We didn’t have to wait for the recently published data in the 2011 National Household Survey to know that nowadays fewer people attend conventional religious services. Spokespersons for mainstream places of worship repeatedly report that their numbers are down and that they find it increasingly difficult to make ends meet.

For example, the combination of diminished attendance and reduced funds has forced several synagogues in the United States to amalgamate, even though they belong to different religious streams in Judaism. Economics trumps theology.

But that doesn’t mean that people are less religious, only that they’re not willing to participate in conventional public worship or affiliate with traditional institutions. Though they may still want the benefit of clergy for life cycle events like weddings and funerals, they don’t appear to need it for personal devotions or religious instruction. Places of worship seem to be more in demand for grand occasions than for regular services.

People today yearn for transcendence no less than earlier generations, but many resent being directed by pulpit and altar as to where and how to find it. Instead of submitting to traditional hierarchies, they want vibrant informal and democratic communities run by members, not gurus. They say they’re “spiritual, not religious,” even if in reality the distinction between the two isn’t always clear to them or to anybody else.

Though some are attracted to extremist manifestations within Judaism, Christianity and Islam, others have chosen to describe themselves as atheists. But that label may, in fact, say the opposite. Hence this pertinent question posed recently in Salon Internet magazine by Professor Frans De Waal of Emory University: “In the same way that firefighters are sometimes stealth arsonists and homophobes closet homosexuals, do some atheists secretly long for the certitude of religion?”

Legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin writing in the New York Review of Books begins his essay in a similar vein: “The familiar stark divide between people of religion and without religion is too crude. Many millions of people who count themselves as atheists have convictions and experiences very like and just as profound as those that believers count as religious.”

The atheist label itself may now also be on its way out. “The atheist spring that began just a decade ago is over, thank God,” commented theologian Theo Hobson in the British weekly the Spectator. He identified Sept. 11 as “the main trigger for the explosion of this latent irritation” reflecting a wish to see Islamic terrorism as characteristic of all religion.

Analysts aren’t necessarily critical of those who have chosen to distance themselves from organized religion. They’re suggesting, however, that we should avoid labelling them as irreligious, because there are probably as many believers in the so-called atheist camp as there are in ostensibly religious, even fundamentalist, circles. In my pastoral work I’ve encountered many non-believers among seemingly passionate champions of traditional religion.

What virtually all have in common is the quest for community. Perhaps that’s behind the recent research emanating from the University of Saskatchewan and reported in the April issue of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry arguing that attending religious services lowers considerably the risk of depression.

Perhaps that’s also why Alain de Botton, the popular exponent of neo-atheism, has advocated atheist “churches,” not because of theology, but because coming together for celebration and reflection, especially around rituals, binds people to one another and helps them to overcome some of the alienation that at times even leads to mental distress.

Atheists seem to crave “religious” access to healthy living as much as others. It’s part of the compelling evidence that conventional labels are futile and misleading. There are many paths to God.

Dow Marmur is rabbi emeritus at Toronto's Holy Blossom Temple. His column appears every other week.