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The impact of spirituality on Spirituality’s

impact on USA
religious competition in the USA religion

marketplace of religion
Marc von der Ruhr
Department of Economics, St. Norbert College, De Pere, Wisconsin, USA
Received 6 June 2022
Revised 31 October 2022
Abstract 16 January 2023
Accepted 17 February 2023
Purpose – The USA has long been known to provide a competitive environment in which religions compete
for believers. The data clearly show winners and losers in this marketplace. Major Christian denominations are
generally experiencing a decline in membership while religious “nones” are growing in number. Of note, the
recent Pew studies of the US Religious Landscape (2008 and 2015a) indicate that measures of spirituality are
rising in this environment. This paper empirically investigates how the demand for spirituality in religion may
better understand these trends.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper applies ordinary least squares to survey data from the 2015
Pew study to empirically investigate how belonging to a major Christian faith and attending religious services
impacts feeling of spirituality, while conditioning on a host of other demographic variables, in order to better
understand these trends.
Findings – The author finds that being a member of a Christian denomination generally reduces the measure
of spirituality relative to religious “nones.” However, this effect is almost always offset by a measure of
attendance at religious services suggesting spirituality is positively associated with social interaction.
Originality/value – The results have implications for religious leaders concerned about maintaining and
growing the church’s membership. The results suggest that Church leaders may benefit from de-emphasizing
hierarchical top-down rules and emphasizing community.
Peer review – The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/I
JSE-05-2022-0342
Keywords Religion, Spirituality, Religious switching, Religious competition
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
The United States marketplace of religion has long been viewed as a competitive market
where different faith traditions compete for followers and consumers of religion are free to
change their religious affiliation. Unlike many other developed nations, there is no state
sponsored monopoly Church. Instead, the freedom of religion allows US consumers of religion
to choose from a wide variety of religions and denominations.
Given the fluid nature of the religious marketplace, it is interesting to see recent trends in
religious affiliation. The Pew Research Center has recently conducted two surveys of the US
religious landscape (see Pew, 2008, 2015a). The results of each survey were published the year
after the survey was conducted. Together, they comment on how religion is practiced in the
US and how its practice is changing. Some noteworthy results from the survey include the
following. Between 2007 and 2014, the share of the population identifying as Christian fell
from 78.4% to 70.6%; a decline attributed primarily to a decline in Catholics and mainline
Protestants. Churches in the evangelical Protestant tradition have shown modest gains in
membership. The single largest growth was among the religiously unaffiliated (often referred
to as “nones”), rising from 36.6 to 55.8%.
Within this environment, the data also reflect that a significant amount of religious
switching has taken place. If Protestantism is viewed as a single group, 34% of US adults International Journal of Social
Economics
have switched from the religion in which they were raised. If the three major Protestant © Emerald Publishing Limited
0306-8293
traditions (evangelical, mainline and historically black Protestantism) are treated separately, DOI 10.1108/IJSE-05-2022-0342
IJSE the statistic rises to 42%. These changes over a relatively short span of time offer evidence of a
market for religion and the fact that people are comfortable asserting their rights as shoppers
and consumers of religion. Last, though there is a general downward trend in religious
belonging, measures of spirituality have risen over the same time period. The survey also asks
questions related to spirituality and highlights the rise in spiritual well-being.
This paper contributes to the interdisciplinary study of religion by offering some insight as to
what may affect one aspect of the demand for religion – the need for spiritual fulfillment. Using the
Pew 2015 survey data, we regress the measure of spiritual well-being on a host of demographic
variables along with membership to major Judeo-Christian denominations along with a measure of
frequency of attendance of religious services. We find that membership to the major
denominations generally negatively impact the measure of spiritual well-being, while attending
a service generally positively impacts these measures. Further, when the denominational
affiliations are interacted with a measure of attendance, the denominational effects themselves
remain negative while the attendance effect is enhanced. We conclude with a discussion of the
implications for religious leaders concerned with the membership of their churches.

