Congregations may see an Easter bump in attendance, but the number of Americans who regularly attend church is falling, according to Gallup.
By Aaron Earls
Congregations likely see an Easter bump in attendance, but church attendance overall is falling, according to a study from Gallup.
Pastors say Easter, Christmas, and Mother’s Day are traditionally their highest attendance worship services, according to a Lifeway Research study. But even those largest crowds may be down from previous years.
More Americans say they never attend religious services (31%) than say they attend every week (21%). A majority of Americans seldom (25%) or never attend (31%), while fewer say they’re at a church, synagogue, mosque, or temple every week (21%), almost every week (9%), or about once a month (11%).
The religious group most likely to attend every week is the Latter-day Saints (54%), followed by Protestant Christians (30%), Muslims (28%), and Catholics (23%). Jews (16%), Orthodox Christians (15%), Buddhists (12%), Hindus (7%), and non-religious people (2%) are less likely to participate in religious services weekly.
Among Christian groups, a majority of self-identified Protestants say they regularly attend church services, including 30% every week, 14% almost every week, and 13% about once a month. Around a quarter (27%) say they seldom attend, and 16% are never at worship services.
More Americans say they never attend religious services (31%) than say they attend every week (21%), according to Gallup. Share on XCatholics are split 50/50 between those who regularly attend and those who don’t. Orthodox Christians are more likely to say they seldom or never attend (56%) than attend at least about once a month (44%).
Atheists, agnostics, and the religiously unaffiliated are the only groups in which a majority say they never attend religious services (79%).
Falling religious attendance
The U.S. population as a whole and almost all faith groups specifically are seeing less attendance compared to the turn of the century. Around the year 2000, 42% of Americans attended religious services weekly or nearly every week. That fell to 38% after 2010 and now 30% in the most recent studies.
Compared to the early 2000s, only U.S. Jews (+7 percentage points) and Muslims (+1) saw increases in at least nearly weekly attendance. Every other group saw declines, including Catholics (-12), Orthodox (-9), Hindus (-8), Protestants (-4), non-religious (-3), Buddhists (-2), and Latter-day Saints (-1).
Much of the decline, however, is driven by the increase in the percentage of Americans with no religious affiliation. While recent research, including by Gallup, has found a slowdown or even a drop in the nones, the group is still significantly larger than it was 20 years ago. And few of them ever attend religious services.
In 2000-2003, 9% of U.S. adults said they were not affiliated with a religious group. At that time, 6% said they attended religious services at least nearly every week. Now, the percentage of Americans who are nones is at 21%, with 3% regularly attending.
The percentage of U.S. Protestants who attend church weekly or nearly weekly has dropped from 48% in the early 2000s to 44% today, according to Gallup. Share on XGallup Senior Editor Jeffrey Jones told RNS the attendance drop comes primarily from generational shifts, as fewer young adults are raised with a religion. “If you were raised in a religion and you have fallen away, you can come back to it,” he said. “Younger people, a lot of times, weren’t brought up in any religion. So they don’t have anything to come back down.”
Additionally, Gallup has found confidence levels in churches, as well as many other institutions, have fallen precipitously. In 2001, 60% of Americans said they had a fair or great amount of confidence in the church or organized religion. Now, the percentage who share that same outlook is nearly half that (32%).
Similarly, trust in pastors has fallen to a historic low, according to Gallup. Currently, just 32% of Americans say pastors have high or very high levels of honesty and ethics, down from 64% in 2001.
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