Happy CES release day to all who celebrate! I, for one, enjoy this holiday much more than Liberation Day.
Regarding the data... so we're seeing this plateau over the last few years, but the generational data clearly shows that we will see the percentage of nones increase in the coming decades due to generational replacement. Millenials and Gen Z are nearly 50% nonreligious. I guess the question is how long will this plateau last?
Another thing I am curious about and wondering if you have data on is the gender gap in Gen Z. This post doesn't get into it but I've been reading a lot about how Gen Z women are abandoning religion while Gen Z men are finding some purpose of sorts there. Would love to see a breakdown by gender and get your take on it.
Yeah, I've got it. I just don't know how to roll all this stuff out. I literally have 21 posts already completely done and ready to publish. And I am trying to do a full post-mortem of the 2024 election results. Trying to figure out where to shoehorn all this in.
So how are we to interpret these trends: the number of Nones has peaked but the number of church attendees is falling?
Are people sincerely picking up Christianity again as a rejection of the emptiness of no belief? Are people choosing Christianity as a badge to show their political allegiance? Can it be explained by Muslim immigration?
Attending church services is not the same things as belonging to a church. There are many people at my liberal Episcopal church in Ohio who are "on the rolls," and participate in things like the Men's Study Group or helping in the church's gardens, BUT who do not actually attend the Sunday services (of which there are 3).
In my experience with Americans who are claiming Christianity for (what seem to me to be) political allegiance reasons, they are not actually going to church. But that's just my observation based on people I know. It would be interesting to see what the actual data show--if there is a source of data that would answer that question.
I am an Atheist Silent generation person and what I’ve observed in the past few decades is that there has been an increase in attendance in Christian denominations for churches which are welcoming to groups that previously might have been shunned. In particular, those churches who are accepting of gay marriage, ordained women and gay clergy, etc. Some of these attendees have always been believers, and others are less “religious” and more “spiritual” but enjoy the fellowship of the church environment even if they don’t actually buy into the ‘god’ thing. Be nice to see metrics on the degree of religiosity within different sects of Christianity and other Abrahamic religions.
It would be interesting to see geographical data overlaid with generational data. In small town southern America it seems the only growth industry is religion. It seems there are more churches than people to attend them.
I'm wondering if you can touch on the apparent difference in church attendance between the Cooperative Election Study and the Household Pulse Survey that was chopped up in "Who are filling up the pews."
I know the Pulse study doesn't really give information beyond a monthly attendance, but it seemed that the attendance numbers were significantly lower than what is presented here. Am I just misreading the numbers, or is there a delta between these two studies? If the latter, do we have any idea of why or which numbers would be more accurate?
Yeah, this is something that I think about a lot and I don't know if I have a good answer. Here's where I am at on this.
1. The Census Bureau has basically no experience asking these types of questions, which means that we really don't have a long term baseline to compare things to.
2. The Census Bureau gives some pretty terrible response options for this question. The fact that 12x a year is the most frequent is just bizarre.
3. The CES has been around for a long time now - back to 2008. So it's much easier to figure out how things have changed and how consistent results are over time.
4. The CES basically just cribs the Pew setup for questions, which is far, far superior to making up a new battery like the Pulse Survey did.
I've always found it better to compare baselines across surveys compared to levels. The CES has always had a more secular sample than the GSS. But both have shown basically the same trajectory of the nones over the last 15 years. Which, to me, is more helpful.
Based on attendance: the "Bowling Alone" phenomenon continues its slow (inexorable?) march towards loneliness and separation, despite a stable core of weekly attenders in all age groups.
Based on belonging: we see a sliver of older Americans growing in religious self-identification.
Looking forwards to more slices!
I'd be thrilled if you ran an analysis grouping high-tension traditions (LDS, Jehovah's Witness, Seventh Day Adventist, Haredi Jew, etc...)! I realize you won't get significance for each separately, but perhaps as a group. If you don't I'll do it at some point.
Would love to see this tied multi-generationally to type of worship experience, if possible. A statistic that jumped out to me back in 2011 is that nearly 70% of young adults who were done with church came from highly-programmed, non-denominational churches, including megachurches. A later, small study found that you basically reverse odds of ongoing Christian activity if you include teens in multi-generational worship rather than keeping them entirely separated. Majority of those who attend "adult" worship as teens remain active as adults; majority of those separated reject church entirely. So is the megachurch and nondenominational experience, which tends to provide separate (often sub-par) experiences for teens in order to attract families, driving young adults away? And if young adults haven't attended church much or at all with their families, are they spiritually curious, as my generation was in the "youth awakening" of the 80s?