2. Literature review
2.1 An economic approach to religion in the modern age
As Witham (2010) points out in the preface of his book, using the lens of economics may at
first glance seem to be a crass way to examine religious behavior. However, since practicing
involves making choices weighing costs and benefits, it is open to economic analysis. Further,
there has been sufficient work done by economists that the field has been given its own
Journal of Economic Literature classification code (Z12).
The trends shown in the Pew studies of the USA religious marketplace show a fluid market in
which there are winners and losers in the marketplace. Stolz and Usunier (2018) take an
interdisciplinary approach to consider the evolution of a consumerist market for religion. They
point out that many disciplines, including sociology, economics, marketing, theology, history and
anthropology have had a voice in this discussion. However, these disciplines have not always
informed each other’s work. Stolz and Usunier’s comprehensive work describes the growth of the
modernization process that contributed to the consumer oriented religious marketplace and then
lay out the implications for both individual consumers and religious organizations.
Among the contributing factors that arose as society modernized are the following.
The social norm that one belongs to a religion has changed dramatically. It was once the case
that a person was expected to belong to a religion and further that it was the same religion in
which they were raised. The data clearly show that many people switch and that switching to
no religion is acceptable. In conjunction with this is a reorientation away from authority and
duty towards self-defined individualistic values. These, combined with other modern factors,
allowed for religious markets to form. And with these markets come consumers making
choices and producers (here religions) competing not only with each other to attract members,
but also competing with secular culture.
Outcomes of this process produce individuals that are religious, people that are not
religious and those that are “fuzzy religious,” a term coined by Voas (2009) as he examined the
beliefs held by Europeans that belonged to a Church but did not reflect the Church’s
teachings. Other well established and empirically supported theories of religious behavior
motivated by preserving religious capital (e.g. marrying in the same religion as one’s spouse)
also changed. Iannaccone (1990) addresses a number of hypotheses of religious behavior
including religious switching, conversion ages and religious intermarriage that recent data
refute even though historical data initially supported these theories. For example, with regard
to religious intermarriage, of those who were married since 2010, 39% of those surveyed were
in religiously mixed marriages. For those married before 1960, this statistic was 19%.
 The process of modernization has implications for religious organizations. As mentioned Spirituality’s
earlier, there was a time when it was expected that a person was a member of a Church but this impact on USA
has changed. Given this culture, there is increased pressure for religions to “sell” their religious
product. This calls for resources to be used to market their goods and services. As is quoted in
religion
Miller (2002), sociologist Peter Berger wrote, “. . . the religious tradition, which could be
previously authoritatively imposed, now has to be marketed. It must be sold to a clientele that is
no longer constrained to ‘buy’”. Berger goes on to use the language of an economist, citing a
“market situation”, “marketing strategies” and “consumer commodities” (Berger, 1967, p. 138).
A natural consequence of the process of making religious activity an option not to pursue,
churches in modern times also must compete with secular endeavors, not just with each other.
This fact has major implications for how a Church may be marketed in an effort to maintain
or increase membership.
Stolz and Usunier next consider the effect on individuals shopping and consuming religion.
The modern culture will naturally change the expectations of religious consumers. Consumers
will expect their “needs” to be met. They make the case that consumers want high quality
services, entertainment and assert the freedom to choose. They cite the growth of megachurches
as one response to this (a phenomenon we return to later). Hamberg (2015) revisits the ongoing
debate about low religious participation in many European nations (in this case Sweden) where
there are often state sponsored religious monopolies compared to the higher participation rates
in nations with religious competition. The conventional wisdom is that competition fosters an
environment that encourages religious participation. Hamberg makes the argument that the low
demand for religion in Sweden is a function of the religion being offered not meeting the
expectations of Swedes, which supports Stolz and Usunier’s argument.
These forces combine to creating a culture in which individuals increasing choose what they
want to believe. Von der Ruhr et al. (2018) study the formation of religious identity from an
interdisciplinary perspective and find that the denominational affiliation of a person may offer
very little insight to what that person actually thinks about issues on which a Church hierarchy
comments. Their results suggests that religious identity is personal and a consequence of a
myriad of potentially interactive factors that leave traditional measures and definitions of
religious identity poorly suited to the study of religious behavior. While this study cites a number
of papers from the rational choice literature, the study by von der Ruhr, Daniels and Ngo
incorporates work from other perspectives beyond rational choice theory. Voas (2009) makes a
similar argument considering European religious identity. Voas examines a group that are
neither regular churchgoers nor self-consciously nonreligious. They retain some loyalty to
tradition, but in an uncommitted way. Religion plays a minor role, if any, for these “fuzzy”
Christians. This further supports Stolz and Usunier’s argument that consumers of a religion truly
do choose what to believe and what not to believe.
Last, these forces intersect in such a manner that leads religious groups to consider consumers’
needs and design their religious offerings to accommodate those needs. This, then, also calls for a
religious organization to accommodate different perceived needs. In other words, religious
organizations need to recognize different segments in their market. Megachurches offer an
excellent application of this. Von der Ruhr and Daniels (2012a, b) employ data from the FACT2000
Survey conducted by the Harford Institute to show how seeker-oriented megachurches (e.g. Rick
Warren’s Saddleback megachurch) grew from a Church that began in Warren’s living room to the
megachurch it has become. Warren’s (1995) book, A Purpose Drive Church details the survey he
did to see what the unchurched or previously churched but currently unaffiliated wanted from a
Church and used the results to accommodate these needs. Strategically, by accommodating these
preferences, he was able to signal that Saddleback was a different way of doing Church that would
