Despite a consistent decline in the share of adults in the United States who identified as Christians over the last 17 years, the trend appears to have slowed in the last five years of a long-term Pew Research study.
The slowdown may not last, however, as other data from Pew’s third Religious Landscape Study shows America’s youngest adults are significantly more likely to be unaffiliated with religion than their older counterparts, suggesting potential future declines in the “American religious landscape.”
With more than 36,000 respondents in the 2023-24 edition, the Religious Landscape Study is the largest single survey Pew Research Center conducts. It paints a religious portrait of the United States, highlighting the religious identities, beliefs and practices of U.S. adults in every state, the District of Columbia and 34 large metro areas.
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The survey was previously conducted in 2007, when 78% of U.S. adults identified as Christian, and in 2014, when that share dropped to 71%.
Data from the latest study shows that between 2019 and 2024, the share of U.S. adults who identified as Christian hovered between 60% and 64%, with a current reading of 62%.
The largest share of American Christians identified as Protestants (40%) followed by Catholics (19%).
About 3% of Americans identified with other groups, such as the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Jehovah’s Witnesses, which are categorized as Christian subgroups by Pew.
Adults who said they are unaffiliated with any religious group and identified as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” constitute some 29% of the population, according to the latest data.
While this group had been growing in recent years, the group of religiously unaffiliated, also known as the “nones,” has also “plateaued,” researchers said.
The rates at which Americans pray and attend church have stabilized in the recent study despite being lower than the rates for 2007. About 44% of Americans say they pray at least once daily, while 33% say they attend religious services at least once monthly.
Other findings in the study show that significant majorities of Americans believe people have a soul of spirit (86%), believe in God or a universal spirit (83%), believe there is something spiritual beyond the natural world, even if we can’t see it (79%); and believe in an afterlife (70%).
And while 83% of Americans say they believe in God or a universal spirit, chances are many do not believe in God as described in the Bible.
In 2018, a Pew study found that 80% of Americans said they believed in God but only a slim majority said they believed in God as described in the Bible. Among respondents younger than 50, belief in the God of the Bible was lower than 50%.
In the latest Pew study, compared to America’s oldest adults (those 74 and older), America’s youngest adults between the ages of 18-24 are much less religious or Christian.
Only 46% of the youngest adult Americans identify as Christian, just 27% pray daily and only 25% say they attend religious services monthly. At 43%, the share of America’s youngest adults who identify as religiously unaffiliated is almost equal to the share who identify as Christian.
“Younger Americans are less likely than older adults to say they were raised in religious households,” researchers noted. “And, compared with older adults, fewer young people who were raised in religious households have remained religious after reaching adulthood.”
Pew’s data suggests that the religiousness of most birth demographics has “remained relatively stable” since 2000. The study found that the youngest cohort of adults is “no less religious than the second-youngest cohort in a variety of ways.”
“Americans born in 2000 through 2006 (those ages 18 to 24 in the 2023-24 RLS) are just as likely as those born in the 1990s (now ages 24 to 34) to identify as Christians, to say religion is very important in their lives, and to report that they attend religious services at least monthly,” the Pew analysis reads.
“Time will tell whether the recent stability in measures of religious commitment is the beginning of a lasting shift in America’s religious trajectory. But it is inevitable that older generations will decline in size as their members gradually die. We also know that the younger cohorts succeeding them are much less religious. This means that, for lasting stability to take hold in the U.S. religious landscape, something would need to change. For example, today’s young adults would have to become more religious as they age, or new generations of adults who are more religious than their parents would have to emerge.”
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