The religious “nones” may not be into going to church, but many of the religiously unaffiliated adults around the world still embrace a wide range of spiritual beliefs.
A recent Pew Research Center survey across 22 countries found that adults who identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” — or the “nones,” as they are commonly called — believe in life after death, the possibility that animals have spirits, and even in God.
For instance, roughly a fifth or more of the religiously unaffiliated in every country that Pew surveyed say they believe in life after death. Participating countries include Colombia, Argentina, Australia, Singapore and Canada, among others.
While the “nones” are often painted as a secular or a vaguely spiritual bunch, the survey shows they are a diverse and nuanced group whose beliefs are shaped by geography, gender and personal identity. In Latin America and South Africa, for example, large majorities of unaffiliated adults believe in God, whereas far fewer in Europe and Australia share that view.
Beliefs of the “nones” also vary depending on whether someone identifies as an atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.”
“The report’s findings shine the light on the complexity and differences of the group — both within countries and across the countries — that it’s not just a monolith,” Jonathan Evans, one of the authors of the Pew report, told the Deseret News. “What it means to be religiously unaffiliated in the United States or the United Kingdom or Australia is probably fairly different from being religiously unaffiliated in a place like Brazil or Argentina.”
Pew’s latest findings also highlight that leaving organized religion does not necessarily mean abandoning spirituality. But religiously affiliated people are still more likely than the “nones” to engage with spiritual beliefs and practices.
What do the ‘nones’ actually believe?
In the United States, between 1991 and 2020, the “nones” have risen from 5% of the population to 30%, becoming the largest single religious group. This rise has slowed, Pew’s large Religious Landscape Study found earlier this year, and the “nones” have stalled at 29% in the U.S.
Still, a lot of Americans hold spiritual beliefs, the study revealed — 83% believe in God or a universal spirit, and 86% say they have a soul or spirit.
“I was trying to think of anything else that 86% of Americans agree on. That’s remarkably high,” Penny Edgell, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota who consulted on the report, said at a press briefing in February.
Some of these spiritual beliefs are widely shared by the “nones” in other countries.
In most of the 22 countries that Pew looked at, at least 20% of people with no religious affiliation say they believe in God. But the numbers vary depending what kind of “none” people believe they are.
Those who identify as “nothing in particular” are far more likely to express belief in God than self-identified atheists, with agnostics falling somewhere in between. In many countries, the “nothing in particular” group makes up the bulk of the unaffiliated: In Japan, 51% of the 55% of the “nones” identify as “nothing in particular.” In Italy, however, 11% of adults say they’re atheist and only 5% identify as “nothing in particular.”
And even within the “nothing in particular” subgroup, beliefs differ by region. In Latin America, for example, 9 in 10 or more say they believe in God. In Brazil, the “nones” who believe in God make up 96%. In several European countries, far fewer do: just 10% in Hungary and 13% in Sweden report belief in God.
Although atheism is typically defined as a lack of belief in God, surveys show that some self-identified atheists still report belief in God or other spiritual ideas. In Germany, for example, 14% of atheists say they believe in God.
“Inconsistency or incongruence in people’s beliefs and practice actually is the norm, not the exception,” according to Pew’s Jonathan Evans. “Once we start digging into how people’s identities, beliefs and practices start to interplay, we should expect to see incongruence.”
Globally, many “nones” hold less traditional, by Western standards, spiritual beliefs. Between 20% and 40% of religiously unaffiliated adults in most countries say they believe ancestral spirits can influence the living — 81% of “nones” hold this view in South Africa.
In places like Mexico and Brazil, most of the “nones” believe there is “something spiritual beyond the natural world.” In more secular countries like Sweden, Hungary and Australia, fewer “nones” hold that belief.
The report has analyzed the responses from about 23,000 adults in 22 countries, where the “nones” make up groups large enough to be studied.
Religion and spirituality are connected
Religious people are generally more likely to hold spiritual beliefs and engage in practices than the “nones,” challenging the idea that those who don’t attend church turn to spirituality as a replacement for religion. Belief tends to be stronger among those who place at least some importance on religion, and weaker among those who say religion has no role in their lives.
