{"id":853919,"date":"2025-07-24T05:00:59","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T10:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/?p=853919"},"modified":"2025-07-23T10:46:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T15:46:00","slug":"trading-faith-for-nothing-what-americans-are-really-doing-after-leaving-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/trading-faith-for-nothing-what-americans-are-really-doing-after-leaving-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Trading Faith for Nothing: What Americans Are Really Doing After Leaving Church"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-preview\"><p>I\u2019m fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with young people on a fairly regular basis. That\u2019s one of the benefits of being a college professor. It\u2019s much easier to keep up with the cultural discourse when you are surrounded by people in their late teens and early twenties. My students are aware of my expertise and often seek to engage in discussions with me about religion, politics, and society. I\u2019m all ears, of course. One thing I hear on a pretty consistent basis from them is that people are rejecting traditional forms of religion and are replacing them with alternative spiritualities.\u00a0<\/p> <p>This idea seems to have seeped into the discourse\u2014that many Americans have replaced Sunday morning worship with yoga sessions, astrology, or consulting a psychic on a regular basis. A recent book by Tara Isabella Burton called <i>Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World<\/i> makes this point exactly.<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block-login login-toggle\">Already a member? <a href=\"#\">Log in<\/a><\/div>\n\t\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block-content\">\n\t\t\t\t<h2>Unlock premium content!<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t<p>Get access to all Church Answers premium content from our expert contributors plus many other membership benefits.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<h3>$9.97 per month<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t<p>Unlimited access<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/join\/\" class=\"button\">Join Now<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-preview\"><p>I\u2019m fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with young people on a fairly regular basis. That\u2019s one of the benefits of being a college professor. It\u2019s much easier to keep up with the cultural discourse when you are surrounded by people in their late teens and early twenties. My students are aware of my expertise and often seek to engage in discussions with me about religion, politics, and society. I\u2019m all ears, of course. One thing I hear on a pretty consistent basis from them is that people are rejecting traditional forms of religion and are replacing them with alternative spiritualities.\u00a0<\/p> <p>This idea seems to have seeped into the discourse\u2014that many Americans have replaced Sunday morning worship with yoga sessions, astrology, or consulting a psychic on a regular basis. A recent book by Tara Isabella Burton called <i>Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World<\/i> makes this point exactly.<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block-login login-toggle\">Already a member? <a href=\"#\">Log in<\/a><\/div>\n\t\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block-content\">\n\t\t\t\t<h2>Unlock premium content!<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t<p>Get access to all Church Answers premium content from our expert contributors plus many other membership benefits.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<h3>$9.97 per month<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t<p>Unlimited access<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/join\/\" class=\"button\">Join Now<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t","protected":false},"author":17635,"featured_media":853920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"publish_to_discourse":"0","publish_post_category":"1","wpdc_auto_publish_overridden":"","wpdc_topic_tags":"","wpdc_pin_topic":"","wpdc_pin_until":"","discourse_post_id":"","discourse_permalink":"","wpdc_publishing_response":"","wpdc_publishing_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,183,184,175,192,177,191,14796,180,18470,194,18058,185],"tags":[20928,20925,20927,20926],"class_list":["post-853919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-answers","category-communications","category-discipleship","category-grow","category-how-to","category-lead","category-mind-body-and-spirit","category-monday-wednesday-featured","category-outreach-and-evangelism","category-prayer-grow","category-preaching","category-premium","category-worship","tag-alternative-spiritualities-strange-rites-new-religions-for-a-godless-world-by-tara-isabella-burton","tag-trading-faith-for-nothing","tag-traditional-forms-of-religion","tag-what-americans-are-really-doing-after-leaving-church","membership-content","access-restricted"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Trading Faith for Nothing: What Americans Are Really Doing After Leaving Church | Church Answers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I\u2019m fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with young people on a fairly regular basis. That\u2019s one of the benefits of being a college professor. It\u2019s much easier to keep up with the cultural discourse when you are surrounded by people in their late teens and early twenties. My students are aware of my expertise and often seek to engage in discussions with me about religion, politics, and society. I\u2019m all ears, of course. One thing I hear on a pretty consistent basis from them is that people are rejecting traditional forms of religion and are replacing them with alternative spiritualities. This idea seems to have seeped into the discourse\u2014that many Americans have replaced Sunday morning worship with yoga sessions, astrology, or consulting a psychic on a regular basis. A recent book by Tara Isabella Burton called Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World makes this point exactly. In Burton\u2019s estimation, people are just remixing religion into something that is more personal and authentic to them. Think SoulCycle, not Bible Study. But what does the data say? Are people actually engaging in a lot of these alternative types of spiritual practices? Tony Jones and I asked over 15,000 Americans to review a list of popular spiritual practices and indicate which ones they had participated in over the past 30 days. They could choose as many as they wished or select none at all. Here\u2019s what that looks like.