How Privatized Spirituality Makes Us Lonely

Over the past three years, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard someone say something like “I believe in God, but I’m against organized religion,” “I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious,” or “I have faith, but I don’t need to be a part of a church.” As Brad Edwards points out in The Reason for Church, Christians don’t primarily evangelize atheists but rather people ambivalent about organized religion. According to a 2024 Pew study, 67 percent of respondents who identify as “nothing in particular” believe there’s something spiritual beyond the natural world.

Not everyone who identifies as “spiritual but not religious” has everything in common, but one thing they share is that while they typically believe in a higher power, the way people relate to it doesn’t necessitate organized religion. They long for transcendence, but they’ve left behind institutional religion and adopted what Tara Isabella Burton calls “intuitional religion.”

What makes this impulse attractive is that it promises freedom from the nihilism that comes with the belief that this world is all there is, as well as freedom from the dogmatic demands of organized religion. If cold materialism offers autonomy but struggles to provide meaning, and organized religion offers meaning but struggles to provide autonomy, then nonorganized spirituality promises both meaning and autonomy.

What Privatized Religion Loses

The “spiritual but not religious” rightly understand the importance of transcendence and the impossibility of finding ultimate meaning when stuck within the material. Unfortunately, without the durability of organized religion, they end up experiencing spiritual isolation.

This isolation forces them to answer questions of ultimate importance either by themselves or in communities that don’t have the bandwidth for such questions. Furthermore, this isolation unintentionally cheapens the experience of transcendence they long for. These unmet needs create an opportunity for the church to showcase a compelling alternative.

If we lose organized religion, we lose a shared sense of reality, rituals, and morality. Why does a shared sense of reality, rituals, and morality matter? Because when these things are no longer shared but privatized, all their burdens fall to the individual.

Nonreligious spirituality forces the individual to answer questions like these: Is there a God? What is he like? Who am I? What is wrong with the world? Is there any hope? How should I live? How can I find meaning? What happens after death?

The individual then has the burden of ordering those answers in a coherent way. Since individuals cannot do this in isolation, they’re left with the crushing feeling that life doesn’t make sense. Young people often feel anxious when trying to decide which career to choose and whom to marry. How much more anxiety must there be when the question “How do I live a meaningful, nonwasted life?” falls on the individual? This isn’t freedom but rather an unbearable weight that has led to what Jonathan Haidt calls the “anxious generation.”

Nonreligious spirituality struggles to provide communal rituals that align with beliefs about ultimate reality. Instead, individuals must curate practices that don’t clearly tie to a coherent vision of reality and then try to find a community that may or may not share their vision of reality.

Nonreligious spirituality struggles to provide communal rituals that align with beliefs about ultimate reality.

Without organized religion, we also lose something morally. Science can analyze, but it cannot tell us what’s good and evil. Politics can create laws, but it cannot cultivate love for what’s true, good, and beautiful. If we lose organized religion and spirituality becomes private, we lose a shared, coherent moral shape.

The “spiritual but not religious” end up with flattened relationships because the organizing principle of their relationships becomes something less than that which is of ultimate importance. Humans long to connect over more than food, movies, sports, and politics, but if the things that matter most are private and nonorganized, then what are we left with?

I’m not saying someone cannot talk about spirituality with friends without organized religion. Rather, I’m saying that without organized religion, individuals cannot share in their spirituality. Talking about spirituality with friends isn’t enough. It doesn’t scratch the existential itch of loneliness. To receive general empathy during a time of suffering without a shared ability to make sense of it isn’t enough. It’s the organized sharing of spirituality that gives relief here. When radical individualism takes over spirituality, it leaves people confused, anxious, and alone.

The church has an incredible opportunity to meet the felt needs of the “spiritual but not religious” who are seeking something bigger than themselves and can’t seem to find it. Here are four practical ways Christians can meet them where they are.

1. Pray fervently.

In Romans, Paul expresses his desire that those outside of Christ would come to know Jesus: “Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved” (10:1, NIV). Paul knows it’s God who foreknows, calls, justifies, and glorifies (8:30). He knows that if the sovereign God of the universe doesn’t move in power, his loved ones won’t come to saving faith.

When thinking about the culture, it can be easy to skip prayer. We must resist this temptation. If we’re going to see the “spiritual but not religious” who are skeptical of organized religion come into our churches, we need God to draw them.

We cannot simply diagnose that the culture is skeptical about institutional religion and rush to apologetic arguments. We must pray that people will grow dissatisfied with their nonreligious spirituality. We must pray that people will wonder to themselves, Is this it? We must pray that people—by grace and through faith—will know the love of God in Christ and be joined to his body. Let’s boldly approach God with the names of our loved ones.

2. Listen with compassion.

As Ryan Burge frequently points out, not everyone who is “spiritual but not religious” believes the same thing. These are people who bear God’s image and have unique stories. Listen to their stories, ask curious questions, and have compassion when you see a pain point.

We must pray that people will grow dissatisfied with their nonreligious spirituality. We must pray that people will wonder to themselves, Is this it?

Matthew 9:36 says, “When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus’s posture toward the helpless people without a shepherd was compassion. He didn’t sigh and roll his eyes. His heart was moved.

Those who want to practice their spirituality by themselves are “sheep without a shepherd” and, in their own unique ways, feel harassed and helpless. We must listen long enough and care deep enough to hear their pain. We should get to know what experiences have shaped them, what they’re hoping for, and what fears regularly linger in their minds. People love to tell their stories to curious and compassionate listeners. Perhaps this compassionate listening might lead to opportunities for gospel proclamation.

3. Evangelize creatively.

In 1 Corinthians 9, Paul gives us a window into his strategy for evangelism:

To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. (vv. 21–23, NIV)

Paul was willing to fill whatever role was necessary to get people to Christ. Creativity in evangelism is a good thing. Creative evangelistic strategies can be used by God to turn those who don’t see the value of the church into faithful brothers and sisters.

Art, fashion, farming, pickleball, music, video games, and grilling are just a few of the opportunities that we can step into creatively and consider how we might introduce people to Jesus. Reaching those who don’t see the value in church is going to demand that we think outside the box and meet people where they are.

4. Commit to unity.

Jesus prays in John 17:23 for his followers: “That they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” The world knowing the love of Christ is downstream of the church’s unity. There’s something beautiful and compelling to individuals in a divided culture about a church united around the good news that Jesus saves sinners. A ruthless commitment to unity will force those with an anti-institutional bent to reevaluate their beliefs.

If the assumption is that institutions cannot be trusted because those who inhabit and lead them are in it for selfish reasons, then a consistent commitment to “do nothing from selfish ambition” (Phil. 2:3) is essential. Reaching people for the sake of Christ and welcoming outsiders into the church in an age of institutional distrust is going to take togetherness. But the good news, as Jesus reminds us in Matthew 16:18, is that the gates of hell will not prevail against Jesus or his people.