlights some interesting trends. In the United States, the number of people with no formal religious affiliation is rising, now at 16 percent, and 22 percent of people say they’ve never attended a religious service, up from 9 percent in 1972. The weird thing is, the number of people who pray is also going up, as is the percentage of those who believe in an afterlife. Belief in God also remains high at about 92 percent (though down from 99 percent in the 1950s).
According to Tom Smith, who led the study, the findings show a growing number of people are spiritual but not religious and that “Americans’ attitudes toward religion are growing more complex.”
As Omar McRoberts, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, explains:

The number of people identifying as “spiritual, but not religious” has been growing perhaps for three decades. This of course has implications for traditional religious institutions, which may feel pressure to revitalize or altogether repackage their spiritual offerings
We should not assume, however, that “spiritual” people are individualists who avoid participation in general. Rather we should look carefully for new forms of spiritual sociability emerging in the religious field, and new ways of expressing spiritual values in the public realm.