potentially attract people that were previously unsatisfied with Church going or were not religious.
Von der Ruhr and Daniels show that megachurches employ secular-based interests hosted by the
Church more than non-megachurches to encourage participation.
IJSE 2.2 March to modernity: the evolution of the economic approach
A leading question to ask is what makes a Church succeed, or what makes a Church strong.
Iannaccone’s (1994) seminal paper explaining why strict churches are strong must be consulted. It
may initially seem odd to think that strict churches will be strong. If a Church is strict or requires
significant sacrifice, it seems intuitive to think that it will have difficulties in attracting members.
And while this is true, it really only impacts how big the Church may be. On the other hand,
another dimension along which we can judge the strength of the Church involves how dedicated its
members are. The latest Pew data show support for this as Evangelical Protestant churches have
not lost membership as the Catholic and mainstream Protestant churches have. Indeed,
Evangelical Protestant churches have remained rather steady in their membership, sometimes
even showing modest gains. Iannaccone notes that being a member of a Church is a jointly
produced experience, much like a book club, rather than an individual pursuit. Consequently, free
riding becomes relevant issue. In a club related activity, a person’s satisfaction (or utility) is a
function not only of his or her effort or contribution, but also of other people’s contributions.
Therefore, if a member of the group free rides, the behavior will reduce the satisfaction of other
members in the group. The implication for a Church is that by making it too “easy” to be a member
may engender such free riding behavior. On the other hand, if the Church is clear that it is strict or
requires significant sacrifice/stigma, it will increase the likelihood that it attracts only those that are
fully dedicated to the Church, resulting in a strong Church. While this strategy helps to attract
dedicated members, it also limits how much the Church can grow. This fact is clearly reflected in
the Pew data with regard to Evangelical Protestant churches.
These insights are quite helpful in understanding some factors that help predict success.
However, as helpful as they are for a short run analysis, we must also consider what happens
to a Church over time in its effort to attract and retain members. A Church faces conflicting
constraints as social norms evolve in a manner that is inconsistent with a Church’s teachings.
First, a Church purportedly teaches a transcendent truth impervious to change. Thus, if a
Church accommodates social change in its teachings, does it undermine its own authority?
Second, if it accommodates a social change, it is likely to attract younger potential members
that embrace such social change at the expense of alienating more established members that
resist such change.
Iannaccone and Miles (1990) empirically tackle this issue of how a Church responds to
changing social norms by studying the response of the Mormon Church to the changing social
roles of women. Specifically, they gather data on how the Mormon Church responded to changes
in women’s roles and how Mormon members responded to the Church’s response. They find that
the Church did respond to women’s changing roles, but with a lag of approximately five years.
The Church demonstrated a short run resistance to change that was followed by a long run
accommodation. The Church also experienced the aforementioned tradeoff of alienating one
group to attract another. More established members participated less, while at the same time the
Church experienced increased participation by younger members. The Church tried to appease
both groups by reaffirming traditional ideals while accommodating new roles and behaviors for
women. As Iannacconne and Miles quote Tawney (Iannaconne and Miles, 1990, p. 1245), the
Mormon Church aspired to “. . . flexibility in practice while maintaining purity of doctrine.”
Churches operating in the modern environment that Stolz and Usunier describe face this
challenge in an individual-centered environment. Finding the balance between following
doctrine and appealing to the perceived needs of its members provides a significant challenge
that may help explain the trends in the data described at the beginning of this paper.
Another lens by which to illustrate a religious marketplace in which churches compete is
offered by Iannaccone and Makowsky (2007). They study the nature of persistent religious
regionalism. They begin by noting that though the US has a very fluid labor market that often
involves relocation, the US has historically demonstrated significant religious regionalism.
For example, the south remains relatively religious while the west remains largely irreligious.
The authors employ simulation techniques to model multiple interacting factors related to Spirituality’s
religious behavior (social ties, denominational affiliation, past religious experience and impact on USA
personal demographics) and integrate them into a religious landscape over space and time to
investigate how various factors affect religious affiliation as people move.
religion
Their simulation triggers a random move of an agent and after the move the agent
reevaluates her religious attributes. These are subject to her original attributes (determined
by birth), her current attributes (that existed just before the move) and her new social
environment (impacted by her new neighbors). Their results suggest that the desire for social
conformity can motivate agents to engage in religious switching so that they conform to the
religious nature of the neighborhood to which they moved. This serves to provide an
explanation for the persistent religious regionalism. However, the results of the Pew surveys
suggest this trend may be changing in so far as membership to the Christian faith is falling in
all four regions and identifying as a religious “none” is rising in all four regions. These
changes suggest that religious consumers are increasingly comfortable not just changing
religion but abandoning it altogether. This also brings us to ask what factors drive their
demand for religion and how religious leaders respond to this demand.
This consumerist approach of the modern era suggests that churches have less power
imposing a top-down approach to the demands they can place on members. As shown in
Von der Ruhr et al. (2018), religious identity formation is idiosyncratic and much more of a
“bottom-up” process. As they argue, denominational affiliation reveals very little about what
people actually think is influenced by factors well beyond the authority of the Church.
In other words, religious consumers individualize their consumption and identity and feel free
to act as consumers rather than feel the need to honor a past affiliation.
Given this summary, it seems that there is quite a bit to gain from considering religion in a
marketplace. No doubt, the demand for religion has many facets. We turn to one aspect of the
demand for religion next, the need for a sense of spirituality and consider how religions’
performance in this regard may inform our understanding of trends in religious switching
that are well documented.

