Priestly sex abuse scandals, scammy televangelists and partisan pastors. In today’s environment the list of reasons why people don’t trust religion like they used to is on the tip of the tongue of every pundit, and there is no shortage of people willing to armchair quarterback their own take on the problem with a seemingly ailing religion in America.
And they may have a point — to a point.
Confidence in religion is not what it used to be. Every year the General Social Survey asks respondents about their trust across different areas of society, including “organized religion.”
In 1973, only about 16% of Americans exhibited “hardly any confidence” (the lowest option offered) in religion. Nearly 50 years later, in 2024, over one-third or 35% of Americans had this same lack of confidence.
So what happened? One thing that data shows is that the decline of confidence in religion has been a long time coming and has been going on since the 1970s at least (and probably earlier, but that’s when the data tracking begins). The reasons why trust in religion has been in decline go beyond sensational headlines to broader issues that cut across religious traditions.
Rather, larger societal issues that cut across denominations and faith traditions are at play, argues Christopher Smith, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame in his new book, “Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America.”
“The macro dynamics harm everyone, even leaders and groups that are not actually responsible for religion’s demise and have some good things going.”
One of these “macro dynamics” is the decline in confidence in all institutions in general, whether they’re big corporations, the government, or almost anything else. While people of a certain ideological bent may smugly point to the decline in religious institutions, the fact is that confidence in their favorite institutions has also probably cratered in the past half-century.
For example, take the mainstream media. The American public once turned to — and trusted — Walter Cronkite and the other golden age of television hosts for their news and insights into the world.
At that time, only about 15% of Americans had hardly any confidence in the press, with only 22% having that same low amount of confidence in television (about the same as religion, it is worth noting).
Now? Their tumble has been much faster and harder than religion. While about one-third of Americans now have hardly any confidence in religion, about half of Americans have hardly any confidence in the press (55%) or television (48%).
Looking at the rest of the institutions, the General Social Survey reveals more of the same. People have been losing trust in nearly all institutions (with very few exceptions like organized labor, which has been increasing).
Still, Smith notes that given what religion claims to be, the lack of confidence is not inspiring even if other institutions have fallen harder: “Religion is set (by its claims and in the mind of others) on a higher pedestal than many other institutions, so it is vulnerable to harsher criticisms. Nobody criticizes the mafia, the expectations are low.”
So it is likely that the picture would be similar regardless of any one scandal coming from a particular faith. The forces of disenchantment are strong in the modern world.
Now, however, there are some whispers that things may be changing. For example, a growing number of Americans believe religion is gaining influence in American life, although they continue to disagree on whether that is a positive or negative development. There is also some evidence that there is a floor to secularization, and that the decline in churchgoing has possibly stopped. and that the decline in churchgoing has possibly stopped.
However, stopping the hemorrhaging of the faithful from the pews and seeing a revival, with more people returning to the pews, are two different things, and concerning the latter there is not a lot of evidence.
“I’d be interested to see hard evidence of religious revival,” Smith noted. “I have not. Lots of rumors and hearsay and anecdotes. I think it’s mostly driven by religious leaders desperate for any good news, and journalists and editors desperate for a new headline.”
Maybe there’s something going on, he added, “but I suspect it’s wishful thinking, not reality.”
Prominent statistician of religion Ryan Burge has also similarly noted the lack of evidence for a revival. God may be talked about a lot on podcasts and in the halls of political and sociocultural power, but that hasn’t necessarily translated into people returning to their church, synagogue, or mosque.
Still, that doesn’t mean that there is not a desire for deeper faith among a subset of people seeking something more. According to some reports Traditional Latin Mass Catholic communities are brimming with younger adherents and devout Haredi Jewish communities are bursting at the seams.
The appeal of more traditional forms of religion, Smith noted, is “a realization that the Tinder/social media/party/Netflix life is empty, bankrupt, nihilistic. These tend to be the more intelligent and perceptive youth looking for something with more purpose, roots, grounding.”
Even so, these seeking youth may be few. Meanwhile, he said, “the vast majority [of youth] have their eyes glued to their cellphone screens.”
While religious congregations have been in decline, Smith notes that the demand for the transcendent that undergirds going to church has not gone away. The hunger remains.
People are just trying to fulfill those needs in less organized, more private ways. As New York Times columnist Lauren Jackson, herself a former believing Latter-day Saint, noted “Americans simply haven’t found a satisfying alternative to religion.”
She went on to describe people’s desire to belong to communities that are richer and “more robust … ones that wrestle with hard questions about how to live.”