The most popular church in America might be St. Mattress, followed by Bedside Baptist.
Those two — euphemisms for sleeping in on Sundays — increasingly describe the attitude of many Americans toward attending churches or other houses of worship.
More than half of Americans (56%) say they seldom or never attend religious services, according to new data from Gallup. Less than a third (30%) say they attend on a weekly or almost weekly basis.
Gallup found that almost all of the so-called Nones (95%) say they seldom or never attend services. More than half of Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Orthodox Christians say they rarely attend as well.
Among religious Americans, Latter-Day Saints (67%) are most likely to say they attend weekly or almost weekly, followed by Protestants (44%), Muslims (38%) and Catholics (33%).
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Overall, the percentage of Americans who never attend services has more than doubled since the early 1990s, while the share of those who say they rarely attend has stayed stable, according to Gallup data.
An earlier report from Gallup found that in 1992, those who attended weekly (34%) outnumbered those who never attended (14%) by 2 to 1. Since 2018, the number of Americans who never attend services has outnumbered the number who attend weekly.
Gallup Senior Editor Jeffrey Jones said the decline in attendance is driven mostly by generational shifts. Not only are younger Americans less likely to identify with any religion, they are also less likely to have been 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.”
Americans today are also less religious overall and less likely to identify as Christian, meaning that the nation’s largest religious tradition — whose adherents are most likely to attend weekly services — has declined, leading to lower attendance.
Jones said that an overall loss of faith in the nation’s institutions likely plays a role in the declining attendance. A Gallup poll last year found that only a third of Americans had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the church or organized religion. But the growth of the “nones” — those who do not identify with any religion — has likely played a larger role in the attendance decline, said Jones.
Gallup’s findings echo the data from other major organizations, such as Pew Research Center, that track religion and other cultural trends and have found both religious identity and participation are declining.
A recent Pew study found that most Americans believe religion’s influence is waning. Half think that is a bad thing. The other half think the decline is good or don’t care.
Bob Smietana is a national reporter for Religion News Service.
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6 Responses
“So, you’ve walked away from the church? Or you’re thinking about it?
You’re not alone.
Over three thousand believers in the USA walk away from the church daily, and the reasons are many.
Some have biblical doubts they can’t reconcile. Others have been hurt by church authorities who supposedly represent Jesus Christ on earth. Some are discouraged, feeling they will never meet God’s approval or measure up to other Christians’ standards. And, to be frank, some don’t want to be part of institutions that seem to have missed the simple message of Jesus altogether.
Many of these church refugees still long to know Jesus, but they are tired of playing the game of religion. Often, those who leave the church are people of real inner integrity and spiritual intelligence who can’t “go along with the program” any longer.
Maybe you are one of them.”
Quoted from the book Leaving Church, Finding God: Discovering Faith Beyond Organized Religion
by Daniel Foster (Author)
The Church is Jesus’ hands and feet on earth and Paul was very clear about neglecting the brethren. We are carrying out His Mission. There is no such thing as a ‘lone wolf’ christian. That is why we have church: for communion, fellowship, evangelism, teaching, encouragement, preaching, local and Intl’ outreach, and a chance to love one another. Christ Himself said that ‘they shall know us by our love.’ I understand the wounds and bad vibes emanating from the American Church. There is always a remnant and it is incumbent on christians to find fellowship. It is not optional and Christ Himself is the Head of the Body on earth. The Church is His Bride and one day we will be reunited. This is what we are waiting for at the end of time. I know people have been seriously hurt and scarred by “christian leaders” and this is another story, but you still need fellowship with believers and be taught by people who know the Word and love Jesus. In all of church history it has never been “me and Jesus” or “me and the Bible”
What is your answer for those of us who have been abused, marginalized and can’t find a safe much less loving church where we live.
Paul is not the final word on how to run a church, that honor was given to Peter from Jesus. If you look at the decline of the character of the church, it can be traced to following the teachings of Paul over Jesus. We were warned by Jesus of false leaders, and by Peter to the dangers of Paul’s teachings being misused. The fact that the church preaches Christians are not required to live under the Commandments, or have to repent from our sins, comes from the misapplication of Paul’s preaching. Grace is not a get “out of jail free” card. Jesus was very clear that the Law was to be followed before/after His death and resurrection. The modern church no longer holds itself to this standard, and the fruits speak for themselves.
It is interesting you mentioned “lone wolf”, the tribe of Benjamin is described as:
Gen 49:27 Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.
And Paul proclaims:
Romans 11:1 “I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.”
Jesus warns:
Matthew 7:15 “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”
I’ve been seeing this explanation for declining church attendance and even for declining identification as a Christian for the last 20 years, but I have yet to see actual evidence that there is any truth to it.
Nobody has ever been able to unearth any signs of a hidden silent minority of thoughtful, faithful Christians of any size regardless of whether it was a Christian organization who commissioned the survey. So the only reasonable conclusion is that it doesn’t exist.
Indeed when you dig into the more detailed results of these surveys, you find evidence that they are more likely to be disengaged and disillusioned with Christianity (not just the church itself) and while a majority still believes in a higher power, very few (13% according to the latest Pew survey) believe that higher power is the God of the Bible, and only 12% of them say that they draw their morality from religious beliefs.
If Christians cannot face up to the real reasons successive generations are leaving Christianity behind, they will never be able to do anything to stop it.
This has only been part of the truth for decades.
20 years ago, only 18% percent of of our community – Granbury, Texas – claimed to attend church services and some of them may have been lying.