Religious and Spiritual Americans Help Heal a Divided Nation

A recent public opinion survey by the nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, Public Agenda, based on a national sample of more than 2000 respondents, found fully one-third of Americans, across the political spectrum, feel politically alienated.

And they are doing something about it.

Despite feeling alienated, most were planning to vote. A subset of the sample, religious and spiritual Americans, went even further. Those who were both religious and spiritual were 20 percent more likely than those who were neither to say that they have taken steps to understand and connect with people with opposing political views. Similarly, spiritual and religious Americans were 21 percent more likely than those who are not spiritual or religious to believe that reducing divisiveness is important.

At first glance, this finding seems to contradict the conventional view of religious people as insular, rigid, and hostile to opposing viewpoints. Might these data suggest that conventional thinking is simply wrong in this case, as in so many others?

Can religion and spirituality help bring us together?

While religious dogma and commitment may encourage close-mindedness on some issues ("close-mindedness" may be considered the flip side of strongly held beliefs and commitments, for example, “Give me liberty or give me death”) religion is also a community-building force. Many studies have found that, compared with non-religious Americans, religious people are significantly more likely to donate to charity and volunteer their time to both religious and civic organizations.

There is a great deal of overlap between those who describe themselves as religious and those who say they are spiritual. A recent survey by the Fetzer Institute, “What Does Spirituality Mean to Us? Found that 70 percent of respondents considered themselves both spiritual and religious. Just 16 percent said they were only spiritual; 3 percent said they were “only religious.”

More surprisingly, another recent survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life conducted jointly with the PBS television program, "Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly," reported that many of the country’s 46 million unaffiliated adults—the so-called nones—are also religious or spiritual. Two-thirds of them said they believe in God (68 percent). More than half say they often feel a deep connection with nature and the earth, and 21 percent, fully one-fifth, say they pray every day.

Let’s look toward the religious and spiritual to help heal a divided nation.