Religion has changed. So much so that for many people the word doesn’t fit anymore. For the first time in its decades-long polling of the question, Gallup’s most recent survey found that less than half of Americans say religion is important in their life. Yet belief in God and use of spiritual practices remain high.

For generations, Christianity was something done to or for people by an organization called the church and its official clergy leaders. But people are rapidly losing interest in this model of religious life. From passive and institutional religion, they are turning to a more engaged and personal spirituality.

Outside the evangelical world, Christianity as the means to something called salvation has been fading for a long time. Heaven and hell are little more than metaphors now. No one is sure what baptism is about (but then “eternal life” has always been misunderstood, as a reading of the gospel of John shows).

As a result, in modern times people’s reasons for going to church evolved into thinking it’s the right thing to do, it’s good for them, it helps with their life’s challenges, or because it makes them feel good. Asked to explain those reasons, most people would struggle, often pointing to some favorite part of the worship service like the music, sermon, prayers, or the comfort of familiar liturgy.

But the appeal of those things is holding fewer and fewer people. And for those who haven’t grown up in the church, they aren’t drawing them in. In short, we have entered a post-church era, when people have little interest in belonging to religious organizations or attending religious events. Yet people’s search for meaning and purpose has not gone away.

Post-church people are those who have come to the realization that true religion has really always been our personal responsibility. It was never something that could be done to us or for us. Religion is not “run” by the church or its clergy. It doesn’t require organizations or buildings.

Rather than those things, religion is our search for and discovery of meaning and value. It involves our separating “the wheat from the chaff” of our lives. Religion is our discovery of our true identity, apart from all the identities family and society try attach to us, and then finding the courage to live out that identity.

If you are still looking for some practice or habit to adopt in 2026, consider committing to practices that enhance your spiritual wellbeing. Spirituality is not a side interest, as religion has become. It’s not a hobby or something we do for 20 minutes a day. Rather, spirit is our fundamental identity. The 20^th century French mystic and scientist Teilhard de Chardin’s simple statement gets it exactly right.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Because religion has had such a hold on our culture, we easily slip into seeing spirituality in the same framework. We think it’s something extra that we do apart from “normal” life. We’ll sit silently in a darkened room or on a park bench for a while and say we’re “doing” meditation, thus checking our spirituality box.

But if our core identity is spirit, then spirituality is being our fullest self, and identifying and removing all the obstacles to that happening. According to Howard Thurman, the African American theologian and mystic, and spiritual advisor to Martin Luther King, this is the most important thing any of us can do.

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

This is how we need to think of the purpose of spirituality and true religion: helping us come alive. What things did that for us we likely discovered when we were young. Then we forget many of them, or dismissed them as unimportant or as luxuries precluded by “real life.” At least that’s what our culture’s authorities told us. But then, after a while, we began wondering why “real life” had become so dull or even oppressive. The religious quest is to rediscover and reconnect with the spirit that is our true self, which is an expression of the one Spirit that is present in every person and is at the heart of all reality.

The ways of making that reconnection are those things which bring us alive. Such practices are endless and different for each of us. Yet they tend to fall into categories discovered by countless generations of human experience. They include things like encountering the mystery and beauty of the natural world, experiencing music and the arts, all types of creativity, compassionate and sacrificial service to others, human intimacy, the search for knowledge and truth, ritual, play, celebration, singing and dancing, reflection and silence.

“Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it.” Not a bad intention for the year ahead. And surprisingly, it’s the most religious thing you can do.

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