TWH – Every year, the Pew Research Center releases its annual assessment of religious beliefs and practices in the United States. The latest findings reveal a continuing shift in religious affiliation, with —religiously unaffiliated or spiritual individuals—becoming the largest single group in terms of religious identity. As TWH reported last year, the rise of this group aligns with broader secularization trends seen in other Western countries, such as those in Europe, where traditional religious institutions have been losing influence for decades.
The growth of the spiritual and nonreligious has occurred alongside a decline in the number of Americans who identify as Christian. Christianity, once the overwhelming majority religion in the United States, has steadily shrunk in adherents. Some analysts have even suggested that Christianity in the U.S. is moving toward becoming a minority religion.
However, the latest research from Pew, released on February 26, 2025, suggests that this decline may be slowing or at least leveling off. The most recent survey, which polled 36,908 U.S. adults as part of Pew’s Religious Landscape Study (RLS), found that slightly more than six in ten Americans still identify as Christian. This suggests a potential plateau in the decline, at least for the time being.
The Religious Landscape Study is the most extensive survey conducted by Pew, offering authoritative insights into U.S. religious affiliation since the U.S. Census does not collect religious data. This year’s findings update the previous survey from 2014 and show that 62% of American adults still identify as Christian—40% as Protestant, 19% as Catholic, and 3% as belonging to other Christian traditions. In contrast, the religiously unaffiliated now comprise 29% of the population, with 5% identifying as atheists, 6% as agnostics, and 19% choosing “nothing in particular.” Meanwhile, 7% of Americans belong to religions outside of Christianity, including Judaism (2%), Islam (1%), Buddhism (1%), and Hinduism (1%).
According to Gregory Smith, a senior associate director of research at Pew, the long-term trend points to religious decline, but the short-term data suggests a period of stability. “If you look at the long term, it’s a story of decline in American religion,” he explained to NPR. “But in the short term, it’s a story of stability over the last four or five years.”
One of the most interesting aspects of the new data is that the youngest group of adults surveyed, those born between 2000 and 2006, are not showing the same steep decline in Christian identification as previous younger cohorts. While they are still less likely to be Christian than older generations, their level of religious affiliation closely matches that of those born in the 1990s, defying past trends of continuous decline.
Beyond religious identification, the study also examined religious beliefs and practices. While fewer Americans attend religious services or pray daily than in past decades, some indicators have remained steady in recent years. For example, 44% of U.S. adults say they pray at least once a day, a figure that has held between 44% and 46% since 2021. Similarly, 33% report attending religious services at least once a month, a number that has hovered in the low 30s since 2020. At the same time, a majority of Americans maintain some form of spiritual belief: 86% believe people have a soul, 83% believe in God or a universal spirit, and 79% believe in a spiritual realm beyond the natural world.
Despite these signs of deceleration or stabilization, Pew cautions that future trends may lead to further declines in religious participation- that is people in pews.
Several factors suggest continued secularization, including the fact that young adults remain significantly less religious than older generations. Additionally, religious upbringing appears to be losing its ability to retain adherents into adulthood. Fewer young adults who were raised religious maintain high levels of religious commitment, while those raised without religion are increasingly staying unaffiliated as they age.
This year’s RLS also highlights significant shifts within Christian denominations. Overall, 35% of U.S. adults have switched religions since childhood, with most shifts resulting in losses for Christian groups and gains for the religiously unaffiliated. Protestantism, in particular, has seen notable declines across all major branches:
- Evangelical Protestants now make up 23% of U.S. adults, down from 26% in 2007.
- Mainline Protestants have declined from 18% in 2007 to just 11% in 2024.
- Historically Black Protestant churches have also seen a decrease, from 7% in 2007 to 5% today.
- The United Methodist Church, which has undergone significant internal division, now accounts for fewer than 3% of U.S. adults, down from 5% in 2007.
Religious trends also vary by demographic factors such as gender, political ideology, race, and immigration status. Women remain more religious than men, though the gap has narrowed among younger generations. Politically, Christian identification has declined more among liberals than conservatives. Among racial and ethnic groups, white Christians continue to decline as a share of the population, while immigrants are more likely to be religious than native-born Americans.
The Pew findings align with data from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), which also tracks religious trends in the U.S. PRRI’s 2023 Census of American Religion found a continuing decline in white Christians. In 2006, 57% of Americans identified as white Christians; by 2023, that number had fallen to 41%. White evangelical Protestants have experienced the sharpest drop, declining from 23% of the population in 2006 to just 13% in 2023. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated population has risen steadily, growing from 16% in 2006 to 27% in 2023.
Although some data suggest a temporary stabilization in religious affiliation, long-term trends indicate that secularization is likely to continue. Younger Americans remain less religious than older generations, and shifts in societal attitudes toward gender, sexuality, and institutional authority may contribute to declining religious participation. While spirituality remains an important part of American life, the traditional dominance of Christianity appears to be giving way to a more diverse and secular landscape. Whether this trend stabilizes or accelerates in the coming years remains to be seen. Still, for now, the data suggests a period of relative steadiness in the religious composition of the United States.
Regarding broader spirituality trends, it is worth noting that Pew’s research remains largely centered on monotheistic traditions. For example, many survey questions focus on the role of the Bible and traditional Christian belief systems. Additionally, Pew categorizes religious groups in ways that may not fully capture the diversity of spiritual identities. The survey footnotes that “Unitarians and other liberal faiths” include Unitarians, deists, humanists, and those identifying as “spiritual but not religious.” Meanwhile, the “New Age” category encompasses Pagans, Wiccans, Druids, Satanists, and others.
The share of Americans identifying with non-Christian religions has grown, albeit from a small base, rising from 4.7% in 2007 to 7.1% in the 2023-24 RLS. In the latest survey, 1.7% of respondents identified as Jewish, 1.2% as Muslim, 1.1% as Buddhist, and 0.9% as Hindu. Additionally, less than 0.3% identified with other world religions such as Sikhism, Daoism, Bahá’í, and Zoroastrianism, while 1.9% identified with alternative spiritual movements, including Unitarian Universalism, Pantheism, and Wicca. Notably, there has been a slight increase in these groups, rising from 0.4% in 2007 and 2014 to 0.7% in 2025.
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