Are More Americans Attending Church? New Study Questions The Hype.
(ANALYSIS) It’s a hotly debated topic in the pews and in the press.
Several reports indicate a record-breaking number of conversions in some American cities. Influencers tell their followers the best place to find a quality spouse is in certain New York Catholic parishes that are packed on a Sunday. On some campuses, college ministries are seeing a resurgence in interest.
Parish publications, regional newspapers and even The New York Times have sought to answer the same question, with various conclusions: Is there a resurgence of Americans returning to church? Are more people claiming a religious affiliation?
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The authors of a new study, which surveyed a sample of 40,000 adults, found the answer: No.
There is “zero evidence of Americans returning to church in higher numbers or increasing religious affiliation,” a representative for Public Religion Research Institute said via email.
PRRI is a non-partisan, non-profit organization that regularly conducts polls to track Americans’ sentiments around religious and political issues — and despite the viral images of young college-aged men packing the pews, their new study points to what other observers have long said: these are isolated situations and don’t move the needle in national data.
At best, the number of Americans choosing not to affiliate with a religion has “plateaued”, according to the study. In 2025, 28% of Americans did not affiliate with a religious tradition — the exact same percentage as in 2024.
“Despite anecdotal claims of a religious revival, our data show that Americans’ religious affiliation held steady in 2025 while weekly worship attendance did not increase,” said Melissa Deckman, CEO of PRRI. “Looking at young adults, there is a shift happening – but it’s not Gen Z men becoming more religious, as some suggest. Instead, young women’s declining religiosity has brought them on par with their male counterparts for the first time.”
A 2024 study by the Study Center on American Life said conservative churches, in particular, are facing an uphill battle to retain young women. In that study, nearly two-thirds of young women ages 18 to 29 say churches do not treat men and women equally.
A cause could be the convergence of American identity in political and religious life: The PRRI study found that white Christians account for a much larger percentage of the Republican Party (68%) than the Democratic Party (23%). And in some areas of the country, being a “Christian” is almost synonymous with being a “Republican.” As a result, many church-going women reject aspects of the Trump administration’s policies and find themselves at odds with their conservative congregations.
The decline has been years in the making. Journalist Sarah Stankorb interviewed women who left evangelical spaces in 2020. They cited several causes for their disillusionment and eventual exits from the churches and Christian spaces they had long invested in.
Among them: Personal experiences with sexual and harrassment and rape by fellow church members; concerns about support for President Donald Trump’s actions and treatment of women; the refusal of fellow churchmembers to wear masks during the Coronavirus epidemic that came “across as indifference toward the health and well-being of their congregation and community” and the way the Republican party treated the economically poor.
Stankorb summarized this exodus of women from the pews with a quote from the Rev. Carol Howard Merritt: “I often tell my [Republican] mom, ‘You guys won an election, but you just lost a generation.’”
Young men, meanwhile, are more likely to be politically conservative — and who view Trump favorably despite the president not being religious himself — and find their local church to be a welcoming place. They grew up hearing messages of empowerment aimed at their female peers (think of organizations that support girls in science careers or leadership development programs that are heavily female-coded) without a similar cohesive cultural message supporting their masculinity. Many came of age during the #MeToo movement, when many male role models were accused of sexual misconduct, and youth dating culture became more fraught.
Derek Rishmawy, who leads Reformed University Fellowship at the University of California, Irvine, told The New York Times that “religion is coded right, and coded more traditionalist” for young adults. And for some of the young men in his ministry group, Christianity is “one institution that isn’t initially and formally skeptical of them as a class.”
The concern over plummeting levels of religiosity over the past few decades and the cautious optimism around the now stabilizing rates extends across Christian denominations.
Noted religion columnist Terry Mattingly dissected the statistics for Catholic churches in his recent article. The gist? The uptick in Catholic converts has reached pre-COVID levels, but it does little to stem the tide of people who leave the Catholic faith.
A 2025 Pew Research study found that 43% of adults who were raised as Catholics no longer identify as religiously Catholic today — although some may still say they are culturally Catholic.
Bucking the trend, several minority faith groups in America seem to be growing slightly. According to a different Pew Study from 2023-2024, “Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus each account for roughly 1% of the U.S. adult population. All three of these groups are larger today than they were in 2007.”
Cassidy Grom is the managing editor of Religion Unplugged. Her award-winning reporting and digital design work have appeared in numerous publications.