There’s something for everyone in this week’s data reports from Gallup and The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) examining shifts in American religiosity:
- People of faith can be encouraged by Gallup data pointing to increased religious identification and attendance, especially among young men.
- Nonbelieving Americans may feel some validation from PRRI data denying “any evidence” of a religious resurgence.
- And some may take note of evidence of a continued decline in young women identifying as religious.
But many are left confused by this swirl of data: Are young men really diverging that much from young women in their religiosity? And is there legitimate evidence of religious revival, or are we looking at overly eager religious observers finding premature hope in outlier data?
After digging into these numbers ourselves and reaching out to researchers, the Deseret News summarizes four takeaways from the joint data release this week. As illustrated below, America’s religious realities are more nuanced and less dramatic than many passionate stakeholders may wish.
1. American young men do seem to be talking about faith more positively
Gallup’s latest numbers show an increase in the number of young men in the United States who say religion is “very important” in their lives, with 42% of young men saying this in 2024-2025, compared with 28% in 2022-2023 (roughly matching the high point on that question for young men over the last 25 years).
By comparison, the percentage of young women describing religion as “very important” has held steady during this period (30%).
This contrasts with early years of the millennium, where young women surpassed young men in calling religion “very important” by between 9 and 16 percentage points. But in the mid-2000s, that steadily began to narrow, shrinking to a five-point difference in the mid-2010s and remaining neck-and-neck through 2022 and 2023.
For the first time in this Gallup polling, young men now surpass young women on this measure of religious attachment. Overall, Gallup reports, “As the proportion of young men expressing a religious identity has been rising since 2016-2017, the proportion of young women doing so has been decreasing, falling six points to 60% today.”
2. Church attendance of young men and young women is similar — and both increasing
Analysts Ryan Burge and Daniel Cox have both cautioned against overinterpreting the recent Gallup data. Cox reminds people that this largest reported gender gap centered on a self-reported “importance of religion” — with “almost no difference in religious affiliation or attendance.”
On that variable, he noted, “Both young women/men have seen an increase in worship attendance.”
Specifically, Gallup’s report shows that young men’s self-reported attendance at a church or other house of worship rose to 40% in 2024-2025, compared with 33% from 2016-2023.
Young women’s attendance increased more modestly, rising three points to 39%, a statistical tie with young men (still well below the levels of the early 2000s).
3. Broader religious decline is ‘paused,’ but still significant
Despite these positive signs among younger Americans, Gallup notes that the latest church attendance rates of older men and older women are “at or near” historic lows, compared with their own previous surveys.
Compared with 30-40 years ago when self-reports of attending weekly were a lot higher, Melissa Deckman, CEO of PRRI, says their surveys now show only one in five Americans currently report attending church.
Despite this, she described how their findings were consistent with other studies showing “a pause with respect to disaffiliation from religion.”
According to PRRI, that number was 28% among young survey respondents last year — and it’s 28% this year.
4. Evidence of larger religious revival is contested
The above is some of the evidence highlighted by those hopeful that a larger religious revival may be afoot. But PRRI cites its newly released annual Census of American Religion in concluding that “there is zero evidence of Americans returning to church in higher numbers or increasing religious affiliation.”
“Despite anecdotal reports of a religious revival,” Deckman said, “our data show that Americans’ religious affiliation held steady in 2025 while weekly attendance did not increase.”
“I don’t doubt that there are pockets of churches and congregations where you’re seeing a rise in new members,” Deckman told the Deseret News. “I don’t discount any of that, but I think the larger picture is one where we don’t see it showing up nationally.”
PRRI has not seen “any evidence” that Gen Z men are “suddenly becoming more orthodox or more Catholic,” Deckman said, referencing their data showing that “their rates of religious disaffiliation have stayed the same over the last decade.”
Overall, she added, “there’s just not a lot of evidence in our data that there’s a lot more regular churchgoing among many Americans, including younger people.”
Deckman doesn’t deny that a shift is happening. But rather than among Gen Z men, she suggests that “young women’s declining religiosity has brought them on par with their male counterparts for the first time.”
Deckman believes this is due to young women “unhappy that religion and politics are so closely intertwined,” which she believes is “probably more true for young women than young men.”
Why the conflicting claims?
So why are some claiming religious revival while others downplay such possibilities?
First, Gallup and PRRI are clearly measuring religious attendance differently. Deckman believes this is partly why significant differences in survey findings keep emerging — they reflect different numbers of response options, how questions are worded and the fact that Gallup collapses two years of data in their report.
“We tend to find not quite as high levels of church attendance,” Deckman says, in part as “a function of how we ask the question and the response options people have.”
Secondly, different research conclusions get highlighted differently among different stakeholders. As Deckman puts it, “certain groups in politics want to kind of take the data to really support a larger point,” referencing the larger “conversation in the country about how much religion is influencing our politics.”
Likewise, Deseret News contributor Stephen Cranney says that some secular observers tend to seize upon data on a closing gender gap “because they frame it as ‘women are leaving churches because of patriarchy,’” rather than looking at the same data and telling a story that “young men are increasingly going to church.”
As Christian columnist Joe Carter cautioned recently about these same kinds of data trends, “We read too much into data that confirms our hopes or validates our fears.”