Church attendance is dropping all across America. It's long overdue.
A new Gallup survey finds that only 3 in 10 Americans are regular churchgoers
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A new Gallup poll finds that regular church attendance is dropping across virtually all religions.
The survey found that while 42% of adults attended a religious service almost every week between 2000 and 2003, that number has dropped to 30% today. The drop is especially felt among Catholics and smaller religious groups. The big exceptions are Muslims (4% increase) and Jews (7%).
While the decline for Protestants is relatively small (-4%), it still implies there are a lot of Americans who no longer make church part of their weekly schedule.
It’s interesting to note that not every group is seeing a steady decline; Mormons experienced a bump in regular attendance a decade ago, as did Muslims. (Buddhists went the other way.) But the overall trend is only going in one direction.
The other aspect of this survey that’s fascinating to me is the sheer number of people who seldom or never go to a religious service anymore. Churchgoing isn’t on the weekly agenda for the majority of Americans (56%).
Specifically, 43% of Protestants and 50% of Catholics say they rarely go to church these days. That’s also true for 95% of Secular Americans, who may have to attend religious services for reasons (like family obligations) that have nothing to do with their own beliefs.
It’s not hard to imagine why this is happening. Among other things, many places of worship are perpetuating harm that’s impossible to ignore, whether it’s evangelical churches pushing anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ lies or Southern Baptists and Mormons downplaying their own problems with sexual abuse.
The flip side of this is that some of the shrinking religious groups are going all-in on extremism as a last gasp. They’re doubling down on all the things that are pushing away young people. There’s more fear. More condemnation of progressive causes. More patriarchy. More vilification of marginalized groups. It’s a horrible strategy in the long term even if it’s working for them in the short term.
I would suspect that followers of some other religions, like Islam and Hinduism, attend services more out of obligation than anything else. As parents pass away and ties to a religious community erode (as first and second generation Americans assimilate), those numbers could shift further away from regular attendance.
Either way, this can’t be good news for religious leaders. It’s not like the future looks bright for religion, with more young people wanting less and less to do with organized faith. You can’t blame them, either. We’ve seen how much destruction religion can cause, and people who are passionate about civil rights, social justice, and improving the world are more likely to find allies in political or cause-based groups rather than in a church.
Religious beliefs, it has to be said, are also untrue.
It’s never been easier for people to have access to information pointing out why their faith is illogical and nothing more than wishful thinking. Which is to say religious institutions are hard-pressed to offer anything people can’t find somewhere else.
Want to be part of something bigger? Find a non-profit that addresses your pet cause.
Want to find like-minded friends? It’s never been easier to find your tribes on social media, based on whatever you’re passionate about.
Want some honesty? Read articles, watch videos, or listen to podcasts created by people you trust. The churches that preach dogma and doom, while promoting right-wing propaganda and cruelty, are hardly the kinds of places you’re going to adjust your schedule to attend.
Gallup points out the bottom line:
On any given weekend, about three in 10 U.S. adults attend religious services, down from 42% two decades ago. Church attendance will likely continue to decline in the future, given younger Americans’ weaker attachments to religion.
Specifically, more 18- to 29-year-olds, 35%, say they have no religious preference than identify with any specific faith, such as Protestant/nondenominational Christian (32%) or Catholic (19%). Additionally, young adults, both those with and without a religious preference, are much less likely to attend religious services -- 22% attend regularly, eight points below the national average.
This is excellent news, no matter how you spin it. While there are definitely benefits to being part of in-person communities, we’re not losing anything worth saving when talking about the decline of religious attendance. People will find new ways to spend their time and spend their money. More importantly, they’re realizing that religion and morality are not interconnected. You can absolutely have the latter without the former.
If churches want to reverse the trend, they need to start rethinking their values and beliefs. Even if they ever get around to that, though, it’ll probably be too late.
Ah well. They can always pray about it.
The funny thing is that nothing in this survey suggests religious beliefs are dying away. If there’s one thing we know from surveys like this, it’s that even though the “Nones” are constantly growing, rarely is that growth among atheists or agnostics. Millions of Americans still believe in the supernatural. They’re ditching church even if they’re not ditching what those churches preach. They believe in religious ideas, just not organized religion.
That’s not such a bad thing. Belief in a higher power may be factually wrong, but by itself, it’s not as damaging as people basing their lives around those beliefs—and pastors using that glue to harm their congregations through misinformation and getting their followers to actively harm the world around them through bad policies.
The Covid-19 pandemic kept anyone with any sense away from churches and other gatherings. I think this had the effect of a lot of people coming to the realization the preachers need them far more than they ever needed the preachers. In spite of dwindling church attendance, the hard core evangelicals continue to delude themselves into believing if they can just get control of government, education, and the media, the people of this country will passively submit to their rule.
It's been a while getting here, but the fallout from 9/11, from the major reports of Catholic priest sexual child abuse, about similar abuse in evangelical churches, and the impact of the internet on religious belief is slowly but surely coming to fruition. People are beginning to recognize not just that religious organizations are not all sweetness and light, but that the dogmas and doctrines they espouse are at best problematic and at worst outright lies.
Now that I think about it, I rather wonder whether all the lies that Trump has spewed over his political career have made those who are at least somewhat open to skepticism more closely examine and perhaps reject not just his untruths but falsehoods in general, and whether that is further accelerating their departure from Sunday services. Strikes me as a distinct possibility.
In any case, this is good news and a trend well worthy of tracking for a while.