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/trading-faith-for-nothing-what-americans-are-really-doing-after-leaving-church\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trading Faith for Nothing: What Americans Are Really Doing After Leaving Church | Church Answers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019m fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with young people on a fairly regular basis. That\u2019s one of the benefits of being a college professor. It\u2019s much easier to keep up with the cultural discourse when you are surrounded by people in their late teens and early twenties. My students are aware of my expertise and often seek to engage in discussions with me about religion, politics, and society. I\u2019m all ears, of course. One thing I hear on a pretty consistent basis from them is that people are rejecting traditional forms of religion and are replacing them with alternative spiritualities. This idea seems to have seeped into the discourse\u2014that many Americans have replaced Sunday morning worship with yoga sessions, astrology, or consulting a psychic on a regular basis. A recent book by Tara Isabella Burton called Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World makes this point exactly. In Burton\u2019s estimation, people are just remixing religion into something that is more personal and authentic to them. Think SoulCycle, not Bible Study. But what does the data say? Are people actually engaging in a lot of these alternative types of spiritual practices? 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But what does the data say? Are people actually engaging in a lot of these alternative types of spiritual practices? Tony Jones and I asked over 15,000 Americans to review a list of popular spiritual practices and indicate which ones they had participated in over the past 30 days. They could choose as many as they wished or select none at all. 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Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. Before that he was an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, and was also the graduate coordinator. He has authored over thirty peer-reviewed articles and book chapters alongside six books (including The Vanishing Church, The Nones, and The Great Dechurching) about religion and politics in the United States. He served as a pastor in the American Baptist Church for over twenty years, leading First Baptist Church of Mount Vernon, IL for 17.5 years until its closure in July 2024.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/author\/ryanburge\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Trading Faith for Nothing: What Americans Are Really Doing After Leaving Church | Church Answers","description":"I\u2019m fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with young people on a fairly regular basis. That\u2019s one of the benefits of being a college professor. It\u2019s much easier to keep up with the cultural discourse when you are surrounded by people in their late teens and early twenties. My students are aware of my expertise and often seek to engage in discussions with me about religion, politics, and society. I\u2019m all ears, of course. One thing I hear on a pretty consistent basis from them is that people are rejecting traditional forms of religion and are replacing them with alternative spiritualities. This idea seems to have seeped into the discourse\u2014that many Americans have replaced Sunday morning worship with yoga sessions, astrology, or consulting a psychic on a regular basis. A recent book by Tara Isabella Burton called Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World makes this point exactly. In Burton\u2019s estimation, people are just remixing religion into something that is more personal and authentic to them. Think SoulCycle, not Bible Study. But what does the data say? Are people actually engaging in a lot of these alternative types of spiritual practices? Tony Jones and I asked over 15,000 Americans to review a list of popular spiritual practices and indicate which ones they had participated in over the past 30 days. They could choose as many as they wished or select none at all. Here\u2019s what that looks like.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/trading-faith-for-nothing-what-americans-are-really-doing-after-leaving-church\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Trading Faith for Nothing: What Americans Are Really Doing After Leaving Church | Church Answers","og_description":"I\u2019m fortunate to have the opportunity to speak with young people on a fairly regular basis. 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But what does the data say? Are people actually engaging in a lot of these alternative types of spiritual practices? Tony Jones and I asked over 15,000 Americans to review a list of popular spiritual practices and indicate which ones they had participated in over the past 30 days. They could choose as many as they wished or select none at all. 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But what does the data say? Are people actually engaging in a lot of these alternative types of spiritual practices? Tony Jones and I asked over 15,000 Americans to review a list of popular spiritual practices and indicate which ones they had participated in over the past 30 days. They could choose as many as they wished or select none at all. Here\u2019s what that looks like.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/trading-faith-for-nothing-what-americans-are-really-doing-after-leaving-church\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/trading-faith-for-nothing-what-americans-are-really-doing-after-leaving-church\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/trading-faith-for-nothing-what-americans-are-really-doing-after-leaving-church\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Young-Woman-Meditating-With-Hands-In-Prayer.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Young-Woman-Meditating-With-Hands-In-Prayer.png","width":1200,"height":628,"caption":"Young Woman Meditating With Hands In Prayer"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/trading-faith-for-nothing-what-americans-are-really-doing-after-leaving-church\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Trading Faith for Nothing: What Americans Are Really Doing After Leaving Church"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/","name":"Church Answers","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/#\/schema\/person\/d5a336fe7fb2e2336148e844c396558a","name":"Ryan Burge","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/56879a20cb590828ec05138ab0896cecf173024f2bf472bb1fb8dd0ad8f13fe0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/56879a20cb590828ec05138ab0896cecf173024f2bf472bb1fb8dd0ad8f13fe0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Ryan Burge"},"description":"Dr. Ryan Burge is professor of practice at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. Before that he was an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, and was also the graduate coordinator. He has authored over thirty peer-reviewed articles and book chapters alongside six books (including The Vanishing Church, The Nones, and The Great Dechurching) about religion and politics in the United States. He served as a pastor in the American Baptist Church for over twenty years, leading First Baptist Church of Mount Vernon, IL for 17.5 years until its closure in July 2024.","url":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/author\/ryanburge\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17635"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853919"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":853983,"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853919\/revisions\/853983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}