Reviewing the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape survey: Part 1

Several weeks ago, the Pew Research Center released the results of its Religious Landscape survey (RLS). This survey provides valuable insight into the current state of American religiosity. Pew first conducted this survey in 2007 and has conducted follow-up surveys in 2014 and 2023-2024.

The latest edition of this survey sampled over 36,000 US adults across the country, and people can view this data either through an interactive website or a written report online.

Over the next week, I plan to publish multiple articles on this landmark survey’s results. But for today, I plan to discuss the overall religious trends in America found in this survey.

Researchers from the Pew Research Center titled their lengthy report on the Religious Landscape Survey‘s findings as the “Decline of Christianity in the U.S. Has Slowed, May Have Leveled Off”. Their report highlights the slowdown in the decline of Americans identifying as Christians in the 2023-2024 RLS.

For context, 78% of Americans in the 2007 Religious Landscape Survey identified as Christian. This percentage decreased to 71% in 2014 and is now 62% in 2024. Despite the continued decrease between 2014 and 2024, this decline effectively stopped around 2020 and has stabilized in the ensuing four years.

Here is how Pew Research Center summarized its overall findings:

The first RLS, fielded in 2007, found that 78% of U.S. adults identified as Christians of one sort or another. That number ticked steadily downward in our smaller surveys each year and was pegged at 71% in the second RLS, conducted in 2014.

The latest RLS, fielded over seven months in 2023-24, finds that 62% of U.S. adults identify as Christians. That is a decline of 9 percentage points since 2014 and a 16-point drop since 2007.

But for the last five years, between 2019 and 2024, the Christian share of the adult population has been relatively stable, hovering between 60% and 64%. The 62% figure in the new Religious Landscape Study is smack in the middle of that recent range.

What an interesting conclusion. Despite the supposed long-term decline in American Christianity over the last 20 years, there is also a simultaneous short-term “plateau” that is occurring in the data.

Younger Americans (Gen Z & Millennials) are less likely to identify as Christian compared to older Americans (Baby Boomers & Gen X). But even with this difference, all American generations did not see a significant decline in religious practice or Christian identification between 2020 and 2024. Therefore, this short-term leveling off in the decline in Christian identification is occurring among Americans of all ages.

Now, Pew Research Center‘s report on the RLS does share one caveat about the short-term stability in the data of American Christian identification:

“The new RLS finds that the youngest cohort of adults is no less religious than the second-youngest cohort in a variety of ways. Americans born in 2000 through 2006 (those ages 18 to 24 in the 2023-24 RLS) are just as likely as those born in the 1990s (now ages 24 to 34) to identify as Christians, to say religion is very important in their lives, and to report that they attend religious services at least monthly.

Time will tell whether the recent stability in measures of religious commitment is the beginning of a lasting shift in America’s religious trajectory. But it is inevitable that older generations will decline in size as their members gradually die. We also know that the younger cohorts succeeding them are much less religious.

This means that, for lasting stability to take hold in the U.S. religious landscape, something would need to change. For example, today’s young adults would have to become more religious as they age, or new generations of adults who are more religious than their parents would have to emerge.“

Of course, we don’t know what the future of American Christianity will look like in the next 5, 10, 20, or 50 years. Only the Lord Jesus Christ himself knows.

That being said, the future trends in American Christian identification rests primarily with the American youth and young adults (Generations Alphas, Z, and Millennials). According to the researchers’ report, their religious beliefs and practices will determine both the long-term and the short-term trends of American Christianity.

While the short-term trends in American Christian identification are more positive than in previous years, American Christians cannot rest on our laurels. We must pass the down the one true faith down to our children, grandchildren, and generations beyond them. Consequently, my next article in this series will focus exclusively on the religious trends of young Americans in the recent Religious Landscape Survey.