I wouldn't even know where to start on that type of question. I've seen a lot of datasets in my career and I don't ever recall a question that's in that realm.
Thank you so much for your reply! Your research is a great gift to us in ministry. I referenced Clark & Powell’s book Sticky Faith, which included research reviews and some small-scale research conducted by the authors. I’ve loaned out my last copy and just ordered some more, but I think they’re associated with Fuller in some way. Fuller seems fairly trustworthy.
Excellent overview of what's happing NOW with regard to American's spirituality.
Also: 2 items
1. Sunday service attendance at my church is so-so, however the church offers a lot of other options/ways for worship/spirituality activities: Wed evening services; morning and evening prayer groups, EFM preparation, fairly regular evensong services, etc.
Is that kind of "participation" counted in the survey?
2. Please send me, eojb@visn.net, info on how people at my church can subscribe to GOR (interesting initialism....grin). I talk about the insights I get from your postings (and graphs) that several people have asked me about the site.
Also, is the 20% off discount still available for those involved in 'youth' outreach? We just created an outreach position at the church.
> There’s only one tradition where a majority say that they are born-again - Protestants. Which makes sense, right? The next highest is “something else.” I can tell you what’s happening there. A lot of people don’t know that they are Protestant. They know that they are Baptist, but that’s not a top level option. As a result, they select "something else" and provide their denomination in a free response.
> A quarter of Orthodox Christians say that they are evangelicals, and it’s about the same share of Latter-day Saints. Then, things get really weird. Fourteen percent of Muslims say that they are evangelical - it’s the same percentage as Roman Catholics. Even 12% of those identifying as nothing in particulars and Hindus say that they are evangelicals!
This is so relevant and helpful. Thanks, as always, for presenting the information in such an easily understandable way!
Thanks so much for publishing all this work.
Thank you so much for this!!!
Happy CES release day to all who celebrate! I, for one, enjoy this holiday much more than Liberation Day.
Regarding the data... so we're seeing this plateau over the last few years, but the generational data clearly shows that we will see the percentage of nones increase in the coming decades due to generational replacement. Millenials and Gen Z are nearly 50% nonreligious. I guess the question is how long will this plateau last?
Another thing I am curious about and wondering if you have data on is the gender gap in Gen Z. This post doesn't get into it but I've been reading a lot about how Gen Z women are abandoning religion while Gen Z men are finding some purpose of sorts there. Would love to see a breakdown by gender and get your take on it.
Yeah, I've got it. I just don't know how to roll all this stuff out. I literally have 21 posts already completely done and ready to publish. And I am trying to do a full post-mortem of the 2024 election results. Trying to figure out where to shoehorn all this in.
So how are we to interpret these trends: the number of Nones has peaked but the number of church attendees is falling?
Are people sincerely picking up Christianity again as a rejection of the emptiness of no belief? Are people choosing Christianity as a badge to show their political allegiance? Can it be explained by Muslim immigration?
Part of it is people needing community and finding it in a church I(community) that meets their need to be around good/their kind of people.
IMO,
Perhaps, but Ryan's data says that they are not attending church.
Attending church services is not the same things as belonging to a church. There are many people at my liberal Episcopal church in Ohio who are "on the rolls," and participate in things like the Men's Study Group or helping in the church's gardens, BUT who do not actually attend the Sunday services (of which there are 3).
In my experience with Americans who are claiming Christianity for (what seem to me to be) political allegiance reasons, they are not actually going to church. But that's just my observation based on people I know. It would be interesting to see what the actual data show--if there is a source of data that would answer that question.
https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/im-an-evangelical-but-i-rarely-go
https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/religion-as-a-cultural-and-political
Awesome, Ryan! Thank you for sharing.
Thank you, Ryan. That makes sense.
I am an Atheist Silent generation person and what I’ve observed in the past few decades is that there has been an increase in attendance in Christian denominations for churches which are welcoming to groups that previously might have been shunned. In particular, those churches who are accepting of gay marriage, ordained women and gay clergy, etc. Some of these attendees have always been believers, and others are less “religious” and more “spiritual” but enjoy the fellowship of the church environment even if they don’t actually buy into the ‘god’ thing. Be nice to see metrics on the degree of religiosity within different sects of Christianity and other Abrahamic religions.
It would be interesting to see geographical data overlaid with generational data. In small town southern America it seems the only growth industry is religion. It seems there are more churches than people to attend them.
