As millions leave organized religion, spiritual and secular communities offer refuge

Brad Ruggles had already begun wrestling with his evangelical faith when he was called to launch a small church in a north Indianapolis suburb. As he pastored over his 200-member congregation, he found himself struggling with members’ resistance to issues of LGBTQ inclusion or questions raised by the murder of George Floyd.

Eventually, in 2021, he stepped down and away from his faith – but ultimately craved the brotherhood he’d enjoyed as part of a congregation. Then he found C3, an inclusive Sunday collective in west Michigan that had undergone its own transformation and now describes itself not as a church but a home for the spiritually homeless, dedicated to pondering existential questions and living out shared values.

“This place is such a unicorn,” said Ruggles, now lead teacher at C3, whose name is a nod to its previous existence as Christ Community Church. “These are some of the most openminded people I’ve ever met.”

Communities like C3 show how, despite Americans’ ongoing abandonment of traditional organized religion, many longing to maintain some sense of spirituality and community in their lives are finding it in places both religious and non-religious.

Their sanctuaries come in many forms. Sometimes their meeting places are in a building, other times online, other times just in the camaraderie with other people who have similar beliefs.

The exodus from mainstream religious paths has taken place over the last several decades: In the early 1990s, nine in 10 Americans identified as Christian; by last year that figure had dropped to 63%. More recently the shift has been driven by young women, reversing patterns of generations past.

The decline has occurred largely among Protestants, 60% of whom are evangelicals. Meanwhile, the portion of Americans describing themselves as agnostic, atheist or “nothing in particular” – the so-called “nones” – has risen to nearly three in 10.

Eight in 10 adults say religion’s role in American life is diminishing, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey, an all-time high. Their actions show it, too: The Southern Baptist Convention has lost more than 2 million members since 2006, and a 2019 Pew study estimated 10 million Christians had left the church in the previous decade.

In all, about 40 million American adults have stopped attending church in the last 25 years, according to researchers Jim Davis and Michael Graham, authors of “The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?”

The reasons people leave the church vary. Some were never close to their faith and find other priorities when they move away from home. Others find fault with the pomp of razzle-dazzle services they see as performative or struggle to reconcile church teachings with personal beliefs about issues such as reproductive rights or LGBTQ inclusion.

Some can’t imagine walking into a church again. Such was the case with Ruggles, who still hasn’t. While some might find refuge in other Christian denominations or more progressive forms of their own faith, others seek to redefine their Christianity in places where they can voice doubts without judgment.

For instance, the Post Evangelical Collective, with branches in 14 U.S. cities, features church leaders, artists and others “who find ourselves estranged from the dominant expressions of American Christianity.”

Or there’s Current Collective, a community in Carlsbad, California, that describes itself as “rooted in the mystic Christian tradition” with a dogma-free theology. “We ultimately believe that our living and being is far more important than our statements of belief,” its website reads.

Some seek religion-free community

Others look to shed religion altogether but still hope to find a community to help them navigate life’s challenges.

“People do indeed still need places to gather, and their communities need them to have places where volunteer energy gets mobilized and inspired,” said Nancy Ammerman, professor emerita of religious sociology at Boston University. “There is no particular reason that spiritual, nonreligious practices should prevent them from doing so.”

Some gravitate to groups like Sunday Assembly USA, a London-based secular network with branches in 13 American cities. The life-celebrating movement initially rode atheism’s growing waves but welcomes a wide range of beliefs, said Ross Llewallyn of Sunday Assembly Atlanta.

“A steady stream of folks constantly give us a try because we’re offering something novel that many have lost,” Llewallyn said. The number of inquiries from people looking to start new chapters has doubled in recent years, he added.

The number of such communities is difficult to track because their identities vary and they have few organized networks.

“The post-religious organizational field is highly diverse and fluid,” said Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame who is writing a book about younger generations’ diminishing devotion to traditional religion.

The patchwork existence of such churches means these communities provide their own oversight; their adherence to no doctrine leaves teachings open to constant shift. For now, that’s how they like it.

