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Why more Americans are identifying with spirituality
The number of Americans who identify as spiritual is on the rise, while many are distancing themselves from organized religion. According to a 2023 Pew Research study, seven out of 10 Americans describe themselves as spiritual in some way, a concept that can be tied to organized religion or exist outside of it.
Lisa Miller, a clinical psychologist at Teacher College, Columbia University and author of “The Awakened Brain” and “The Spiritual Child,” says humanity is at a crisis point without spirituality. In an interview at her Connecticut home, she led Lisa Ling through a meditation that evoked a spiritual experience.
“Religion, our beautiful world faith traditions, it is a gift of our parents and grandparents,” Miller explained after the meditation. “Spirituality is innate. Spirituality is an inborn human capacity.”
Miller pointed to scientific research, including MRI studies, that shows spirituality is embedded in the human brain.
“We now have an excellent peer review science of 20 years that says we are innately spiritual beings,” Miller said. “When we strengthen our spiritual core, we are healthier. We are more resilient.”
A 2023 Gallup Poll found that 82% of Americans have some type of spiritual belief system. At the same time, fewer people are identifying with organized religion. Varun Soni, interfaith chaplain at the University of Southern California, has witnessed this shift. He says people often associate religion with violence, misogyny, and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. But he believes they are missing part of the picture.
“Religion is also a place of social services, liberation theology, hospitals, and schools,” Soni said.
Despite discussing faith and spirituality, Soni said God is rarely mentioned in his conversations with students.
“You don’t need religion and you don’t need God, but you need something sacred. You need something that gets you up in the morning,” he said.
Soni oversees more student religious groups than any other chaplain in the country and has observed a trend: About 50% of students entering college have no religious background. While at the same time, depression is on the rise. He sees a direct link between the absence of faith and the increase in depression, with many young people turning to social media as a replacement for their spiritual identity.
Miller agrees that nurturing spirituality is essential for adolescents and young adults. Without it, she warns, “spiritual emergence can devolve into emptiness…despair, and depression.”
For those seeking to awaken their spiritual core, Miller encourages people to pay attention to moments of synchronicity—events that seem coincidental but she believes hold deeper meaning.
During a guided meditation with Ling, a white bird flew past the window. Ling took that as a sign, as she was thinking about synchronicity in her own life at the time it happened. Miller called it a “sacred synchronicity.”
TRENTON, N.J. — Democratic Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver has defeated Republican small businessman Carmen Bucco in a contest in New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District that opened up because of the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in April.
McIver will serve out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends in January. She and Bucco will face a rematch on the November ballot for the full term.
McIver said in a statement Wednesday that she stands on the “shoulders of giants,” naming Payne as chief among them.
She cast ahead to the November election, saying the right to make reproductive health choices was on the ballot as well as whether the economy should benefit the wealthy or “hard working Americans.”
“I will fight because the purpose of politics and the purpose of our vote is to give the people of our communities and our nation a bold voice,” she said.
Bucco congratulated McIver on the victory in a statement but said he’s looking forward to the rematch in November.
“I am not going anywhere,” he said in an email. “We still have a second chance to make district 10 great again!”
Who are LaMonica McIver and Carmen Bucco?
McIver emerged as the Democratic candidate in a crowded field in the July special election. A member of the city council of New Jersey’s biggest city since 2018, she also worked for Montclair Public Schools as a personnel director and plans to focus on affordability, infrastructure, abortion rights and “protecting our democracy,” she told The Associated Press earlier this summer.
Bucco describes himself on his campaign website as a small-business owner influenced by his upbringing in the foster system. He lists support for law enforcement and ending corruption as top issues.
The 10th District lies in a heavily Democratic and majority-Black region of northern New Jersey. Republicans are outnumbered by more than 6 to 1.
It’s been a volatile year for Democrats in New Jersey, where the party dominates state government and the congressional delegation.
Among the developments were the conviction on federal bribery charges of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who has denied the charges, and the demise of the so-called county party line — a system in which local political leaders give their preferred candidates favorable position on the primary ballot.
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, who’s running for Menendez’s seat, and other Democrats brought a federal lawsuit challenging the practice as part of his campaign to oust Menendez, who has resigned since his conviction.
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Sean “Diddy” Combs at same Brooklyn detention center that held R. Kelly, Sam Bankman-Fried, other high-profile inmates
A second judge refused to grant bail to Sean “Diddy” Combs on Wednesday and he could remain in federal custody at a Brooklyn detention center until his trial for sex trafficking charges. Combs joins other high-profile inmates, such as singer R. Kelly, fallen cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, rapper Ja Rule —even Al Sharpton served a brief stint— who were held at the same federal detention center.
Notorious for its horrible conditions —inmates won a $10 million class action settlement after enduring frigid conditions during an 8-day blackout in 2019— the waterfront industrial complex, MDC Brooklyn, houses 1,200 inmates.
JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images
Violence and corruption have long plagued the facility; U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown of the Eastern District of New York wrote the detention center had “dangerous, barbaric conditions” in a recent sentencing opinion. Two inmates were stabbed to death in recent months and several correction officers have been convicted for smuggling contraband and accepting bribes.
Combs joins a list of high-profile personalities that have landed at the MDC Brooklyn, partly because the city’s other federal detention center, MDC New York, closed in 2021, also due to horrible conditions. The disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in his cell there in 2019. “Numerous and serious” instances of misconduct among corrections staff gave Epstein the opportunity to kill himself, a subsequent federal watchdog investigation found.
Kelly sued the federal detention center in 2022 for wrongly putting him on suicide watch after his sentencing. Kelly sought $100 million because he said the detention center knew he wasn’t suicidal after he was convicted in 2021 for racketeering and violating the Mann Act, which bars transporting people across state lines for prostitution.
Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Former crypto billionaire Bankman-Fried survived on bread, water and sometimes peanut butter when he was in the MDC Brooklyn, his attorney said, because the detention center continued to serve him a “flesh diet” despite requests for vegan dishes.
Ja Rule stayed at the MDC Brooklyn for a brief time before being released after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession. Most of his prison time was spent in a state prison in New York.
Sharpton served a 90-day sentence in 2001 and went on a hunger strike for protesting the U.S. Navy bombing of the island of Vieques, in Puerto Rico.
Combs was taken into custody on Monday and according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday he was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution.
His attorney Marc Agnifilo told CBS News, “It’s impossible to prepare for a trial from where he is,” after a first federal judge denied Combs bail on Tuesday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky agreed with prosecutors who argued the hip-hop mogul, who is accused of using his business empire as a criminal enterprise to conceal his alleged abuse of women, is a flight risk and poses an ongoing threat to the safety of the community.
Agnifilo said the part of the detention center where Combs is being held is “a very difficult place to be.”
contributed to this report.
