Is the ‘I’m Spiritual but Not Religious’ Life Actually Working for You?

It’s one of the most common self-descriptions in America right now. But if we’re honest, it raises a question worth sitting with.

You’ve probably said it or at least thought it. Maybe someone asked if you go to church and you found yourself reaching for the phrase because it felt like the most accurate thing: “I’m spiritual, just not religious.”

It’s a reasonable position. And it comes from somewhere real. I hear this phrase often when asking people about their beliefs. Studies show that a growing number of people share this position.

Maybe organized religion feels like a straitjacket — rules and rituals that seem more about performance than actual connection with God. Maybe a church hurt you, or you watched religious institutions do things that seemed deeply at odds with the God they claimed to represent. Maybe you believe in something — you’re just not sure what — and the label “religious” felt too rigid, too tribal, too loaded. I get it. I've been there myself. All of that makes sense. And none of it makes you a bad person.

But here’s the question this post wants to sit with honestly: Is the spiritual-but-not-religious approach actually working? Not as an accusation — as a genuine question. Because it deserves one. After all, you are reading this post. You must be searching for something more. So let's think through things to help you process it.

First, let’s take the position seriously

The “spiritual but not religious” (sometimes called SBNR) position isn’t new, but it’s never been more widespread. According to Pew Research, roughly 28 percent of American adults now identify as religiously unaffiliated — and the majority of those people aren’t atheists. They believe in something. Many pray. Many describe meaningful spiritual experiences. They’ve just decided that organized religion isn’t for them.

And their reasons aren’t hard to understand. Churches have been judgmental. Denominations have been political. Scandals have been real and damaging. The history of religion includes genuine darkness. If you’re coming to the SBNR position from any of those experiences, you didn’t arrive there randomly. If you've rejected Christianity because of some of these things, you were right to reject it. But, know that it wasn't really Christianity you were rejecting. It wasn't really the God of the Bible. It was a false representation. Perhaps the faith and spirituality you really long for is found in what the Bible describes but not what every church or group of Christians represent. That doesn't mean every church is bad, it just means you need to find a church and a group of people that take the Bible seriously and want to seek the truth that Jesus taught. That's likely what. you really want.

More than that: the impulse behind it is actually pointing at something true. The desire for a spirituality that isn’t just rule-following, that isn’t about earning approval, that isn’t performance for an audience — that instinct is good. Jesus had some of his harshest words for the religious professionals of his day who had turned faith into exactly that kind of hollow performance (Matthew 23). So the critique of empty religion isn’t foreign to Christianity. It’s practically built into it.

Many aren't aware of this. Christianity has been packaged or mis-represented by so many that many people never hear what the Bible actually teaches.

The honest limitations

Whatever you believe about God or the universe or human flourishing — it filters through your own preferences, your own experiences, your own blind spots. It's often shaped by the world around you. But it also means your spiritual life can quietly drift toward whatever is comfortable rather than whatever is true. When you’re the seeker and the standard, the tendency is to gradually arrive at a version of “the spiritual” that doesn’t challenge you very much. If there is a god in that view, it probably looks a lot like you. It loves the things you love and hates the things you hate. it rarely challenges you.

Tim Keller, who spent decades in conversation with New Yorkers who held versions of this view, observed that when we construct our own spirituality, we tend to imagine a God who confirms our existing values rather than one who transforms them. We end up making God in our own image.

A spirituality built entirely around personal preference has no real way to correct itself. And most of us know the ways our own judgment could use some correction. The SBNR path is almost by definition a solitary one. You explore, you read, you practice — on your own terms, in your own space, at your own pace. And that can be meaningful. But spiritual growth doesn’t flourish in isolation.

We need to be known. We need people who can see our blind spots. We need accountability, encouragement, and the friction of real relationships. If your spiritual search is happening alone, it's somewhat shortchanged. Community, guides, and other voices are helpful. You don't usually discover these truths on your own. It's helpful to hear the stories of those who have walked the path before you. It's helpful to get the perspective and wisdom of others who have already wrestled and asked the questions. you are now asking.

Author Trevin Wax noted something striking: those who maintain a generic spirituality are also, statistically, less likely to volunteer, less satisfied with their local communities, and less likely to say their social lives are going well. The spiritual-but-not-religious path tends to correlate with broader disengagement from community, not just from church. This is based on studies but can also be a broad statement. However, if this is true, then the path of a private spirituality has less community and warmth than being a group of people gathered around truth and living out that value as a group of people is truly rich.