Transplant from Northeast
Let's hope this is the top of the bull run on Paganism! I'm super bearish on Paganism in our land.
I'm wondering if you can touch on the apparent difference in church attendance between the Cooperative Election Study and the Household Pulse Survey that was chopped up in "Who are filling up the pews."
I know the Pulse study doesn't really give information beyond a monthly attendance, but it seemed that the attendance numbers were significantly lower than what is presented here. Am I just misreading the numbers, or is there a delta between these two studies? If the latter, do we have any idea of why or which numbers would be more accurate?
Yeah, this is something that I think about a lot and I don't know if I have a good answer. Here's where I am at on this.
1. The Census Bureau has basically no experience asking these types of questions, which means that we really don't have a long term baseline to compare things to.
2. The Census Bureau gives some pretty terrible response options for this question. The fact that 12x a year is the most frequent is just bizarre.
3. The CES has been around for a long time now - back to 2008. So it's much easier to figure out how things have changed and how consistent results are over time.
4. The CES basically just cribs the Pew setup for questions, which is far, far superior to making up a new battery like the Pulse Survey did.
I've always found it better to compare baselines across surveys compared to levels. The CES has always had a more secular sample than the GSS. But both have shown basically the same trajectory of the nones over the last 15 years. Which, to me, is more helpful.
Based on attendance: the "Bowling Alone" phenomenon continues its slow (inexorable?) march towards loneliness and separation, despite a stable core of weekly attenders in all age groups.
Based on belonging: we see a sliver of older Americans growing in religious self-identification.
Looking forwards to more slices!
I'd be thrilled if you ran an analysis grouping high-tension traditions (LDS, Jehovah's Witness, Seventh Day Adventist, Haredi Jew, etc...)! I realize you won't get significance for each separately, but perhaps as a group. If you don't I'll do it at some point.
Would love to see this tied multi-generationally to type of worship experience, if possible. A statistic that jumped out to me back in 2011 is that nearly 70% of young adults who were done with church came from highly-programmed, non-denominational churches, including megachurches. A later, small study found that you basically reverse odds of ongoing Christian activity if you include teens in multi-generational worship rather than keeping them entirely separated. Majority of those who attend "adult" worship as teens remain active as adults; majority of those separated reject church entirely. So is the megachurch and nondenominational experience, which tends to provide separate (often sub-par) experiences for teens in order to attract families, driving young adults away? And if young adults haven't attended church much or at all with their families, are they spiritually curious, as my generation was in the "youth awakening" of the 80s?
I wouldn't even know where to start on that type of question. I've seen a lot of datasets in my career and I don't ever recall a question that's in that realm.
Thank you so much for your reply! Your research is a great gift to us in ministry. I referenced Clark & Powell’s book Sticky Faith, which included research reviews and some small-scale research conducted by the authors. I’ve loaned out my last copy and just ordered some more, but I think they’re associated with Fuller in some way. Fuller seems fairly trustworthy.
For Dr. Burge,
Excellent overview of what's happing NOW with regard to American's spirituality.
Also: 2 items
1. Sunday service attendance at my church is so-so, however the church offers a lot of other options/ways for worship/spirituality activities: Wed evening services; morning and evening prayer groups, EFM preparation, fairly regular evensong services, etc.
Is that kind of "participation" counted in the survey?
2. Please send me, eojb@visn.net, info on how people at my church can subscribe to GOR (interesting initialism....grin). I talk about the insights I get from your postings (and graphs) that several people have asked me about the site.
Also, is the 20% off discount still available for those involved in 'youth' outreach? We just created an outreach position at the church.
what are your thoughts on how much the “something else” category is picking up Christians who don’t fall into other categories?
He has some data around that in this article: https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/the-rise-of-the-non-christian-evangelical?utm_source=publication-search
> There’s only one tradition where a majority say that they are born-again - Protestants. Which makes sense, right? The next highest is “something else.” I can tell you what’s happening there. A lot of people don’t know that they are Protestant. They know that they are Baptist, but that’s not a top level option. As a result, they select "something else" and provide their denomination in a free response.
> A quarter of Orthodox Christians say that they are evangelicals, and it’s about the same share of Latter-day Saints. Then, things get really weird. Fourteen percent of Muslims say that they are evangelical - it’s the same percentage as Roman Catholics. Even 12% of those identifying as nothing in particulars and Hindus say that they are evangelicals!
23% of LDS ID'ed as evangelical/born-again in the 2024 data. 10% of Muslims. 16% of Catholics.