Spiritual Yearning in a Shifting World: Mapping the Dynamics, Predictors, and Consequences of Spiritual Seeking in Nonreligious Lives
Joshua A. Wilt (Case Western Reserve University)
Patty Van Cappellen (Duke University)
Julie J. Exline (University of Virginia)
Yehudis Keller (Case Western Reserve University)
Award: $249,999
Start Date: October 1, 2026
End Date: September 20, 2028
Focus: This mixed-methods project treats spiritual yearning as a process that unfolds over time rather than as either a fixed personality trait or a passing emotion. It focuses especially on nonreligious adults - including atheists, agnostics, people who are spiritual but not religious, and those who have left a faith tradition - and asks when yearning becomes integrated with meaning, authenticity, moral growth, and constructive engagement, and when it instead becomes rigid, frustrated, despairing, or entangled with spiritual and psychological distress.
Approach: A 12-month longitudinal study of approximately 1,500 adults will use seven survey waves to identify persistent, episodic, crisis-driven, and potentially resolving trajectories of spiritual yearning. The study will test how bereavement, illness, relationship change, religious exit, encounters with nature, aesthetic experiences, sacred moments, personality, and spiritual practices initiate, intensify, or resolve yearning. Repeated life-story interviews with a smaller group will illuminate how participants interpret these experiences. A second longitudinal study will focus on approximately 250 people who are currently leaving or have recently left a religious tradition.
Contribution: The project will connect distinct patterns of yearning with meaning in life, authenticity, moral identity, hope, well-being, psychological richness, depression, anxiety, and spiritual struggle. It is careful not to equate distress itself with vice; instead, it asks whether particular patterns of yearning become constructive or constricting over time. Anticipated outputs include empirical articles, a conceptual review, open datasets, conference presentations, and public-facing materials that help normalize existential searching while clarifying when additional support may be needed.
