Prayer in non-religious life

Words for people who do not identify with a religious tradition but still want something said. A first-class option, not a fallback.

For a growing share of people, no prayer is said at the hospital bed, the graveside, or the dinner table, and something else stands in its place. Roughly 28 percent of American adults now report no religious affiliation, and the 2021 census recorded 37.2 percent of people in England and Wales with no religion. What fills the space prayer once held is a repertoire rather than a single rite: shared silence, spoken tribute, gratitude, music, practical help, and plain presence. Some of it is improvised at kitchen tables. Some of it is trained, accredited, and organized. The organized strand is humanism. Humanists UK, founded in 1896 and known as the British Humanist Association from 1967 to 2017, accredits celebrants who lead non-religious funerals, weddings, and naming ceremonies, and runs a pastoral network whose trained volunteers visit hospitals, prisons, and hospices. In the United States, the American Humanist Association, founded in 1941, works alongside The Humanist Society, which endorses humanist celebrants and chaplains; the Federal Bureau of Prisons accepted humanist chaplaincy endorsement in 2020. Across all of it runs one consistent difference from prayer: these practices are addressed to the people in the room, not to a deity. The unorganized strand is larger still. It takes in atheists and agnostics, the many who answer surveys with nothing in particular, and a distinct spiritual but not religious group, about 22 percent of American adults, who report awe, connection, and meaning without institutional religion. Outsiders usually meet all of this first through language and habit: a public figure saying our thoughts are with the families, a school observing a moment of silence, a funeral announced as a celebration of life. These are not absences or omissions. They are the working replacements, and they have their own histories, institutions, and etiquette.

Forms of prayer

The rhythm

No liturgical calendar or daily office exists, and it would be dishonest to describe one. Where rhythm appears it is personal or civic. Personal: a gratitude entry before bed, a morning meditation, a weekly walk, a candle lit on a private anniversary; about three in ten unaffiliated Americans meditate, and around a quarter pray privately at least sometimes, on their own terms. Civic: the annual remembrance silences, such as Britain's two-minute silence on 11 November, and the moments of silence called after public tragedies. A minority join recurring congregation-style gatherings, Sunday Assembly among them. Otherwise the deepest rhythm is biographical rather than annual: a naming to welcome a child, a wedding, a funeral, each marked once and deliberately. Professionals should expect habits to vary widely between individuals, because nothing in this tradition obliges any observance at all.

At life’s moments

Awareness-level notes only: what a moment tends to involve here, not what to do at one.

• Dying and the end of life: Surveyed nonreligious people overwhelmingly accept hospice (96 percent in one study of 263) and most would decline a chaplain visit, though minorities welcome one for companionship or existential conversation. Documented wishes center on honesty, comfort, company, and the absence of religious framing. Some care teams keep a brief silence after a death, a practice known as The Pause.
• Funerals and burial: Humanist funerals are celebrant-led tributes with music, readings, and time for reflection, and mourners often describe them as unusually personal. More than 8,000 take place yearly in England and Wales. Families choosing one usually want the person's own tastes honored and no assumption that a religious service was the default.
• Grief and mourning: Plain words carry the weight: I am so sorry, I am thinking of you, offers of specific help. In one survey, 77 percent of nonreligious respondents said phrases like it's in God's hands would leave them angry or annoyed, and afterlife platitudes such as she is in a better place can land as erasure rather than comfort.
• Marriage: Humanist weddings are personal ceremonies with vows the couple shapes. They carry legal force in Scotland (since 2005, where they now exceed Christian weddings), Northern Ireland (2018), Jersey, and Guernsey; in England and Wales couples add a civil registration, and roughly a thousand a year do, by Humanists UK's estimate. In the United States, endorsed humanist celebrants can solemnize marriages.
• Birth and new life: Naming or welcoming ceremonies mark a new child without baptism: the celebrant meets the family, and the ceremony states their hopes and wishes for the child's future before gathered friends. Humanists UK celebrants lead roughly 500 a year, and many families instead mark a birth privately or not at all. Neither choice is considered spiritually incomplete.
• Serious illness: Awareness matters more than ritual here: 38 percent of nonreligious respondents in one survey had felt marginalized in healthcare because of their beliefs, and research finds them disproportionately uncomfortable raising existential concerns first. Many still want conversation about meaning, fear, and family, provided nobody prays over them uninvited or treats illness as an opening for conversion.
• Peace: Reflection, silence, and unstructured quiet are this population's registers for calm. A moment of silence works in any mixed room, a classroom, a council chamber, a stadium, because it makes no claim on anyone's beliefs. United States courts have upheld school silences only where the stated purpose is genuinely secular rather than prayer by another name.
• Spiritual life: Spiritual but not religious is a measured category, about 22 percent of American adults, not a dodge. Researchers describe a naturalistic spirituality of awe, transcendence, and connectedness to the natural world with no supernatural object. Among the unaffiliated broadly, 43 percent express belief in God or a higher power, a phrase some use as a metaphor for vastness.
• Blessings and thanksgiving: A secular grace keeps the pause before eating and redirects the thanks: to the cook, the growers, the gathered company, or simply a shared quiet moment. Humanist organizations publish non-religious wording for holidays such as Thanksgiving. In mixed families this is often the workable compromise, since a moment of silence lets religious relatives pray privately within it.