But such groups, Smith said, hold promise, especially following the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Here are some communities in which the unmoored are finding a home:

Vinings Lake Church ― Mableton, Georgia

In Mableton, Georgia, northwest of Atlanta, Vinings Lake Church sprouted from the remains of Vinings Lake Baptist, a 40-year-old faltering congregation whose numbers had dwindled to the point that it struggled to pay the utility bills.

Leaders were preparing to shut the church down and sell the building. Instead, they signed it over to the founder of what would become simply Vinings Lake Church, who was undergoing a religious deconstruction that would ultimately drive him away from the evangelical world.

“He literally pulled the letters off the sign out front,” said Cody Deese, now lead pastor at Vinings Lake, which describes itself as “an ever-evolving spiritual collective waking up to beauty, truth and goodness wherever it’s found.” 

Deese had grown up with a fundamentalist evangelical background; his father had been a Baptist pastor. But by the time he took over the church in 2017, he and his wife had decided to support same-sex marriage; it was around the time that Donald Trump became president, “and that changed everything for everybody.”

Partisanship made its way into the pews, and when Deese invited a member of the Muslim faith to address the congregation about Islamophobia, people walked out. Others did the same when he brought in a blacksmith to make art from melted-down reclaimed firearms acquired from the local sheriff’s office.

But the real exodus, Deese said, took place when he attempted to address the topic of Christian nationalism.

“Bottom line is, if you need to know how to shrink a church, I’m your guy,” Deese said wryly.

A congregation of 800 plummeted to 100. The budget shrunk by $1 million. Some staff members had to be released. But internally, Deese said, those who remained “were more alive than we had ever been. We had no doubts. It was like we had seen something. We were pulled into a greater vision and understanding of what a local collective could be.”

The community is now composed of nones, agnostics and disillusioned former members of megachurches. Members don’t meet every Sunday, but a typical gathering might include meditation and breathing exercises, music and a singer; someone will read scripture or ancient wisdom teachings or leading-edge voices in spirituality.

“We do our best to be nonpartisan,” Deese said. “The difference between us and fundamentalism is one phrase: We might be wrong. They were always so damn certain about everything.”

Awakenings Movement ― Houston

At Houston’s Awakenings, many members arrive questioning the brand of Christianity they grew up with, their social justice ideals at odds with the theology they’ve been prescribed.

“They’re maybe two verses away from throwing out the baby with the bathwater,” said Tia Norman, the group’s pastor. “They have often experienced burnout and have a sense that there’s something more, but they’re not quite sure what it is.”

Many, she said, are weary of sharing with previous church leaders their struggles with personal turmoil or questions about police brutality and being handed a Bible verse as a Band-Aid.

“Sometimes in these environments, if spiritual teachers or church leaders would just say, ‘I don’t know,’ that we don’t have all the answers, it helps us relate more,” Norman said. “I say it all the time.”

She describes the 19-year-old community as a nondenominational one built on notions of inclusivity and tolerance, a place where members can explore their activist leanings while practicing self-care.

“We’re actively exploring intersections of identity, faith and justice,” she said. “What is the wisdom from Christian tradition that we can draw from to wholeheartedly respond to the things that are causing so much division in the world today?”

The community has about 40 core members, and while the Bible is the text most often referenced, Awakenings attracts people of all faith traditions, Norman said.

Sunday weekly meetings are conducted online, with one in-person session a month. Each revolves around a different question posed by rotating community members, followed by a short period of meditation and, finally, an instructive anecdote provided by Norman or someone else in the group.

“The idea is that everyone has a story we can all learn from,” she said.

Aldea Spiritual Community ― Tucson, Arizona

When people hear the word “church,” they usually visualize dogma and organized religion, Jake Haber said. At Aldea Spiritual Community in Tucson, where he’s lead pastor, he’s trying to achieve just the opposite.

“We have no set of beliefs anyone has to adhere to in order to belong in our community,” he said. “Desire for community is a human one that transcends culture and religion, and we’re trying to get back to the simplicity of that. We all want to have people to walk alongside when we’re celebrating or when we’re grieving.”

The 30-year-old former evangelical church experienced a gradual and grueling theological transformation that led to its emergence in 2006 as a social-justice-minded community embracing multiple spiritual traditions and welcoming “people of diverse journeys” to its fold. The name, which means “village” in Spanish, is a nod to both its Sonoran location and inclusive approach.

