Less Than 50% Of Americans Now Attend Any House of Worship In Historic First

Updated September 6, 2021

Regardless of what faith you follow, if any, you likely have some memories of attending a house of worship as a kid.

And while it's true that everyone is different in the same way, most of us will likely remember finding the whole experience pretty boring. And when we're bored, our eyes tend to wander and we can find ourselves noticing how attentive others were in the proceedings that we had a hard time focusing on.

But while that boredom is pretty common among children, it was hard not to get the expectation that we would one day see our local leader's words as inspiring rather than background noise.

Yet for some, that day never comes. So once they get old enough that they can make their own decisions, they're not likely to return now that nobody is making them.

And those who experienced this dissatisfaction may be interested to know that their story is more common than they may have thought.

A recent poll by Gallup shows that in 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque.

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At first, the fact that these numbers showed a 3% decline from 2018 may create the impression that this was just a temporary dip caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, it seems more likely that this decline is well in line with a trend the pollster has tracked over the past two decades.

Nonetheless, this marks the first time that church membership declined below 50% of the American population since Gallup started recording this data in 1937.

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Gallup's data shows that membership was at 73% in that inaugural year and hovered around 70% until the turn of the new millennium.

But ever since, membership has trended downward and Gallup has identified several factors in how this has happened.

The first factor that might spring to mind is simply that people are becoming less religious.

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And indeed, Gallup noted a 13-point increase in people who declare no religious affiliation since the 1998-2000 period just before the decline began in earnest.

But while this apparently accounts for more than half of the overall decline in church, synagogue and mosque membership, it doesn't give us the full picture.

After all, the United States can still be considered a significantly religious nation with over seven in 10 Americans affiliating with a specific major religion.

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However, Gallup also saw a 13% decrease in church membership even among these people as their attendance percentage has fallen to 60%, with most of this change happening in the last three years.

And while this trend is more pronounced among younger Americans, it seems that no generation is completely immune to it.

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After all, church membership among those born before 1946 has fallen by 11% in the same period of time and the percentage of those among this age group with no religious affiliation has increased from 4% to 7%.

So while this age group is holding the strongest for church membership at 66%, even that number isn't quite what it used to be.

Baby Boomers and Generation X have seen their own membership numbers decline by 9% (down to 58%) and 12% respectively (down to 50%).

For millennials and Gen-Zers, this decline is a little harder to chart since neither were old enough to respond to Gallup polls conducted during 1998-2000. However, what is clear is that 31% of millennials and 33% of Gen-Zers have no religious preference, which dwarfs the rates of any previous generation.

Furthermore, there is enough data to suggest that millennial church membership has fallen 13 points to 50% in the last 10 years.

Should this trend continue, the number of active churches throughout the Unites States is likely to decline in kind.

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Although Gallup admitted they don't have precise numbers indicating the extent to which this is already happening, they did say that even a conservative estimate at church closures puts the number at multiple thousands per year.

h/t: Gallup

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