For chaplains, nurses and funeral directors

Never infer beliefs from age, accent, or family; ask, and record the answer where the care team will see it. In survey research most nonreligious patients would decline a chaplain, yet some accept companionship or want to talk through meaning and mortality, and about 8 percent in one study would not feel able to say no, so a declined offer should stay declined. In documented surveys most nonreligious people respond to comfort phrases invoking God, heaven, or a better place with anger or annoyance rather than solace, and unprompted bedside prayer tends to read as care for the speaker rather than the patient. Useful contacts: Humanists UK accredits funeral, wedding, and naming celebrants and runs the Non-Religious Pastoral Support Network of trained visitors in hospitals, prisons, and hospices; in the United States, The Humanist Society endorses humanist celebrants and chaplains. Funeral directors should expect requests for celebrant-led services, personal music, and no default religious content, while remembering that mixed families sometimes add a hymn or prayer for religious relatives. A moment of silence is the safest shared observance in a mixed room, and some clinical teams mark a death with the brief silence known as The Pause.

Common misreadings

Variation within the tradition

The category resists flattening. Among American nones, 17 percent call themselves atheists, 20 percent agnostics, and 63 percent nothing in particular, and their practices differ sharply: 4 percent of atheists but 61 percent of the nothing-in-particular group express belief in a higher power, and about a quarter of the unaffiliated pray privately at least sometimes. Sociologists also distinguish nonverts, who left a religion, from cradle nones raised without one. Region matters. Scotland recorded a nonreligious majority (51.1 percent) in its 2022 census and has had legal humanist marriage since 2005, while England and Wales (37.2 percent no religion) still withhold legal force from the ceremony. Organized humanism, the strand with celebrants, chaplains, and codes of ethics, is a small articulate slice of a far larger unorganized population. Professionals should treat every preference as individual, because no rite or schedule binds any of these groups.

Terms worth knowing

• Humanism: A non-religious worldview that grounds ethics and meaning in human experience, reason, and care for others, without reference to gods; organized nationally by bodies such as Humanists UK and the American Humanist Association.
• Celebrant: A trained officiant who creates and leads personalized ceremonies such as weddings, namings, and funerals. Humanist celebrants work wholly without religious content; independent celebrants may mix religious and secular elements.
• Nones: Survey shorthand for the religiously unaffiliated, from the answer none of the above; covers atheists, agnostics, and people who say their religion is nothing in particular.
• Spiritual but not religious: A self-description claiming spirituality, awe, or connection while declining religious affiliation; about 22 percent of American adults in Pew's 2023 measurement, skewing younger than religious Americans.
• The Pause: A brief voluntary silence some clinical teams observe in the room after a patient dies, honoring the person and the care given; begun by a University of Virginia nurse.
• Non-Religious Pastoral Support Network: A Humanists UK network of trained volunteers offering like-minded pastoral care to non-religious people in British hospitals, prisons, and hospices, parallel to chaplaincy.
• Moment of silence: A shared period of quiet marking a death or a grave occasion. Because silence asserts no creed, people of any belief or none can take part on equal terms.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

The claims on this page rest on the following. Where practice varies, the variation is stated rather than resolved.