2.3 Religion and spirituality

Many factors are likely to contribute to the demand for religion. These may likely include some
sense of reassurance of an afterlife, a sense of community, access to a network of people and a
moral compass. As Chiswick (2010, p. 3) notes, “For many people, the search for spirituality is at
the heart of any religious experience.” No doubt that is the case, yet it is interesting in that the
sociological literature has illustrated the potential for a dichotomy between religion and
spirituality. We turn to a subset of literature, beginning with Heelas and Woodhead (2005).
Heelas and Woodhead focus on Kendal, a city in northern UK to study the cultural shift that
creates a divide between religion and spirituality. They characterize this split in a few different
ways. First, they consider religion to be focused on a life lived in terms of external or objective roles,
duties, obligations as opposed to the spiritual life lived in terms of subjective experiences. They
suggest the religious life being viewed as a “life as” versus a spiritual life begins a “subjective life.”
They further contrast religion and spirituality where religion involves pursuing a life above the
individual self, whereas the spiritual life does not refer to a higher authority. Importantly, they
emphasize that religion does not neglect the subjective self wholly, suggesting that Chiswick’s
statement is not to be forgotten despite the contrast between religion and spirituality.
Hill et al. (2000) also make important contributions to this discussion. They address both
the distinctions between and overlap of, religion and spirituality. Many of the themes of
Heelas and Woodhead are echoed, characterizing religion as ordered to an external authority
and being formally structured while spirituality is more personalized. In this context, they
consider those who are “spiritual but not religious” and those who are “spiritual and
IJSE religious”. This paper considers those that are religious but not spiritual. Our interest here is
to empirically investigate how religious affiliation affects spirituality.
However, the path to this viewpoint separating religion from spirituality based on external
vs internal orientation may suggest that the dichotomy may be more complex. Flanagan and
Jupp (2016) serve as editors of a collection of essays that result in the book, A Sociology of
Spirituality and we summarize a subset of the essays here. Varga authored a chapter that
summarizes the work of Georg Simmel on religion and spirituality. He notes that for Simmel,
(p. 145) “. . . spirituality means a belief that there are forces or there is a God or there are gods
beyond the experienced reality of the individual.” He goes on to write that while spirituality may
or may not be associated with the sacred and that religion may include spiritual elements,
spirituality has an individual element to it that is not necessarily a function of any particular
Church teaching. Nevertheless, his view allows for the comingling of spirituality and the sacred.
Varga continues (p. 148) to cite Simmel’s argument that “individualized religiosity takes
precedence over institutionalized religion.” He invokes modern mega-churches and their
deliberate effort to address individual preferences and needs in their delivery of religion,
suggesting that even organized religions are aware of the need to accommodate multiple
preferences, including secular based activities.
Von der Ruhr and Daniels (2012b) cite how mega-churches employ secular based activities
to signal a “new way of doing Church” and to subsidize religious participation. This feeds
back to Varga’s conception of Simmel’s theory that we are associated through multiple
groups and as a result, create a personalized religion. Another result of Simmel’s analysis
leads him to view religion as a bridge between the objective and the subjective, once again
personalizing religion. So, unlike the conclusion of Heelas and Woodhead (2005), religion and
spirituality may not be so cleanly separated.
Varga notes that the increased spirituality may explain decreased religious affiliation.
However, this does not explain why religious affiliation may explain decreased spirituality.
Another contributor, Girodan, makes the argument that, in a world of religious competition
and secularization, a natural byproduct will be that individuals will personalize their religion
and as a function of that, also personalize their spirituality. Thus, from this subsection of the
literature, we conclude that a complex relationship exists between religion and spirituality.
