Online Reporter
Matters of Faith
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 organised 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 evangelise atheists but rather people ambivalent about organised 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 organised religion.
They long for transcendence, but they’ve left behind institutional religion and adopted what Tara Isabella Burton calls “intuitional religion.”
Without organised religion, we also lose something morally. Science can analyse, 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 organised religion and spirituality becomes private, we lose a shared, coherent moral shape.
The “spiritual but not religious” end up with flattened relationships because the organising 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 non-organised, then what are we left with?
I’m not saying someone cannot talk about spirituality with friends without organised religion. Rather, I’m saying that without organised religion, individuals cannot share in their spirituality.
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 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 sceptical of organised religion come into our churches, we need God to draw them.
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.
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 organised religion. If cold materialism offers autonomy but struggles to provide meaning, and organised religion offers meaning but struggles to provide autonomy, then non-organised spirituality promises both meaning and autonomy.
What privatised 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 organised 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 organised 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 privatised, all their burdens fall to the individual.
3. Evangelise 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. – TGC.
