Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Is Being "Spiritual" Enough Without Being Religious? A Study Of Violent And Property Crimes Among Emerging Adults, Sung Joon Jang, Aaron B. Franzen

Faculty Publications

While prior research tends to confirm a negative association between religiousness and crime, criminologists have been slow to incorporate new concepts and emergent issues from the scientific study of religion into their own research. The self-identity phrase “spiritual but not religious” is one of them, which has been increasingly used by individuals who claim to be “spiritual” but disassociate themselves from organized religion. This study first examines differences in crime between “spiritual but not religious” individuals and their “religious and spiritual,” “religious but not spiritual,” and “neither religious nor spiritual” peers in emerging adulthood. Specifically, we hypothesize that the spiritual-but-not-religious …