THE number of Americans who say that they are religious has remained about the same in the United States over the past five years, after years of sharp decline, a new study by Pew Research says.
Again, after years of sharp decline in religious observance, the latest survey suggests that the number who practise a faith, pray each day, say religion is important to them, and attend services regularly has changed little for the past five years.
Pew’s analysis drew on the National Public Opinion Reference Survey, in which 4108 adults were interviewed.
The pollsters did note that the number of young men professing a faith was now about the same as women in the same age group — a change from previous polls, in which women tended to be more religious than young men. The change is not due to a growth in young men’s religiosity, however, but a reduction in that of young women, the data suggest.
Last year, the Bible Society’s report The Quiet Revival (Feature, 15 August) suggested an increase in the number of young people coming to faith, particularly young men, and it sparked wide debate about young people’s faith and religion. Neither the Church of England’s latest data nor statistics from the Episcopal Church offered any evidence that these Churches are participating in this growth.
Pew said that its own survey also found no evidence for this generally, and that young adults today are broadly much less religious than older people. The youngest cohort surveyed, however — those born in 2003 — are very slightly more religious than the second-youngest cohort, aged 23 to 30. This may be because they were still living at home and following their families’ religious customs, researchers suggested.
But the relative stability experienced in the figures over the past five years is itself a good news story for the Christian faith in the US, the report indicates, after years of sharp decline in “belonging, behaving, and believing”.
In 2025, 62 per cent of Americans polled said that they were Christian, and eight per cent adhered to another religion. In 2020, 64 per cent were Christian, and seven per cent of another faith. The number of people saying that they had no religion has stayed the same, at 28 per cent.
Pew researchers also examined other surveys to look for trends or a change in the faith of young people. Their analysis suggests that far more young people had left a faith than converted to a faith.
“The big-picture outcome of religious switching is a net loss for Christianity and a gain for the religiously unaffiliated. Among adults ages 18 to 24, 26% are former Christians. By contrast, 5% are converts to Christianity.”
It qualified its findings by saying that it was possible that “smaller changes” might be happening in some places, changes “that just aren’t widespread enough to show up in national surveys”.
