After her own spiritual journey, a religion scholar hypothesized that one common belief about the "spiritual but not religious" – that they aren't serious about their beliefs – is wrong. The Rev. Dr. Linda Mercadante, a senior professor of theology at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio, conducted hundreds of interviews with so-called SBNR's to let them tell their own spiritual stories. The result is her book, Belief Without Borders: Inside the Minds of the Spiritual But Not Religious.
