Demographic Variation in Religious/Spiritual Connection Across 22 Countries: A Cross-National Analysis

Prior research has examined individuals’ and groups’ perceived connected with their religion or spirituality (R/S), however, much of the literature is from western contexts. Less is known about the prevalence of connections to R/S across nations and cultures. We used nationally representative data from the first wave of the Global Flourishing Study (N = 202,898) to explore the distribution of R/S connection in 22 geographically and culturally diverse countries and identify potential differences in connection to a religion or spirituality across nine sociodemographic characteristics (age, gender, marital status, employment status, years of education, immigration status, frequency of religious service attendance, religious affiliation, racial/ethnic identity). Our descriptive analysis supported substantial cross-national variation in the proportion of people who endorsed ‘often/always’ feeling a connection to a religion or spirituality, ranging from 23% in Japan to 85% in South Africa. We estimated country-level descriptive statistics for a connection to a religion or spirituality in each sociodemographic category, and then performed a series of random effects meta-analyses to aggregate results across countries. Meta-analytic results provided evidence of subgroup differences in R/S connection for religious service attendance and (to a lesser extent) age, with the highest R/S connection observed among people who attended religious services.