As we embarked on this year’s report, we asked young people that initial question. Their responses transcended narrow categories and painted an expansive picture of how sacred experience can take shape.

The State of Religion and Young People 2023: Exploring the Sacred highlights what we’ve learned from the more than 4,500 young people we surveyed and dozens more who participated in in-depth interviews. Our findings illustrate what young people know about the sacred, if and where they experience it, what those encounters are like, and how they impact their lives. For the purposes of this report, we defined the sacred as “those things, places, or moments that feel special and set apart from others—experiences that evoke a sense of wonder, awe, gratitude, deep truth, and/or interconnectedness.”

In short, young people’s experiences of the sacred aren’t confined to specific spaces or places but instead are more often found in moments that foster interconnectedness with themselves, with others, and with something larger than themselves.

Here’s a snapshot of what we learned from listening to young people about their sacred moments: