The United States is More Religious Than Europe, But By How Much?

One of the most important questions that one has to ask in doing data work is pretty simple, “Compared to what?” If I make a graph that visualizes the partisanship of white evangelicals and it indicates that 60% of them are Republicans, the data means very little by itself. Every set of results needs to be held up against a “reference case.” So, in the prior example, it would be helpful to compare the partisanship of white evangelicals to maybe the entire sample or the entire sample of white people. This helps us understand where this data stands in relation to the bigger picture.

That’s always the issue with American religion. If I tell you that in the 1970s about 40% of folks reported that they were weekly church attenders and now it’s closer to 25%, that seems like a big drop. But does that mean that the average American is pretty irreligious? Well, it would help to compare Americans to other advanced democracies across the world. That would give us a sense if 25% was at the top or the bottom of the religiosity spectrum. Which is exactly what I want to do in the post today - give us all a nice “reference case."

In this instance, it’s Europe. While we can surely debate this fact, they are probably our nearest cultural neighbor. So, seeing where they are on measures of religious belonging and religious behavior can provide a bit of a guidepost for where the United States could be in a couple decades. Lucky for us, the European Social Survey just released Round 11, which is data that they collected in 2023-2024 across two dozen European countries.

Let’s first focus on a super basic question - religious attendance. The ESS gives respondents a range of options from ‘Never’ to ‘More than once a week.’ Just be aware - not many people put themselves at the top end of this scale.

From an attendance perspective, the Netherlands is the least religious country in the dataset. About two-thirds of the Dutch never attend religious services and nearly 80% are attending less than once a year. In comparison, just 1 in 10 are at a house of worship on a weekly basis. But, there’s another way to look at this - what country has the lowest share of weekly attenders? The answer is Iceland at 3%, followed by Sweden, Norway, and Finland. It shouldn’t take a deep knowledge of geography to know what those countries have in common - religion is nearly extinct in Scandinavia.

What about the other end of the religious behavior spectrum? Well, in Poland 39% of folks are weekly attenders - that’s the highest of this group of 24. They are followed by Slovakia (35%), Cyprus (29%), Ireland and Italy (both at 26%). But notice in the graph that Greece had the lowest share of never attenders at just 6%. That’s an interesting country because nearly half the respondents say that they only attend on special holy days. The only other countries even close to that are Serbia and Lithuania.

Let me compare the answers to this question from the most recent wave of the ESS to the prior collection period which came from 2018 and 2020. This should give us a sense of whether religious behavior is still shifting in Europe in the last few years.

I was pretty surprised to see just how little had changed in a bunch of these countries over the last five or seven years. In 15 countries out of 24, the share of never attenders changed by no more than three percentage points between the two surveys being fielded. So, stasis is really the norm here. This may point to the fact that secularization has really run its course through most of the continent. Which means that what comes next for religion in Europe is really hard to predict.

What about the big movers? Well, in Belgium the share of never attenders rose from 52% to 61%. That’s clearly the largest shift among any of the countries in the dataset. In France, never attenders rose by four points and it was six points in Germany, going from 44% in 2018 to 50% in 2023. There was also a significant jump in the Netherlands (five points) and Norway (six points). I could find four cases where this percentage went down: Hungary, Ireland, Italy, and Serbia. But I am not ready to say that any countries are seeing a big revival as the differences aren’t that large.

Remember that idea of a reference case? Well, I wanted to compare the United States to Europe when it comes to the share of weekly church attenders. This is comparing all fifty states (and D.C.) with the 24 countries included in the most recent version of the European Social Survey.

The first thing to point out is that when I made this graph in a prior post the average weekly attendance rate for Europe was 14% and it was 25% in the United States. Guess what? That hasn’t changed in the latest data. So, it looks like religious decline has slowed significantly.

From this angle, the most religious of the bunch is Utah with 44% of folks being weekly attenders. That’s followed by South Dakota at 42%. Then we have the first European country to show up - Poland at 40%. That’s followed by Alabama at 38% weekly attendance and then Slovakia at 35%. Then there’s a huge sea of green - meaning a whole bunch of American states. We don’t see another European country appear until we get to Cyprus, which is about as religious as Missouri, Indiana, or Texas.

