The varieties of nonreligious experience: meaning in life among believers, non-believers, and the spiritual but not religious

Abstract

The Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR) have grown rapidly in developed, secularizing societies. We hypothesize that one reason for the proliferation of the SBNR is that spiritual beliefs, distinct from religiosity, afford some degree of meaning in life to people leaving religion. In two pre-registered studies (USn = 917; UKn = 1,289), we compared meaning in life among religious believers, SBNRs, and non-believers. Religious believers reported the most meaning, followed by SBNRs, and then non-believers, who reported the least meaning. Further analyses revealed that the differences between SBNRs and non-believers are largely mediated by differences in their degree of spiritual beliefs, whereas the differences between SBNRs and religious believers are largely mediated by differences in their degree of social connection. We conclude that spiritual beliefs and social connection play distinct roles in the creation of existential meaning in life, which may partly explain the popularity of SBNRs in secularizing societies.