In Italy, for example, only 16% of “nones” say they believe in God, compared with 91% of religiously affiliated adults — a 75-point gap, according to Pew. The difference is smaller in Argentina, where more than 60% of “nones” report belief in God while 99% of religiously affiliated hold that belief.
The majority of “nones” across the countries in the report say that they never pray. In the Netherlands, 87% of “nones” say they never pray, compared with 45% in the U.S. and 17% in Colombia.
Religious people who meditate surpass the meditating “nones” by 13 percentage points.
Religiously unaffiliated are less likely than the affiliated adults to engage in rituals like lighting candles, although both groups show similar interest in fortune-telling and horoscopes. In Mexico, for instance, 12% of adults in both groups say they use fortune tellers, horoscopes or other ways of predicting the future.
Overall, spirituality and religious affiliation tend to go hand in hand.
“People often think that spirituality rushes in to fill a void among nonreligious people, like the two are polar opposites,” said Ryan Burge, professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis, who also analyzes data on religion. “But the data show that those who are most spiritual are also the most religious.”
According to Burge’s data, 62% of religious respondents described spirituality as “very important” to them, compared with 24% of “nones” who felt the same.
“People, who say they’re highly spiritual also say they’re highly religious and there’s really no evidence that’s changing,” Burge said.
Why beliefs of ‘nones’ differ geographically
The gap between more believing “nones” in Latin America, for example, and more secular “nones” in Europe raises the question: What does culture have to do with religious and spiritual belief?
Researchers attribute these differences in part to a “secular transition” — a process where younger generations gradually become less religious in belief and practice than their parents and grandparents, according to a paper published in Nature Communications in August.
People first reduce participation in practices that demand time and resources, like attending church, then religion loses personal significance, and eventually, people shed their religious identity.
Burge calls this phenomenon “religious residue.” Latin America was still overwhelmingly religious as recently as a generation ago, with Catholicism dominant in many countries 30 to 40 years ago, he said.
Europe, on the other hand, has largely been secular for two generations, which means that today’s adults and their children have been largely removed from religious practice. “A lot of Europe is just secular — there is very little residue left for lots of those people," Burge said.
The Nature Communications study notes that more technologically advanced and modernized countries tend to see “a decline in the symbolic and social functions of religion.”
Culture and religion are often deeply intertwined, according to Burge. “It’s hard to disentangle those two forces because religion at some level is a manifestation of culture,” he said. Often, he believes, the cultural context shapes religious practices and beliefs more than the other way around.
As the “nones” group continues to grow, both in the U.S. and globally, their beliefs will likely reshape how societies think about faith and spirituality.
“It’s helpful for us to understand what is going on on a more nuanced level‚” Pew’s Evans said, “why potentially people are making different decisions or why there are different patterns in religious identity and what might be driving those.”
Other findings:
- How the beliefs of the “nones” vary by gender: Similarly to the gender gap among the religious, it’s the “nones” who are women who are more likely than men to have religious and spiritual beliefs. This gender gap is seen across the countries. For instance, in Australia, 60% of women who identify as religiously unaffiliated tend to believe that spirits are part of nature, whereas 31% of unaffiliated men believe the same thing.
- “Nones” on importance of religion: Most people who are religiously unaffiliated say religion has little or no importance in their lives, the study found. Often 6 in 10 religiously unaffiliated adults, or more, in Europe, Canada and Australia say that religion is “not at all important.” Still, in countries like Brazil, Colombia, Peru and South Africa, about half or more of “nones” say religion is at least somewhat significant.
- Do religious texts play a role in the country? More “nones” believe that sacred texts influence their country’s laws and a quarter or fewer believe that those texts should influence the laws. The U.S. and Greece are the two countries in the study where most “nones” believe that the Bible has influence on the current laws.
- Is religion tolerant or intolerant? Most of the “nones” in the countries surveyed believe religion encourages intolerance rather than tolerance. In Australia, Sweden and Germany, over 70% of unaffiliated say religion leads to intolerance. Majorities also see religion as promoting superstition.
- Their skepticism extends to politics. In nearly every country, most “nones” say it is not important for national leaders to hold strong religious beliefs. South Africa is the only exception, where half of the “nones” want to see their leader have their own religious beliefs and stand up for people with religious beliefs.