What Christianity actually offers — which is different from “religion”

Here’s where it’s worth making a distinction that often gets lost: Christianity, properly understood, isn’t the same thing as “religion” in the sense that SBNR folks are rejecting. Keller made this point frequently. Most religious systems, he argued, operate on the principle of I obey, therefore I am accepted. You earn your standing with God through moral effort, religious practice, or spiritual achievement. That is the religion most people are pushing back against when they say they’re “spiritual but not religious.” And honestly, they’re right to push back on it. That version of religion is exhausting, and it doesn’t produce the transformation it promises.

But the gospel — the actual message of Jesus — runs in exactly the opposite direction.

The claim isn’t that you become acceptable by doing the right things. It’s that you are accepted through what Jesus has already done, which then produces genuine change from the inside. As Keller put it: I am accepted through Christ, therefore I obey.

That’s not religion as self-improvement. It’s not rule-following to earn God’s approval. It’s the news — which is what “gospel” literally means — that the standing you’ve always wanted has already been secured, not by your effort but by grace. That changes everything. That's the beginning to understanding a real Christian faith. Building on that foundation of the Gospel results in a faith enriched with all sort of implications for life.

C.S. Lewis, who was himself a committed skeptic before becoming one of the most thoughtful Christian writers of the 20th century, described the experience of the gospel as something fundamentally different from religious striving. It wasn’t another set of demands — it was more like coming home. Finding that the thing you’d been looking for was already looking for you.

That’s a different offer than what most people picture when they hear the word “religion.”

The question of truth

All of this may sound great, but there’s one more thing worth saying directly, because dancing around it would be dishonest.

The SBNR position tends to assume that different spiritual paths are more or less equally valid — that what matters is sincerity, or personal growth, or connection with something larger than yourself, and that the specific content of what you believe is less important.

But that assumption is actually a spiritual position, not a neutral vantage point. It assumes that God — or the divine, or the universe — is the kind of thing about which no one can be more or less right. And that’s a claim, not an obvious truth. The atheist Sam Harris notes that every religion makes exclusive claims and the belief they are all equally valid is "logical non-sense." Those are his words and not mine.

Keller made this point with characteristic gentleness: saying “all spiritual paths are equally valid” sounds humble, but it’s actually a very specific belief about the nature of reality — and one that puts the person making it in a position of claiming knowledge about God that nobody can really have. It’s more intellectually consistent to actually examine the specific claims of different traditions and ask whether any of them are true.

Here's what I mean: when you say 'one mountain, many paths to God' it sounds nice and reasonable. But, you cannot know there are many paths unless you have a vantage point of the geography from above, or have walked every path to conclude they all lead to the same destination and God. But, unless you can follow every path and die multiple times you cannot know. The vantage point from above the mountain is only one that God knows.

Christianity makes very specific claims: that God is personal, that human beings are made in his image, that something has gone wrong, that God himself entered history in Jesus to address it, and that the resurrection is a real historical event with real consequences. These are claims you can actually engage with, examine, push back on.

What you don’t have to do is pretend they’re irrelevant.

The Christian faith has undergone 2000 years of scrutiny and survived. Why? Because it is not only spiritually true but filled with a lot of verifiable reasons that make it trustworthy.

An invitation, not a verdict

If you’ve read this far, it’s probably because you’re genuinely curious — not looking to be told you’re wrong, and not being told that here. This is an invitation, not a verdict.

The spiritual instinct in you is good. The hunger for something real, something that doesn’t feel like empty performance — that’s pointing at something. The question is whether a personally constructed spirituality is the destination, or whether it might be the beginning of a search that leads somewhere more specific, more demanding, and more satisfying.

Fort Mill and the surrounding area — Tega Cay, Baxter, Rock Hill — are full of people who would describe themselves exactly where you are. At One Hope Community Church, we’ve got folks who spent years in the SBNR space before they started asking harder questions. People who were skeptical. People who had been hurt by churches. People who came in with doubts and were surprised to find a place where those doubts were welcomed, not managed.

We’re not offering a slick version of religion. We’re offering honest community, genuine engagement with the claims of Jesus, and a space where you can ask the questions you’ve been carrying.

Come and learn with us.

visit us on Sundays at 10:30 AM at the Baxter YMCA in Fort Mill — or just reach out. We’d love to talk.

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