Understanding Varieties of Religious Types: A Latent Profile Analysis of U.S. National Data.

OBJECTIVE: Religion and spirituality are multidimensional features of adult life, yet most research examines individual dimensions in isolation rather than as components of a greater whole. This study uses a person-centered approach to identify distinct profiles of religion and spirituality and to examine how these profiles differ across sociodemographic and psychological characteristics in a national sample of U.S. adults. METHODS: Data come from the Refresher sample of the Midlife in the U.S. (MIDUS) study. Latent profile analysis was used to identify patterns of religion and spirituality across six dimensions: religious service attendance, private religious practice, religious identification, subjective spirituality, daily spiritual experience, and religious coping. Sociodemographic characteristics, personality traits, and optimism were then compared across profiles. RESULTS: A six-profile solution provided the best fit, identifying groups labeled Highly Religious, Spiritually-Oriented Religious, Organizationally Religious, Moderately Engaged, Disengaged Identifiers, and Nonreligious. Profiles differed meaningfully across sociodemographic characteristics including age, race/ethnicity, gender, and education, as well as across personality traits and optimism. CONCLUSIONS: These findings underscore the substantial heterogeneity in how religion and spirituality are lived and expressed. By identifying distinct constellations of religion and spirituality within individuals, this approach moves beyond variable-centered analyses and provides a more holistic framework for understanding religion and spirituality as lived configurations connected to broader psychological and social processes.