• Religious 'Nones' in America: Who They Are and What They Believe, Pew Research Center (2024). Vouches for the 28 percent unaffiliated figure, the atheist (17 percent), agnostic (20 percent), and nothing-in-particular (63 percent) split, growth from 16 percent in 2007, and the finding that nones are not uniformly anti-religious.
• Spirituality Among Americans, Pew Research Center (2023). Vouches for 22 percent of US adults identifying as spiritual but not religious, the 48/22/10/21 percent breakdown of spiritual and religious self-descriptions, and the younger skew of the SBNR group.
• Religion, England and Wales: Census 2021, Office for National Statistics (2022). Vouches for 37.2 percent no religion in England and Wales, up from 25.2 percent in 2011, with Christians below half for the first time; the 51.1 percent Scottish figure comes from the Scotland's Census 2022 release on ethnic group, national identity, language and religion, seen in search results.
• Death without God: Nonreligious Perspectives on End-of-Life Care, Helen Dempsey-Henofer (2019). Diversity and Equality in Health and Care 16(3): 74-79; full text read. Vouches for the survey of 263 nonreligious adults: 96 percent accepting hospice, 63 percent declining chaplains, 8 percent unable to decline, 77 percent angered or annoyed by religious phrases, 38 percent feeling marginalized in healthcare, 82 percent accepting of natural death, and the description of The Pause credited to University of Virginia nurse Jonathan Bartels.
• More Than 'None:' Spiritual Care by and for the Nonreligious, Amy Lawton and Wendy Cadge, Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, Brandeis University (2024). Working paper, full text read. Vouches for 27 percent of chaplain contacts involving unaffiliated people, meditation (26 to 30 percent) and private prayer (26 percent) rates among nones, the 43 percent higher-power belief figure and its subgroup split, 88 percent saying belief in God is unnecessary for morality, Thomas Ferrick as first US humanist chaplain at Harvard in 1974, Greg Epstein's election to lead Harvard's chaplains, Federal Bureau of Prisons approval of humanist chaplains in 2020, Bullivant's nonvert and cradle-none distinction, and the naturalistic-spirituality and wellbeing research it reviews (Dein 2016; Gad et al. 2022; Hwang and Cragun 2017).
• End-of-life preferences for atheists, Marilyn Smith-Stoner (2007). Journal of Palliative Medicine study of 88 self-identified atheists. Vouches for a good death defined to include respect for nonbelief and the withholding of prayer, and a threefold secular spirituality of personal meaning, human connection, and the natural world.
• Humanist Ceremonies pages and marriage-law campaign page, Humanists UK website, Humanists UK (2026 (as consulted)). Vouches for the celebrant network active since the organization's 1896 founding lineage, ceremony types and their content (music, readings, time for reflection), and, via the fetched marriage-laws page, legal recognition in Scotland, Northern Ireland (2018), Jersey (2018), and Guernsey (2021), the 2020 High Court discrimination finding for England and Wales, and humanist ceremonies overtaking Christian marriages in Scotland.
• Factsheet: Humanist weddings, Religion Media Centre (2022). Vouches for humanist weddings reaching 23 percent of Scottish weddings and overtaking Christian weddings, Humanists UK's network of roughly 400 trained celebrants, and the estimate of about 1,000 non-binding humanist weddings a year in England and Wales.
• Counting blessings versus burdens: an experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life, Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCullough (2003). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84(2): 377-389. Vouches for the experimental finding that gratitude-listing groups reported higher wellbeing than hassles-listing groups, grounding the gratitude-practice section as evidence-based and secular.
• Wikipedia reference articles: Moment of silence; Two-minute silence; Thoughts and prayers; Humanists UK; American Humanist Association; Sunday Assembly, Wikipedia contributors (2026 (as consulted)). Consulted for the 1919 Armistice two-minute silence and its Cape Town precursor, Wallace v. Jaffree on school silences, the thoughts-and-prayers criticism timeline from 2007 through Parkland, organizational founding dates (Union of Ethical Societies 1896, BHA 1967, renamed 2017; AHA 1941; Humanist Society celebrant program), the figures of 8,000 plus humanist funerals and about 500 namings yearly in England and Wales, the roughly 150-volunteer pastoral network, and Sunday Assembly's 2013 founding; cross-checked against the institutional pages above and news coverage seen in search results.