For the first time in over 80 years of surveys on the subject, new Gallup data analysis released March 29 found that just 47% of American adults said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque in 2020—the first time that fewer than half of respondents reported membership at such houses of worship.
Gallup has documented a decline for decades, with particularly steep drops apparent in recent years. When the analytics company first asked about church, synagogue or mosque membership in 1937, 73% of respondents said they belonged to one. (Gallup’s question does not explicitly include other faith centers, such as Buddhist, Sikh or Hindu temples or meeting houses.)
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That percentage stayed around the same until the turn of the century; in 1999, 70% of U.S. adults still said they belonged to one of the three. But, based on annual aggregated data from two surveys Gallup asks each year, by the mid-2000s it had dropped to around 60% and by 2018 it was 50%.
“A big part of this story is generational differences,” says Mark Chaves, a sociologist of religion at Duke Divinity School and the author of American Religion: Contemporary Trends, explaining that studies have found that “each generation is a little less religious than the generation before.”
“It’s not like today’s young people are particularly unreligious,” he continues; Gallup’s latest findings are that 66% of adults born before 1946 say they belong to a church, while 58% of Baby Boomers, 50% of Generation X and just 36% of millennials said they belong to one. “Their parents were less religious than their grandparents… it’s a longer term generational replacement that’s driving these longer term trends.”
Gallup found that the decline in membership is “primarily a function of the increasing number of Americans who express no religious preference.” Between 1998 and 2000, an average of 8% of Americans say they did not identify with any religion, per the company’s biannual surveys of U.S. religious attitudes and practices, according to a three-year aggregate of Gallup’s survey data. Just twenty years later, between 2018 and 2020, that figure had risen to 21%.
But Gallup has also seen a decline in house of worship attendance among Americans who do identify with having a religious preference. Between 1998 and 2000, an average of 73% of Americans who identified as religious said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque. Between 2018 and 2020, an average of just 60% of religious Americans said the same.
Many places of worship across the U.S. have been closed for over a year as the country contended—and continues to contend—with the COVID-19 pandemic. But Chaves says he thinks it’s “too early to tell” if the pandemic has played a role in the decline in house of worship participation. Jennifer Herdt, a professor of Christian ethics at Yale Divinity School, adds that she’s heard stories of the pandemic bringing some people back towards worship, either because of the ease of a virtual service or the need for a support system and a sense of community.
Herdt adds that while the decline in particular religious affiliations could be viewed in some ways as younger people turning away from institutions, it could also suggest a greater openness towards other faiths and world views—and a curiosity towards others’ beliefs.
“I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, even from the perspective of a religious person,” she continues. “That openness is what many of the world’s religions teach: that we should be caring and loving of all others regardless of their religious commitments.”