Miller (2021) extensively discusses the role of spirituality and religion and their impact on well-
being. She cites numerous academic studies in order to create a narrative supporting her findings.
Among the works she cites is a study of attention and focus by Berman et al. (2008). The authors
distill their work down to two manners in which we may focus our attention: top-down or bottom-
up. The former is helpful to keeping on focus and solving a well-defined problem. The latter offers a
broader perspective by not being focused on a specific goal. Rather, it allows one to better see
connections that may not be immediately obvious when strictly problem solving. Miller makes the
case that this bottom-up approach allows for enhanced spirituality as it fosters experiencing
synchronicity.
Miller extends this line of thinking to address achieving awareness versus awakened
awareness. The achieving awareness may be likened to the top-down approach discussed above.
It focuses on the idea that our purpose is to control our lives, asking how we can get and keep the
things we want. On the other hand, awakened awareness may be considered to be a refined
version of seeking synchronicity. It has us asking ourselves what life is showing us. We see
various things and integrate them from the perspective of seeking a path, not dictating the path.
Miller continues this line of research to examine quest orientation, or “. . . a tendency to
journey in life: to search for answers to meaningful personal decisions and big existential
questions; to perceive doubt as positive; to be open to change . . .” (p. 170). Shoe goes on to
relate the questing brain to integrating achieving and awakened awareness, contributing to
increased spirituality. She describes a path leading to awakened connections in which “we are
in relationships – with our ancestors, our loved ones, our higher selves, our higher power . . .”
(p. 204). With this, Miller describes in laymen’s terms recent science that describes a process Spirituality’s
of deliberate exercises that can lead to heightened spirituality. impact on USA
She goes on to say, “Spiritual ways of knowing have been crushed by binary ways of
knowing . . . We think in terms of binaries and decisions. Red state/Blue state. Nationalist/
religion
Immigrant. White/Black. Queer/Straight”. (p. 228) This relates nicely to Von der Ruhr et al.’s
(2018) work on religious identity and what we actually know about a person’s beliefs based on
religious affiliation. As stated earlier, they make the case that identity formation is affected by
many factors and that to think that just because someone affiliates with a certain religion we
know what she or he believes can lead to an “us vs them” (again, a binary outcome)
perspective that in the context of this paper, likely reduces feelings of spiritual well-being.
Appealing to the trends identified in the recent Pew studies, in particular the growth of
religious “nones” along with some attention to the part of the demand for religion that relates
to spiritual fulfillment, we stand to gain some insight to what may be driving the movement
away from organized religion.

3. Data analysis
In an effort to empirically investigate the nature of religion and spirituality, we employ the dataset
associated with the 2015 Pew Research Center’s report on “America’s Changing Religious
Landscape” report. The survey covers a lot of ground. We focus on a question that involves
measures of spiritual well-being. We regress the response on a host of demographic variables which
include a series of intercept dummy variables to address if the individual is married or not, white or
non-white and male or female. We also account for their age, educational attainment, income,
political affiliation and ideology. We comment further on the coding of the variables in Appendix.
Last, we include a series of intercept dummies for Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, or “Other” religion
with the omitted category being those with no religious affiliation and a measure of the frequency of
attendance at religious services. We estimate two models. The first includes the variables
mentioned above. The second includes all of the variables from the first model, but adds to them
four additional variables. We interact attendance with the different denominations (Protestant,
Catholic, Jewish and other) in an effort to see how denominational affiliation influences the impact of
attending religious services on the measures of spirituality. Table 1 provides the results.

