The Templeton Foundation is seeking researchers to study an important big question:
“How can those who experience a deep yearning for a meaningful spiritual life, but find traditional religion unsatisfying, fulfill that yearning? This new research is addressing the spiritual yearnings, existential concerns, and search for meaning of spiritually curious but nonreligious individuals and communities.
“What kind of phenomenon is spiritual yearning? What do the spiritually yearning nonreligious describe as the object of their yearning? What are the differences between spiritual longing, spiritual questing, and spiritual curiosity? Is spiritual yearning a persisting phenomenon, or does it tend towards resolution or dissolution?
“How should we understand the role of spiritual struggles in meaning-making and spirituality among the nonreligious? To the degree that nonreligious individuals experience or report a lack of spiritual meaning, what is it they report lacking (e.g., community, ritual, grounds for morality, sacred spaces)?”