“A village is a place where everyone finds their place,” said Haber, who joined Aldea in 2022. “In church language, people think about hierarchy and power. A village is more communal.”

The community now emphasizes values over beliefs. Not all of the former church’s members have joined along in the journey.

A typical Sunday gathering features talk, music and meditation and draws half of the community’s membership of about 150, nearly all of whom are people who have left traditional organized religion, Haber said.

“They’re people who grew up in a more traditional church structure and felt there was more to life or God than what they had been taught,” he said. “… Until recently it seemed to most that if they wanted to be part of a spiritual community their only option was to be part of a religious, dogmatic environment. Now people are seeing there’s alternatives.”

Heartway Church ― Davie, Florida

Danny Prada wants people to ask the big questions. He likely won’t give them the answer – that’s for them to figure out, he said.

“I tell folks, this is how I see it but you’ve got to work this out for yourself,” said Prada, founder of Heartway Church in Davie, Florida, 24 miles north of Miami. “I don’t offer any sort of certainty; if anything, it’s like, let’s get comfortable with uncertainty.”

Heartway launched in 2015 as a Southern Baptist Convention plant, but as Prada began to experience doubts about denominational doctrine, his questions about issues such as LGBTQ inclusion were met with resistance. Eventually, the church’s philosophical detour forced Heartway to relinquish its SBC funding.

“We lost a lot of people in the process,” Prada said, blaming much of that on his own zeal, immaturity and antagonistic approach to the faith he was shedding. “I felt like it was my duty to prove that way of Christianity was wrong and this one was right. Even now, a lot of people can’t go where we continue to go, and they fall by the wayside.”

Heartway is now what Prada calls “a contemplative community centered on love” – focused on Christ’s teachings, he said, “while remaining open to other ways that God speaks to humanity.”

The result is an interfaith community with guest speakers that have included Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist leaders and representatives of various Christian denominations. In addition to Sunday gatherings and meditations, members engage in “Christian yoga” or therapeutic sound healing sessions, and Prada’s teachings incorporate Sufi, Hindu or Zen Buddhist texts, or even psychology or science.

Attendance averages between 120 and 140 on any given Sunday, he said – a showing he considers respectable given the church’s location in conservative South Florida. It includes individuals who consider themselves spiritual but not religious as well as so-called nones, those who don’t affiliate with any particular religion.

Heartway, he said, is “a place where those people can belong and maybe reconnect with the faith traditions of their past and get some of the benefits they miss without being bound to all the baggage that comes with it.”

C3 Spiritual Community -- Grand Haven, Michigan

In Grand Haven, Michigan, west of Grand Rapids on the shores of Lake Michigan, C3 “feels like an ongoing experiment,” said lead teacher Ruggles.

Sunday gatherings average around 90 attendees and are built around a topic presented by a group or guest teacher bookended by community discussions.

The community began as a Reformed Church in America, part of a network of mainline Reformed Protestant churches. Its separation from the RCA began in the 1990s after the church let a gay organization conduct meetings in a church office.

As the community went through its theological transformation – the name C3 refers to its former identity as Christ Community Church – many members fell by the wayside; it now meets at a community center but has seen recent growth among younger generations, executive director Shannon McMaster said.

The community now revolves around what McMaster calls 2024 kinds of values, not rooted in dogma or scripture; while its curriculum draws much of its inspiration from Christian teachings, speakers represent multiple faith traditions.

“What makes C3 itself is the way the Sunday gathering happens, forming this spiritual community around the idea that each individual uncovers their spiritual life for themselves, but they don’t have to do by themselves,” he said.

C3 isn’t a church, Ruggles said, though members meet on Sunday mornings, hear music and do other church-type things. At the same time, he said, speakers don’t face resistance over something they said because it doesn’t jibe with scripture.

“People are really fed up with what Christianity, especially evangelical Christianity, has aligned itself with,” Ruggles said. “C3 is not something I feel embarrassed to talk about, whereas as a pastor I always felt some kind of chagrin…. This is the future of spirituality in our country – communities finding creative ways of leaving behind stodgy practices that no longer serve a society moving into a better place.”