4. Discussion
When we examine the results in the first column with regard to the question asking about a “deep
sense of spiritual peace and well-being”, we first address the non-denominational factors. First, as
the respondent increases attendance of a religious serve, the reported measure of spirituality rises.
Marital status has no statistically significant effect. Being white as opposed to non-white
decreases spirituality. Personal importance of religion increases spirituality. A person becomes
more spiritual as they age, but this effect very modestly diminishes over time. As both education
and income rise, so too does spirituality. Being Republican as opposed to independent reduces
spirituality, while being a Democrat has no statistically significant effect. Begin female increases
spirituality while increasing ideology towards being liberal decreases spirituality.
Next, we tackle the focus of this paper: how does religious affiliation impact spirituality?
We find that identifying as Catholic, or Jewish all statistically reduce a sense of spiritual well-
being relative to a person who has no religious affiliation. In contrast, being a member of the
other 95 listed religions actually serves to increase spirituality. We find this result to be
fascinating in light of the positive impact attending a religious service has on spirituality.
To investigate further, we interact the denominations with the attendance variable to see if
there are differential impacts across the denominations. The results are in column 2.
Qualitatively, the majority of the results are unchanged with the exception that now belonging
IJSE Dependent variable: Spirit
n 5 26,675
Variable Coefficient Coefficient

Constant 1.80116*** 1.865323***

(0.047874) (0.054000)
Attends 0.14465*** 0.081047***
(0.005807) (0.020473)
Married 0.016211 0.01478
(0.015455) (0.015452)
White 0.062645*** 0.064588***
(0.016975) (0.01699)
Protestant 0.021484 0.140042***
(0.028231) (0.046231)
Catholic 0.161737*** 0.304267***
(0.029676) (0.053098)
Jewish 0.543926*** 0.619717***
(0.056074) (0.103949)
Other 0.087449*** 0.064459
(0.030521) (0.047054)
Religion important 0.34224*** 0.352311***
(0.011323) (0.011811)
Age 0.018698** 0.01941**
(0.007725) (0.007725)
Age^2 0.00103* 0.001114**
(0.000533) (0.000533)
Education 0.026276*** 0.025654***
(0.004125) (0.004126)
Income 0.011347*** 0.011516***
(0.003531) (0.003529)
Republican 0.050264*** 0.05101***
(0.017332) (0.017324)
Democrat 0.004995 0.005934
(0.017523) (0.017521)
Ideology 0.018806** 0.01877**
(0.00791)6 (0.007919)
Gender 0.237215*** 0.235734***
(0.013822) (0.01382)
Protestant attendance 0.074041***
(0.021125)
Catholic attendance 0.084247***
(0.022717)
Jewish attendance 0.063445
(0.039834)
Other attendance 0.034763
(0.022257)
R-squared 0.208865 0.209683
Adjusted R-squared 0.208391 0.20909
F-statistic 439.8692 353.5855
Prob (F-statistic) 0 0
Note(s): ***5> sig at 1%
**5> sig at 5%
Table 1. *5> sig at 10%
Results for spirituality Source(s): Table by Marc von der Ruhr

to a Protestant denomination negatively impacts spiritual well-being and belonging to “Other”

