According to some recent headlines, a religious renewal is underway in America as some churches report a surge in baptisms and conversions led by younger Americans, particularly Gen Z men.
Melissa Deckman, Ph.D.
It is a storyline that, in many ways, feels sensical. Americans, as we know, are experiencing a crisis of loneliness and are hungering for more face-to-face, authentic connection. Many Americans continue to be faithful to religious congregations; among those who attend religious services regularly, my organization, Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), found that roughly 8 in 10 do so to experience religion as part of a larger community. Churches and other sacred communal spaces may be particularly well-positioned to meet the needs of Americans left adrift by our increasingly atomized lives.
This supposed new interest in religion, some argue, is fed by online influencers. Orthobros promote the merits of Orthodox faith, whose demanding rituals affirm traditional masculinity to young men seeking structure. Catholic Anthony Gross, who regularly posts about the hippest Catholic churches in New York City, is followed by more than 130,000 people on Instagram. Others argue that joining more ritualistic faith traditions represents a new countercultural vanguard for younger Americans. Or, as Julia Yost recently wrote, “In a secularizing world, becoming Catholic has rebellious cachet.”
And yet, as PRRI’s latest Census of American Religion shows, there is simply no evidence to suggest at a national level that Americans are becoming more religious, either in their affiliation with a particular faith tradition or in terms of attending religious services more regularly.
For instance, in 2025, the percentages of Americans who identify as white evangelical Protestants (13%), white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants (13%), and white Catholics (12%) remain unchanged from 2024. Fewer than 1% of Americans identified as Orthodox Christian in 2025, at similar rates from the year before. The percentages of Christians of color and members of non-Christian religions, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Unitarian Universalists, and other world religions, show little change in the past year and have remained largely consistent since 2013.
Americans aren’t returning to church in higher numbers, either. Over the past decade, religious service attendance has declined, with fewer Americans saying they attend religious services at least once a week and more saying they seldom or never attend them. Roughly one in four Americans attend church weekly in 2025 (26%) — the same as the previous year.
Younger Americans (18-29) are also not returning to the pews in higher numbers. Just one in five young men (21%) and women (20%) attended church weekly in 2025, matching their 2024 rates. These rates of church attendance among younger Americans have remained largely unchanged since 2013.
Image courtesy of Jen Johnson via Unsplash
Moreover, the percentage of young Americans who are religiously unaffiliated has also remained unchanged in the past year, shifting from 38% in 2024 to 39% in 2025. And contrary to the conventional wisdom that younger men are being drawn to religion, the percentage of young men who identify as religiously unaffiliated has largely stayed the same since 2013, with 35% identifying as a “none” in 2013 and 35% identifying as a “none” in 2025.
Instead, a far more notable trend involves Gen Z women. While American women have always been more religious than men — attending church more often and identifying more strongly with faith traditions — we see that Gen Z women are bucking that trend. While their rates of church attendance are on par with their male counterparts, they have shed religious labels steadily since 2013, when 29% identified as religiously unaffiliated. By 2024, that figure grew to 40%, and in 2025, it increased to 43%. Most of that growth has resulted from a decline in religious affiliation among young women of color.
Of course, many Americans continue to forge paths into new faith traditions, driven by marriage, a friend’s invitation, or a restless search for deeper meaning. This “religious churning” is a long-standing American hallmark; whether individuals are trying on new beliefs or abandoning faith altogether, the decision to stay or leave is often a deeply personal quest for fulfillment.
The problem with current stories that denote a larger religious upswing in the United States, however, is that they promote a sort of wishful thinking or vision of America that implicitly endorses a set of political and cultural assumptions, as religious renewal stories are often linked to more traditionalist values.
By overstating evidence and elevating anecdotal examples of renewed interest into a broader cultural trend, a narrative emerges that the United States is becoming uniformly more religious, which is a misrepresentation of where the country is headed. This is especially dangerous at a time when right-wing politicians and members of the Trump administration attempt to blur the lines between church and state.
In reality, the data are more complex, with stability in overall religious affiliation, fewer Americans attending organized religious services, and notable shifts among Gen Z women away from religious identity. Failing to reflect this complexity reinforces a distorted view of American public life, suggesting a cultural and political consensus that is incongruous with reality.
Melissa Deckman is the CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and the author of The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy.
