How Christian is America in 2026? After nearly two decades of steady decline, the most comprehensive religious survey ever conducted in the United States now finds the Christian share of the population holding remarkably steady. Drawing on Pew Research Center's landmark 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study, Gallup's long-running religion polling, Giving USA, the American Bible Society, the U.S. Religion Census, and Barna Group, this report assembles more than two dozen verifiable statistics that together paint a nuanced portrait: a faith that is smaller than it was a generation ago, yet far from disappearing—and showing early signs of renewal among the young.

62% of U.S. adults identify as Christian

83% believe in God or a higher power

$146.5B given to religion in 2024

356,642 congregations counted nationwide

Key takeaways

62% of U.S. adults are Christian—a 9-point drop since 2014 and 16 points below 2007, but the decline has stalled, with the Christian share hovering between 60% and 64% every year since 2019. (Pew Research Center)
The religious "nones" have plateaued too, holding at 29% after years of rapid growth from 16% in 2007. (Pew Research Center)
Belief remains widespread: 83% of Americans believe in God or a universal spirit and 86% believe people have a soul. (Pew Research Center)
Bible use rebounded to 41% of adults—about 110 million people—in 2025, up from 38% the year before. (American Bible Society)
Religion is still the largest cause in American philanthropy, receiving $146.54 billion in 2024, though its share of all giving has slipped from 34% in 2011 to 23%. (Giving USA)
A generational reversal is underway: Gen Z churchgoers now attend nearly twice a month on average, the highest level Barna has recorded for young Christians. (Barna Group)

How many Americans are Christian?

The 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study—Pew Research Center's third such survey, built on responses from more than 36,000 U.S. adults fielded between July 2023 and March 2024—finds that 62% of U.S. adults describe themselves as Christians. Within that group, 40% identify as Protestant, 19% as Catholic, and 3% as other Christians. It remains, by a wide margin, the country's dominant religious tradition.

Gallup's separate 2025 polling lands in the same neighborhood, finding 44% of Americans identify as Protestant or nondenominational Christian and 20% as Catholic. The two organizations use different methods and question wording, but both confirm that a clear majority of Americans still claim a Christian identity.

The decline has slowed—and may have leveled off

For years the headline story was decline. The Christian share of the population is now 9 percentage points lower than in 2014 and 16 points lower than in 2007, when 78% of adults were Christian. But the slide appears to have paused: for the last five years, between 2019 and 2024, the Christian share has been relatively stable, hovering between 60% and 64%.

Pew is careful to caution that this stability may be temporary. The report notes that "other indicators suggest we may see further declines," pointing out that younger Americans remain far less religious than the older, heavily Christian generations now passing away.

Year	Christian share of U.S. adults	Religiously unaffiliated share
2007	78%	16%
2014	71%	23%
2023–24	62%	29%

Source: Pew Research Center, 2007, 2014, and 2023–24 Religious Landscape Studies. View report.

Catholics, Protestants, and the major traditions

The Protestant world has reshuffled significantly. Evangelical Protestants now make up 23% of U.S. adults, down from 26%; mainline Protestants have fallen to 11% from 18%; and members of historically Black Protestant churches account for 5%, down from 7%. Mainline Protestantism has seen the steepest proportional decline of the three.

Protestant tradition	Previous RLS share	2023–24 share
Evangelical Protestant	26%	23%
Mainline Protestant	18%	11%
Historically Black Protestant	7%	5%

Source: Pew Research Center, 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study. View executive summary.

The rise—and plateau—of the "nones"

The mirror image of Christianity's decline has been the growth of the religiously unaffiliated. Americans who identify as atheist, agnostic, or "nothing in particular" now stand at 29%, up from 23% in 2014 and just 16% in 2007. Yet like the Christian share, the "nones" appear to have stopped growing for now. Gallup similarly recorded the unaffiliated reaching a high of roughly 24% in its 2025 data.

What Americans believe

Religious identity and religious belief are not the same thing—and belief remains strikingly common. According to Pew, 83% of U.S. adults believe in God or a universal spirit, 86% believe people have a soul or spirit, and 79% believe in something spiritual beyond the natural world. Seven in ten—70%—believe in heaven, hell, or both. Even as formal affiliation has softened, the spiritual instincts of the American public have proven durable.

Prayer and scripture in daily life

Practice tells a more sobering story than belief. 44% of U.S. adults say they pray at least once a day—a figure that has held steady between 44% and 46% since 2021 but is down sharply over the long term. Among Christians specifically, the share who pray every day has fallen to 44%, down from 58% in 2007.

