Living in Colorado, 26-year-old Alisa has a view of mountains every day. As she drives past them or gazes at them out the window, she finds herself participating in what feels, to her, like prayer.

“How breathtaking and glorious the mountains are—that is kind of what I'm praying to,” she explains. “I'm praying in this, to this beauty. Nature is just this incredible force.”

This fits well within Alisa’s understanding of spirituality today. “Spiritual practice is nurturing my soul. It’s connecting my soul to myself or possibly something greater,” says Alisa. “The components of a spiritual life are one’s ability to seek peace.”

Alisa’s environmental approach is one of many that represent the general spirituality we have been reporting on in this series. Openness is evident across generations, religious beliefs, religious experiences and backgrounds. But what does something as abstract as “spiritual openness” really imply?

In this piece, Barna offers some more concrete definitions and starting points. We’ll also look at some of the backstories, experiences and practices that accompany an open spiritual disposition.

To take a closer look at what spiritual openness looks like across the population and how its depth might vary, Barna created a four-point scale to place respondents into three categories: high openness, moderate openness, and low openness. This scale was based on a combination of factors including: belief in a spiritual or supernatural dimension of life; belief in God or a higher power; positive feelings toward spirituality; and self-described spirituality that is “open,” “exploring” or “curious.” (See the Methodology for more details about this definition and scale.)

The general population roughly splits into thirds across these three levels of spiritual openness, with the plurality falling into a moderate level of spiritual openness.

Across all generations, the majority of people are spiritually open—even two-thirds of Elders (66%) are at least moderately spiritually open. Today’s teens are especially in a state of amplified spiritual openness, with nearly three in four (74%) qualifying as moderately or highly open.

Openness and Christianity are highly correlated, especially among the one in five adults who are practicing Christians (meaning they attend church regularly and say their faith is very important to them); 42 percent are highly open and another half (47%) are moderately open.

The U.S., however, is largely made up of nonpracticing Christians (47% overall), people who identify as Christian but otherwise don’t meet Barna’s “practicing” definition. Many nonpracticing Christians show a degree of spiritual openness; 79 percent are at least moderately spiritually open.

One-third of U.S. teens and adults are non-Christians (33%), just 16 percent of whom could be thought of as spiritually open (here, we’re referring to both high and moderate levels of openness).

In this issue of our Spiritually Open series, we’ll specifically explore this group of respondents. For pastors and Christians interested in outreach or evangelism among those outside the Church, this minority of non-Christians who retain spiritual openness might present some fertile ground for faith conversations. It’s important to understand their backstories, their current spirituality and the hurdles that keep them from claiming the Christian faith as their own.

Spiritually Open Non-Christians Are Not Unfamiliar with Faith in General or Christianity in Particular

Through a series of questions, Barna dug into the backstories of spiritually open non-Christians to look for commonalities and trends. It’s important for pastors and church leaders to recognize that just because someone may be outside of their church or not claim their faith, that doesn’t mean they are wholly unfamiliar with it.

Interestingly, nearly half of spiritually open non-Christians who had a religious upbringing (43%) say their faith was very important to them while growing up, and 37 percent say they were very active in that faith during their upbringing.

Remember Alisa? She falls into this camp. Though today she satisfies her spiritual longings through other avenues, she grew up in a nondenominational Christian church, where her concept of spirituality was more “intertwined with religion.”

Many spiritually open non-Christians were indeed raised Christian (37%), and most have identified as Christian at some point in their lives (55%). Even if they haven’t identified as a Christian, 61 percent have attended a Christian church or parish at some point.

A key here is that while many spiritually open non-Christians have had experiences with Christianity, they have had a different faith experience than practicing Christians who share their openness. (For now, we’ll focus on the telling gap between these two groups, but will come back to compare to the stories of nonpracticing Christians later in this series, as they offer other unique insights on discipleship challenges.)

These open non-Christians with Christian backgrounds are less likely than their practicing Christian peers to have had meaningful experiences in their faith community where they contributed to the church, served the poor or marginalized or gained leadership training.

