Christianity still ‘loses far more people’ than it gains in the US

 

While 43 per cent of the oldest Americans say they attend religious services at least once a month, only 26 per cent of young adults claim to do so.

Alamy

A study found that 12 per cent of the youngest American adults have left the Catholic Church, while only 1 per cent of adults aged 18 to 24 have converted to Catholicism.

A survey carried out by the Pew Research Centre found that levels of religiousness have been relatively stable in the United States over the past five years, with no clear evidence of a religious revival among young adults.

The report from the nonpartisan “fact tank”, which conducts public opinion polling and demographic research, said the percentages of Americans who say they pray every day, that religion is very important in their lives, and that they regularly attend religious services have remained steady since 2020, which suggests that the prolonged religious decline seen in previous decades has plateaued.

Pew found “no clear evidence” of a “nationwide religious resurgence” of the kind that has been described in the media. On average, young adults remain much less religious than older Americans. They also found that young adults today also are less religious than young people were a decade ago, and that there is no indication that young men are converting to Christianity in large numbers.

While 59 per cent of the oldest Americans say they pray every day, only 30 per cent of young adults born between 1995 and 2002 say they do. While 43 per cent of the oldest Americans say they attend religious services at least once a month, only 26 per cent of young adults claim to do so.

The report also said that, although it has been anecdotally suggested that young people are increasingly turning to “traditional” forms of Christianity, such as the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, the data shows that across all age groups “Christianity loses far more people than it gains through religious switching”.

It said 12 per cent of today’s youngest adults have “switched out” of Catholicism, while only 1 per cent of adults aged 18 to 24 have converted to Catholicism, defined for the purposes of the survey as self-identifying as Catholic today after having been raised in another religion or no religion.

The report stated that the “big-picture outcome of religious switching is a net loss for Christianity and a gain for the religiously unaffiliated”: while 26 per cent of adults aged 18 to 24 are former Christians, only 5 per cent are converts to Christianity.

Young men are now about as religious as women in the same age group, a notable change from the past, when young women tended to be more religious than young men. However, the data shows that this narrowing gender gap is driven by declining religiousness among American women, not by an increase among men. The overall trajectory is that both young men and women are still becoming less religious, but that the rate is faster among women.