Earlier this year, our partners at NORC at the University of Chicago shared with us that they’d received the last of the 3,600 responses to our national survey on spirituality and civic life. With excitement and anticipation, we and our partners at Hattaway Communications, our advisors, and reviewers dug into the data, looking for the nuance of what it means to be and feel spiritual today.
The timing was ironic, our country was just beginning to experience its own spiritual crisis as we grappled with our collective—and varying—responses to a contagion unlike anything we’ve experienced and to racial injustices all too familiar to many. But what the study revealed, and what we are excited to share with you, is a spiritual awareness and related aspirations that may help us navigate these and other challenges ahead.
People from a variety of spiritual and religious backgrounds shared that spirituality is an essential element of being human that can bring beauty to our lives and animate us in powerful ways. Through personal stories and survey data, the study further reveals how the spiritual element of our nature informs our understanding of ourselves and each other and inspires us to take action in our communities.
Next month, we’ll be sharing the findings through a comprehensive report and an interactive website. We invite you to sign up here for more updates about the launch. Throughout the rest of this year, we’ll be sharing insights from the research from our many advisors and reviewers, elaborating on findings, and revealing additional research underway using our data.
This has been a labor of love for Fetzer and our partners at Hattaway Communications and builds on decades of inquiry into the spiritual dimension of life and its relationship to our external actions. By better understanding how people describe, nurture, and practice their spirituality, we hope that we can find new ways to share stories and inspire action.