You can clearly see that the bottom of this graph is dominated by Europe. The least religious state in this data is Maine - 12% never attenders. Then you have fifteen European countries. So, while Maine may seem pretty secular from an American perspective, it would certainly be a middle of the pack country if it were in Europe. So, it really depends on your frame of reference.

But religious attendance is just one part of the equation. What about religious affiliation?

Again, the Netherlands leads the way on this metric, too - 72% of the Dutch have no religious affiliation. Remember that 67% of them never went to religious services, either. So, it’s safe to assume that 7 in 10 people living in the Netherlands have nothing to do with religion. Then, there are a bunch of Scandinavian countries with Belgium and the United Kingdom thrown into the mix too.

There are quite a few countries in Europe that are majority Christian, though. For instance, over 60% of Ireland are Catholic. That’s also the case in a bunch of other places like Austria, Portugal, Slovakia. And it’s above 70% in Lithuania, Italy, Croatia and Poland. For Serbia, Cyprus, and Greece, they are 85% Orthodox Christians. Using this measurement, the most religious country in Europe is Greece with just 7% who are non-religious. But on the other hand only 17% of Grecians are weekly attenders. So a lot of belonging without behavior.

Let’s compare the share who are non-religious in the United States versus Europe. I know this is going to seem impossible after just glancing at this graph but the median for both Europe and the United States for the share who are non-religious is 39%.

The issue here is pretty easy to spot based on the colors - Europe is incredibly bimodal on this metric. That means that there are a whole bunch of countries at the very top of the scale and the very bottom. For instance, there are six countries with a higher share of nones than any state in the United States. But of the 13 countries at the bottom of the graph, 11 of them are from the European continent. So, it’s a tale of a whole bunch of very secular countries compared to a whole bunch of really religious countries on the European continent.

North Dakota has the lowest share of nones in the United States at 22%. But that’s bested by Poland, Serbia, Cyprus and Greece. While Maine is the most secular state in America, it’s still ten points more religious than Sweden or the Netherlands. From this angle, I think it’s fair to say that the modal country in Europe is probably Slovenia. It falls nicely in the middle of the range of values. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s harder to make broad claims about the religiosity of Europe compared to the religiosity of the United States. There’s just a ton more variation in the ESS.

Now let's combine behavior and belonging metrics. This is the share of each country that is weekly attending Christians. I think this does a pretty good job of showing the stark differences between the two continents.

Now we see quite a bit of variation across the top of the graph. Utah has the highest percentage of weekly attending Christians at 40%, but that’s followed closely by Poland at 39%. But then it goes back and forth between the United States and Europe. Then, of course, there’s a huge run of states. The U.S. basically makes up the entirety of the middle portion of the graph. I think from this analysis, the best comparison for the average American is Ireland or Italy. In both cases, about 24% are weekly attending Christians. That’s right in line with a whole bunch of states from various regions of the country.

But then, the bottom of the graph is just all Europe. You have 14 European countries where the share of the population who are weekly attending Christians is in the single digits. That’s not true of any state. The closest is Maine and Nevada at 10% each, but then there’s a bunch of states clustered between 12% and 17%. Of course, the least Christian countries are in Scandinavia but you also have France, Belgium, and Germany all at 5% or below, too.

There’s a lot to chew on here. Religion in the United States is certainly more normally distributed than what we see in Europe. In the ESS, it seems like there’s a whole bunch of fairly religious countries but also an even larger number of very secular countries, too. There’s just a lot more regional variation in Europe than the United States. Yes, the American South is more religious than New England. But the difference between South Carolina and Maine is only 18 points. Comparing Iceland to Poland, the gap is twice as large.

But I also think it’s fair to say that secularization has largely stopped in Europe, too. That’s certainly the case when it comes to attendance. I think a fair assumption is that most countries have bottomed out and won’t continue to go down from here.

Again, the operative question in doing this kind of word is: compared to what? If you compare Poland to Maine, then Europe is way more religious. But if it’s looking at Iceland next to Utah, then the picture reverses. Generally speaking, the United States is more religious than Europe. But that definitely glosses over a lot of nuance in the conversation.

Code for this post can be found here.