is no longer statistically significant.
 Of particular interest to us is that the attendance effect remains positive. We can make Spirituality’s
comparisons by summing the coefficient on ATTEND with the coefficients of the cross terms impact on USA
of DENOMINATION*ATTENDANCE towards the bottom of the results for those that are
statistically significant. We see that the attendance effect is enhanced for members of
religion
Protestant or Catholic denominations.
Taken together, we wonder if this suggests that attendees’ demand for religion in terms of
their spiritual needs is adversely affected by denomination affiliation across the Catholic,
Protestant and Jewish faiths. However, independent of that, the sense of community served by
being a member of a religion enhances spirituality. Anecdotally, we ask ourselves if people find
the doctrines imposed by these churches to dampen spirituality. We can make an argument by
referring back to our literature review. If, as Von der Ruhr et al. (2018) suggest, people are
generally predisposed to personalize their religious identity, a hierarchical approach that
organized religion is likely to default to will adversely affect a personal fulfillment which may be
empirically represented in these results.
We can also look at the percent responses to questions about whether the respondent’s
religion is too focused on rules (50.8% agree, 43.8% disagree), too concerned with money and
power (51.4% agree, 43.2% disagree). Interestingly, and supporting our results regarding
attendance positively affecting spirituality, when asked about religion’s ability to bring people
together and strengthen community bonds, 89% of respondents agree and only 8.9% disagree.
Taken together, as religious leaders consider the various factors that impact the demand for
religion, the results discussed here suggest that focusing on the portion of demand that relates to
promoting feelings of spiritual well-being may be of central importance in reversing some of the
trends of people leaving religion and becoming religious “nones”. Further, though the focus of this
study is the US marketplace of religion, these results may inform the work discussed earlier by
Hamburg (2015) regarding religious participation and the need for a Church to offer services that
meet the needs of its potential members.

5. Conclusion
The changes Pew’s survey of the USA religious landscape reflect the fact that consumers of
religion are quite comfortable shopping for religions, switching religions, or abandoning religion
be becoming religious “nones.” A number of studies have documented that consumers of religion
tend to individualize their consumption and religious identity. Consequently, the externally
focused idea of religion has increasing tended towards the personalized nature of spirituality.
Given these trends, this paper employed data from the 2014 Pew survey to empirically
investigate how belonging to a Catholic, Protestant, Jewish faith impacts a measure of spiritual
well-being relative to a religious “none.” It also investigates how attending a service affects the
same measure, all while conditioning on a host of other demographic variables. The results
suggest that generally, belonging to these faiths dampens the feeling of spiritual well-being,
while attending services enhances it. We interpret this to mean that the “top-down” imposition of
religious rules adversely affects spirituality, while the community of being with other church-
goers positively affects it. For religious leaders concerned about declining membership, this
suggests that they reorient religious services to allow for less stress of the hierarchy of a Church,
and increase efforts to build community in a “bottom-up” manner.

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Religion, Ch. 8.
Appendix Spirituality’s
Coding of the variables
The data are taken from the PEW 2014 survey. impact on USA
religion
Question 102: Now, thinking about some different kinds of experiences, how often do you feel a deep
sense of spiritual peace and well-being? Would you say at least once a week, once or twice a month,
several times a year or never?
We recoded the responses such that “never” was coded 0, and as the measure rose, we coded
incrementally until we reached “at least once a week” as 4.
The independent variables, likewise, are all from the codebook.
Question 45 addresses our variable, “Married”. It is coded as 0 for the absence of marriage or living
together and as 1 for living with a partner or being married.
Question 48 addresses our variable, “White”. It is coded as o for any non-white classification and 1 for
“White, non-Hispanic”.
Question 49 proves the data for coding our denominational dummy variables. The categories are self-
explanatory and the omitted category is or religious “nones”.
Question 76 addresses our variable, “Attends”. We recoded it such that there are 6 categories, ranging
from 0, indicating “Never”, to 5, indicating “More than once a week”.
Question 77 addresses our variable, “Relimp”, or how important religion is in the respondent’s life.
We recoded it as 0, “Not at all important” to 3, “Very important”.
Question 178 addresses our variable, “Age” as well as “Age^2” (to capture a non-linear impact of aging
on spirituality). The codebook classifies age as 15 age ranges. We code these such that a higher code
indicates an older age group.
Question 180 addresses our variable, “Education”. PEW codes this as 8 categories, with a higher coding
as more education.
Question 186 addresses our variable, “Income’. PEW codes this as one of 9 ranges of income, such that a
higher coding reflects a higher income.
Question 189 addresses our variables of “Republican” and “Democrat”. Each is a dummy variable
taking a value of “1” with the omitted category being “Independent”.
Question 191 addresses our variable, “Ideology”. PEW codes this as belonging to one of five categories,
ranging from 1 as “Very Conservative” to 5 being, “Very Liberal”.
Question 198 addresses our variable, “Gender”. It is a dummy variable taking the value of 0 for “Male”
and 1 for “Female.

Corresponding author
Marc von der Ruhr can be contacted at: marc.von-der-ruhr@snc.edu

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