The people who attend church or temple regularly in NYC would take extreme issue with your comment as to whether the city -- and by extension, they -- have a meaningful spiritual life. You have to really be careful when you say something like that, but I assume you didn't mean it as an insult.
That said, NYC has a tradition of not letting religion enter public debate. There are notable exceptions to this rule, such as the sporadic activism of the orthodox jews in brooklyn, the out-spoken ministers in Harlem, and comments made from the pulpit at St. Pats. But by and large, religion in NYC is a personal affair and not part of the public discourse.
This is something that is not easily debated, since neither you, nor anyone else, can or should tell someone how to practice their religion -- whether it should be private or public.
The problem I have with New York is abortion, it started there and a politician would never get elected without being prochoice. And the fact that the gay community trashed the Cathedral with condoms filled with sperm and threw them all over the church. And it happend more than once. Where was the outcry after the first time?