The generational gap is stark. Only about 27% of adults ages 18 to 24 pray daily, compared with much higher rates among older Americans—the single clearest warning sign in the data for the future of organized religion.

Church attendance and membership

Gallup finds that 31% of Americans attend religious services weekly or nearly weekly in 2025, while 57% say they seldom or never attend. Formal membership has fallen even further: fewer than half of Americans now belong to a house of worship, with membership below the majority mark for several years running. Giving USA's analysis similarly notes that congregational membership dropped from 70% in 1999 to 45% in 2023.

Pew's own measure—attendance at least monthly—has been notably flat, with 33% of adults attending at least once or twice a month, identical to its 2020 reading. Attendance varies widely by tradition, as the chart below shows.

Evangelical Protestant60%

Catholic40%

Orthodox Christian37%

Mainline Protestant34%

Share attending religious services in person at least monthly, by tradition. Source: Pew Research Center, 2023–24 Religious Landscape Study. View report.

The Bible's place in American life

One of the brighter data points comes from the American Bible Society's 15th annual State of the Bible report. In 2025, 41% of adults—about 110 million people—qualified as Bible users, up from 38% (99 million) the previous year. Millennials drove much of the gain, posting a 29% increase in Bible use year over year, and men saw a 19% increase that narrowed the long-standing gender gap.

The deeper measure—Scripture engagement, which tracks how central the Bible is to people's decisions and relationships—rose to 20% from 18%, though it still trails the 25% recorded in 2019 before the pandemic. Encouragingly, Scripture engagement among Gen Z climbed to 15% and among Millennials to 17%, up from 11% and 12% a year earlier. Lifeway Research's complementary analysis underscores that consistent Bible reading remains concentrated among a committed minority.

Money in the offering plate

Religion remains the single largest cause in American philanthropy. According to Giving USA 2025, of the $592.50 billion Americans gave to charity in 2024, an estimated $146.54 billion went to religious organizations—more than any other subsector. Yet the trend line is downward in relative terms: religion's slice of total giving has fallen from 34% in 2011 to 23% in 2024, and when adjusted for inflation, giving to religion was the only one of the nine major subsectors to decline.

How many churches are there?

The 2020 U.S. Religion Census—the most extensive count of congregations ever conducted—tallied 356,642 congregations with more than 161 million adherents across 372 religious groups, equal to 48.6% of the national population. The Catholic Church reported the most adherents at over 61 million, the Southern Baptist Convention had the most congregations at more than 51,000, and the United Methodist Church appeared in the most counties—2,989.

A generational reversal?

Perhaps the most surprising development of 2025 came from Barna Group, which documented what it called a historic reversal in young-adult church attendance. Gen Z and Millennial churchgoers have moved from an average of just over one weekend per month in 2020 to nearly two in 2025: the typical Gen Z churchgoer now attends 1.9 weekends per month and Millennials 1.8—the highest rates Barna has recorded since it began tracking these generations. Belief in Jesus is rising particularly among Gen Z men, complicating the familiar narrative of inevitable youthful disengagement.

Pew strikes a more measured note, finding that overall religious indicators have held steady since 2020 rather than surging. Taken together, the evidence suggests at minimum that the long youth exodus has paused—and at most that a modest revival may be taking root.

The road ahead

The data resist a single tidy storyline. American Christianity is smaller than it was in 2007, with fewer weekly worshipers, fewer formal members, and a shrinking share of charitable dollars. At the same time, the decline has plateaued, belief in God remains nearly universal, Bible use is rising, and the youngest churchgoers are showing up more often than they did five years ago. Whether the recent stabilization marks a genuine turning point or merely a pause before further decline will depend largely on whether today's young adults carry their renewed engagement into the decades ahead.

Why this matters for the church

For pastors and ministry leaders, these numbers carry a practical lesson: the Americans who remain engaged are deeply engaged, and the tools that nurture that engagement matter more than ever. The rise in Bible use and Scripture engagement—especially among Gen Z and Millennials—shows that personal connection to Scripture is where renewal begins. That conviction is the reason HolyJot exists: to help believers move from occasional Bible reading toward a daily, reflective habit through guided journaling, while giving churches modern tools to shepherd a generation that is, against expectations, leaning back in. In a landscape defined by both decline and quiet renewal, the congregations that invest in genuine spiritual formation are the ones best positioned for what comes next.

Christianity in America Statistics (2026)