Spiritually open non-Christians are also less likely than practicing Christians to see the religion of their growing-up years as a source of belonging or as an opportunity to connect with God.

Instead, non-Christians with spiritual openness are more likely to see their childhood religion in a negative light. While practicing their former religion felt like the right thing to do or offered guidelines for how to live, a more common sentiment is that their childhood religion was an obligation rather than a choice. Another interesting note is that spiritually open non-Christians are twice as likely as their practicing Christian peers to say their childhood religion was a source of anxiety.

Spiritually Open Non-Christians Are Sorting out the Place of Faith in Their Lives

The upbringings of spiritually open non-Christians are just one piece of their broader stories. There is much to learn from how they presently perceive and engage with faith, whether Christianity or otherwise.

Politics is a big issue for non-Christians who have moved away from Christianity but retain a degree of spiritual openness. More than half (51%) say they want to distance themselves from the politics of the Church. Only 27 percent of spiritually open practicing Christians agree.

Many of these non-Christians take issue with institutions such as the Church in general. Of those open non-Christians who have some Christian background, 40 percent say they have a hard time trusting religious institutions. Only 10 percent of practicing Christians in this category agree. We don’t know from this survey if they have a general distrust of all institutions or if the issue lies specifically with the Christian Church. Either way, this distrust is a big hurdle for faith leaders to overcome.

These open non-Christians also struggle to believe the Church can help them. Roughly one-third says they are skeptical of most teachings from the Church (35%), that the Church doesn’t answer their questions (34%), or that the Church can’t answer their questions (31%). Additionally, 27 percent say their childhood faith has not helped them as an adult. These responses together paint a picture of people who have experienced life in the Church and found that its teachings fell short. In fact, “past experiences with a religious institution” is the top reason they say they have doubted their beliefs. This poses the question: Can the Church show it is relevant to modern life?

On a more personal level, many open non-Christians don’t feel they can relate to the Christians they have encountered. More than one-third with some Christian experience (36%) says their beliefs aren’t aligned with most Christians they know. They identify a lack of mature faith among Christians they know.

Considering all these hang-ups, it’s no surprise that many people we find among the non-Christians who are still spiritually open are also individuals who have gone through what could be called “deconstruction” of their childhood faith. In fact, 37 percent of open non-Christians say they have come to realize most things they believed as a child weren’t entirely accurate. More than one-quarter say they have let go of the core religious beliefs they held as a child (28%) or have deconstructed the faith of their youth (27%). It's likely that some of their previously mentioned experiences with the Church or with Christians contributed to this journey of reevaluating their beliefs, pulling them apart and figuring out how (or if) they fit together.

Even with this bleak view of Christianity, open non-Christians are looking for a deep spiritual experience—and they’re looking for it in a variety of places. In fact, 38 percent of open non-Christians say they are open to learning from any religion, and 30 percent report that no one faith system works for them. It’s not just an individual faith they’re looking for, either. They also long for spaces where they can speak freely about their spirituality, with 28 percent of open non-Christians sharing this desire for community.

These non-Christians are highly spiritual people looking for growth and depth in their spirituality. They seem to be looking for something that paper-thin, inch-deep cultural Christianity simply can’t provide. So, they might seek it out in other places. Yet, 39 percent of spiritually open non-Christians say they have made a commitment to Jesus that is still important to them today.

These stories reveal a need for churches to engage in more than just “evangelism as usual” with the open non-Christians in their communities. Traditional approaches to apologetics or faith-sharing may not yield much with this spiritually attuned, reportedly Jesus-committed group. Rather, our findings urge that pastors and congregants learn how to embrace spiritual conversations and outreach that humbly, curiously and honestly reckon with the reputational challenges and questions that sometimes surround the Christian faith. Additionally, churches need to focus on deep discipleship to provide the rich spiritual experiences non-Christians and Christians alike are looking for.

For ideas on next steps, see "Reaching Spiritually Open Christians: A Field Guide for Faith Leaders."