Pew Report: U.S. Religious Practice Has Held Stable Since 2020, With 34% of Adults Attending Services in the Past Month
A new Pew Research Center report released October 28 challenges claims of a religious revival in the United States, finding that after a prolonged decline, Americans' religious practice has remained broadly stable since 2020. In the data, 70 percent of U.S. adults identify with a religion, 47 percent pray daily, 44 percent say religion is very important in their lives, and 34 percent attend religious services at least monthly.
In a June survey cited by the report, 34 percent of adults said they had attended a religious service in person in the previous month, and 45 percent had attended in person or watched online — both the highest levels since Pew began asking the questions in July 2020.
The signals among young adults are mixed. Among those born from 2004 to 2008, now ages 18 to 22, 41 percent attend services at least once or twice a month, above the national average of 33 percent, and the youngest men report greater religious observance than the youngest women, a pattern not previously seen in Pew surveys. By contrast, only 27 percent of adults born from 2000 to 2003, now ages 23 to 26, attend at least monthly, and that group is the least religious of any age group on prayer frequency, the importance of religion and religious identification. Pew cautions that the 18-to-22 findings rest on 443 respondents with a margin of error of plus or minus 5.7 percentage points, that it cannot yet tell whether the pattern is a turning point or a blip, and that there is no clear evidence any tracked birth cohort has become more religious in recent years.
(Source: Pew Research Center)
Source: Pew Research Center
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：美国一所教会的礼拜现场（资料图）。Rockfordmark 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: A church service in the United States (file photo). By Rockfordmark, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
