A major new study from Pew Research Center offers an in-depth look at the American religious landscape and how it’s changed over time.
Researchers determined that the share of U.S. adults who identified as Christian declined by 16 percentage points from 2007 to 2019 as the share of U.S. adults who identified as religiously unaffiliated surged.
But the study also showed that trend lines have stabilized since 2019, which has surprised even those scholars who were expecting the unexpected.
The key question now is how long the stabilization will last.
Pew’s new report is nearly 400 pages long and the Deseret News’ feature article on the data has more than 1,700 words.
If you don’t have time yet to fully dive in, this list of 10 key takeaways will give you some talking points.
- Nearly all Americans hold spiritual beliefs. Organized religion’s decline has not led to a decline in spiritual beliefs. Around 85% of U.S. adults believe in God or a universal spirit and that people have souls or spirits in addition to physical bodies, Pew found.
- Religious shifts are broad-based. Before the recent stabilization, religious affiliation was declining in essentially every demographic group in the U.S. Living in the South or having kids or skipping college didn’t guard against religious change.
- But some groups are falling away from organized religion faster than others. For example, political liberals are leaving Christianity faster than political conservatives. “The share of self-described political liberals who identify as Christians has fallen 25 percentage points since 2007, from 62% to 37%. Among self-described conservatives, the Christian share has declined 7 points, from 89% to 82%,” Pew reported.
- Many Americans identify as religious but don’t regularly attend church. While around 70% of U.S. adults claim a religious affiliation, just 33% say they go to religious services at least once per month.
- Nondenominational Christian churches are gaining members as once-prominent denominations lose them. However, the overall share of U.S. adults who identify as Protestant dropped from 51% to 40% from 2007 to 2024.
- The share of Americans who identify as Latter-day Saints has been stable since 2007. The figure is hovering around 2%, according to Pew.
- The non-Christian share of the U.S. population is growing. In 2007, 4.7% of Americans said they were Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or part of some other non-Christian faith group. Now, that figure stands at 7.1%.
- Immigrants to the U.S. are mostly Christian, but they’re driving the growth of non-Christian groups. Pew reported that 58% of U.S. immigrants are Christian, while 14% identify with other religions.
- Older Americans are much more religious than younger Americans. Eighty percent of U.S. adults older than age 74 identify as Christian, compared to 46% of adults younger than 25. Fifty-eight percent of the older group say they pray daily, compared to 27% of the younger group.
- Unless faith groups find a way to bring in new members, the share of religiously unaffiliated Americans will start growing again. Without a notable shift in church membership, organized religion will naturally decline as highly religious older generations shrink.
The 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study was conducted from July 17, 2023, to March 4, 2024, in English and Spanish.
Pew used address-based sampling to create its nationally representative sample of 36,908 U.S. adults.
The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 0.8 percentage points.
When you’re ready to do a deeper study of the data, check out the full survey report and the accompanying interactive website.