A Survey of Americans’ Spirituality

George Gallup Jr. is perhaps the foremost public opinion pollster in the nation. He has long had his finger on America’s pulse. His findings about things that matter--politics, social trends, economic security, personal happiness, to name a few--have helped America stay in touch with itself.

When it comes to religion, Gallup has long out-shone his peers as a keen observer of the spiritual state of the union. So when he writes a book titled “The Next American Spirituality,” one takes notice.

Unfortunately, for all the sweeping promise of its title, the book, written with Timothy Jones, falls short on delivery.

Many writers have noted that America is in a state of flux, looking for its spiritual bearings. Old-time religion and new affluence (for those who have it) don’t seem to be the tonics they once were in bringing meaning to life. For more than a decade, mainline Protestant churches have been seen “as an artifact” of an earlier age, according to the Rev. Eileen W. Lindner, writing in the Year 2000 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches.

As for affluence and consumerism, people are beginning to realize, author Eugene Peterson wrote in “Subversive Spirituality,” that “getting more and doing more only makes [our] sickness worse. . . . We are surprised to find ourselves lonely behind the wheel of a BMW or bored nearly to death as we advance from one prestigious job to another.”

Meanwhile, sex and violence permeate society. Moral standards are breached daily in large and small ways by “all sorts and conditions of men,” as the 1928 Book of Common Prayer says.

Yet, in the face of this, spiritual quests continue, driven in part, Gallup says, by the vacuousness of secular promises of fulfillment. The percentage of Americans who say they feel the need to experience spiritual growth has risen sharply, up 24 points in just four years to 78%, Gallup reports.

As a churchman, Gallup is not altogether sanguine about the quest for spirituality. Americans, he suggests--as others long have reported--are treading all kinds of roads less traveled, some of them faddish and shallow.

That is by no means a startling insight, which is a problem with this book: Much of it is a rehash of previously reported facts.

It is hardly news, for example, that Americans are searching for spirituality. Nor is it new that mainline churches have suffered a decline in membership.

Moreover, at a time when Lindner and others are writing of a new religious pluralism in America, Gallup’s book is narrowly focused on Christianity and how Christian churches can seize the moment for their institutional advantage.

Diana L. Eck, professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard University, notes in the latest Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches that there are now twice as many Muslim Americans as Episcopalians, of which Gallup is one. This book offers no serious treatment of the change in American society which that fact highlights.

Yet despite its shortcomings, Gallup’s book has a redeeming contribution to the dialogue about faith in America. Gallup randomly selected 100 Americans over the age 18 and, in a telephone poll, asked them about their spiritual practices in the preceding 24 hours. Although the sample was small and the resulting margin of error on the results is plus or minus 11 percentage points, those data provide insights that go beyond the usual soft and unverifiable questions about whether a person believes in God.

During that 24-hour window, 59% of those Gallup surveyed said they had sensed being part of God’s plan, 70% had sensed that God was loving, 67% had prayed, 48% had talked about religion in their workplace, 55% had prayed at a meal, 36% had read the Bible, 32% had read books or articles with spiritual themes, 45% had gone out of their way to help someone, 22% had spoken out on a national issue out of their religious conviction, only 5% had called a psychic hot line or read their horoscope.

Asked if they thought of spirituality more in a personal and individual sense or in terms of organized religion and church doctrine, 72% opted for the “personal” view. And 53% said they relied more on themselves to solve problems of life than on an outside power such as God.

The findings, Gallup says, offer both good news and bad news. “The interest in spirituality in itself . . . is not an unalloyed cause for rejoicing,” he cautions. “If Satan can masquerade as an angel of light, we need more than our senses and wants and whims to find true spirituality. We need revealed truth and the steadying influence of the church.”