The room next door to faith — Questioning religion is not the same as abandoning it

Article by Peter Choi in the May 2026 issue of The Christian Century
First published on May 6, 2026

When I recently heard Pádraig Ó Tuama describe himself as being “in the room next door to belief,” heads nodded across the room. He had named something many people feel but struggle to articulate: the ache of stepping away from familiar convictions without entirely abandoning faith.

Some drift slowly away from the room of belief; others experience a sudden, painful rupture. However it happens, life will never be the same. At the same time, Ó Tuama seemed to be acknowledging that not all spiritual migration is an exodus, a total departure. Leaving certainty is not the same as leaving religion. He describes being next door to the room and hearing muffled sounds through the wall. He has left the room but not the building. In fact, the loss of belief can lead to a different relationship with faith.

It is also noteworthy that Ó Tuama describes belief as a room in the first place. To extend his metaphor: A person dwells inside a room, not the room inside the person. This way of looking at belief is humbling, for it is not so much that we hold beliefs inside us, but we are held inside a belief system. And if belief is indeed a room in a house, not a prison, with a door and the freedom to move in and out, it makes all the difference in how a person might change and grow by way of movement.

Ó Tuama’s words add nuance and grace to a more familiar description of evolving faith: “spiritual but not religious.” SBNR describes a common experience, but what about those spiritual people who undergo disenchantment without choosing to leave religion?

It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue like SBNR, but we may need another category for a similar though distinct experience: “spiritual but not leaving religion.” This descriptor fits those who feel deep incongruity between their spirituality and religion, yet not one that requires them to jettison the latter altogether. For many who have grown up in the church, probing spiritual questions need not mean displacement from their spiritual roots. They may move to a different room without leaving the house—and this spiritual sojourn may be a deeper journey into religion.

These shifts and nuances are easy to miss. In some faith circles, religion has even become a suspect word. When Christian preachers contrast their (true) faith with other (false) religions, even claiming that theirs is not a religion, they may be striving to highlight the virtues of their conviction. But they risk overlooking the deeply religious nature of their own spirituality.

A prominent pastor and apologist once declared to me, “I don’t know any Christian who doesn’t believe some theologies are better/truer/more faithful than other theologies. Don’t you? How could you not? So there’s nothing wrong with saying, ‘My theology is truer than yours.’”

But must we believe that our convictions are truer or better than those of others? Once we do, any change begins to look like betrayal, every departure a step toward degeneration. Instead of doubling down on beliefs, we might acknowledge that movement is inevitable and not always fraught with mortal danger or descent into heresy. The slippery slope metaphor, after all, assumes we stand on a mountaintop—but in the valleys and plains of life, there is no precipice from which to fall. When spiritually curious people ask hard questions while refusing to leave religion behind, they may simply be exploring other rooms in the same house.

What some believers fear as downgrade or deviation may instead be a faithful acknowledgment that we all see through a glass dimly. Rather than claiming exclusive access to spiritual truth, remaining within religion while asking hard questions can simply be an act of humility and solidarity with others who are searching too. The room next door is still in the same building; there is a continuity of membership in the same household. You can overhear music through the walls. The smell of dinner wafts through the air.

I wonder if this is what Jaroslav Pelikan meant when he said, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” This vision of living faith requires plumbing the depths of the faith of the dead and adapting it for new challenges. At the end of the day, the room next door provides both safety and differentiation. Tradition is not staying frozen in one room; it is living in a house built by those who have gone before us, with rooms connected by doorways and hallways.

Christian Smith has written about a “re-­enchantment” among young Americans today. Disenchantment is not always the final destination. Sometimes re-enchantment happens in the room next door. Through their questions and pursuit of spirituality, many young people are delving deeper into religion, even if it does not look like the religion of their parents.

A few days ago, I had lunch with a young man who told me that, for him, quitting prayer has become a profoundly life-changing spiritual practice. He explained how prayer had too often functioned as a soothing mechanism, a form of dissociation that distanced him from his own healing. So he decided to practice not reaching for prayer as a reflex, learning instead to tend to his own heart. As I strained to understand, many thoughts rushed through my head; and if I’m honest, I wanted to clarify and improve his reasoning. But the most important words I could offer were simple: Tell me more. 

Peter Choi is executive director of the Center for Faith and Justice in San Francisco and author of George Whitefield: Evangelist for God and Empire.

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