Religion

While U.S. currency says “In God We Trust,” only half of U.S. adults have certainty about God’s existence.

When asked about their confidence in God’s existence, 50% say they know God exists and have no doubts, according to the latest General Social Survey (GSS). In 1993, 65% of Americans said they were certain God existed, and the percentage has been sliding down ever since.

Belief in God has particularly fallen among young adults. In 1993, 63% of 18- to 34-year-olds knew God existed with no doubts. Today, just 36% have the same confidence. Other age demographics have fallen, but not to the same extent. Belief in the divine among 35- to 49-year-olds is down to 49%. While the percentage of those 50 and older who have complete confidence in God’s existence remains higher than other age groups, it has dropped to 58%.

Belief in God among upper-class Americans has actually increased over the past two decades, from 49% to 53%. But it has declined in every other class designation. Middle-class belief is down from 62% in 1993 to 44%. Working-class belief has declined from 67% to 54%. And lower class belief has dropped from 75% to 57%.

Christianity is not [currently] declining in America. At the New York Times, journalist Lauren Jackson has been doing some searching, thorough reporting for a new series “Believing.” Apparently, 92 percent of Americans say “they hold a spiritual belief in a god, human souls or spirits, an afterlife, or something ‘beyond the natural world.’”

Jackson reasons that people haven’t found a satisfying alternative to religion. She reports that for the last few decades, much of the world has tried to go without God, a departure from most of recorded history. More than a billion people globally and about a third of Americans have tried to live without religion. Studies in recent years have offered insights into how that is going. The data doesn’t look good.

Actively religious people tend to report they are happier than people who don’t practice religion. Religious Americans are healthier, too. They are significantly less likely to be depressed or to die by suicide, alcoholism, cancer, cardiovascular illness, or other causes. In a long-term study, doctors at Harvard found that women who attended religious services once a week were 33 percent less likely to die prematurely than women who never attended. One researcher on the study said, that because “they had higher levels of social support, better health behaviors, and greater optimism about the future.”

Religiously affiliated Americans are more likely to feel gratitude (by 23 percentage points), spiritual peace (by 27 points), and “a deep sense of connection with humanity” (by 15 points) regularly than people without a religious affiliation.

Religion can’t just become another way to optimize your life. Some have tried. Jackson describes secular community gatherings with pop music, morality talks, free food — but “None of us became regulars.” Going for any reason other than faith itself leaves you with little reason to stick around.

For most of the last 30 years, the story of religion in America has been a pretty steady one: a constant, and consistent, drop in religious affiliation every year. Starting in the 1990s, the share of Americans who identified as Christian, or identified with any religion at all, began to drop precipitously. At the same time, those with no religious affiliation — nicknamed “nones” — began to spike.

That trend might be ending. Over the last five years, the share of Americans who are “nones” has stabilized at roughly 30 percent, across multiple tracking surveys — largely because of one group: Zoomers.

Sometime around or after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, young Americans began to find, or at least retain, religious belief at higher rates than previous generations.

Gen Z seems to be the key. Recently, surveys have found that Zoomers are the only generation not losing their religious affiliation. Why? There’s no unifying explanation for this trend, but it extends beyond the United States. And that suggests that there might be some structural reasons Gen Z is rediscovering faith. Something about post-Covid seems to be bringing youth back to Christianity, specifically, but also to religion in general.

There are three potential explanations:

1. Loneliness: Gen Z seeks community and connection in faith to combat widespread feelings of isolation.

2. Distrust of Institutions: Turning to religion as a countercultural response to declining trust in government and mainstream culture.

3. Political and Social Shifts: Young men are becoming more religious and politically conservative, while young women favor more liberal faiths, reflecting broader generational divides.

The vast majority of American Christians were raised in the faith—and most can point to the influence of their moms. In a 2023 study, the American Bible Society found that a majority of believers remain in the same religious tradition as their mothers.

This agrees with a large body of mainstream social science research dating back to the 1970s that says the active faith of mothers is a strong predictor of religious transmission. Some of this may be attributed to the natural bond children have with their mothers. But there is also research that shows that moms take a more active role in faith formation in America.

For every ­100 Americans raised by Protestant mothers:

99% of Christian teenagers talk about God with their mothers

71% of Christian teenagers read the Bible with their mothers

70% of Christian teenagers pray with their mothers

63% of Christian teenagers say their mothers encourage them to go to church

62% share the same faith tradition as adults

19% have no religion

11% joined another Christian tradition

4% are now Catholic

4% are other

The billionaire Elon Musk has recently been invoking Christianity as he discusses core beliefs. Raised Anglican in South Africa, young Musk got an early taste of differing religious views attending a Jewish preschool. “I was just singing ‘Hava Nagila’ one day and `Jesus, I Love You’ the next,” he jokes.

As he grew older, Musk has said, he turned to the great religious books—the Bible, Quran, Torah, some Hindu texts—to deal with an existential crisis of meaning. And he looked to philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche.

But not until the boy discovered science fiction, he says, did he begin to find what he was looking for. In particular, he says, it was the lesson he took away from the “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” that the purpose of life wasn’t so much about finding the big answers but asking the right questions.

“The answer is the easy part,” Musk said during a public event. “The question is the hard part.”

Recent tweets have included: “Jesus taught love, kindness, and forgiveness. I used to think that turning the other cheek was weak & foolish, but I was the fool for not appreciating its profound wisdom.”

And: “While I’m not a particularly religious person, I do believe that the teachings of Jesus are good and wise.”

Describing himself as “cultural Christian,” Musk indicated his guiding belief goes back to that of seeking greater understanding. “That is my religion, for the lack of a better way to describe it, it’s really a religion of curiosity,” he said. “The religion of greater enlightenment.”

Journalist Derek Thompson is lamenting the decline of church attendance in America. As an agnostic, one would think he would be pleased. In a piece for The Atlantic, he writes: "Maybe religion, for all of its faults, works a bit like a retaining wall to hold back the destabilizing pressure of American hyper-individualism, which threatens to swell and spill over in its absence."

Thompson paraphrases social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his book, The Anxious Generation:

Many Americans have developed a new relationship with a technology that is the diabolical opposite of a religious ritual: the smartphone. (To) stare into a piece of glass in our hands is to be removed from our bodies, to skim our attention from one piece of ephemera to the next. Digital life is disembodied, asynchronous, shallow, and solitary.

Religious rituals put us in our body, requiring some kind of movement that marks the activity as devotional. Christians kneel, Muslims prostrate, and Jews pray. Religious ritual also fixes us in time, forcing us to set aside an hour or day for prayer, reflection, or separation from daily habit. Finally, religious ritual often requires that we make contact with the sacred in the presence of other people.

I wonder if, in forgoing organized religion, an isolated country has discarded an old and proven source of ritual at a time when we most need it. It took decades for Americans to lose religion. It might take decades to understand the entirety of what we lost.

In Buddhist Japan, they now have robot priests. Mindar is a robo-priest which has been working at a temple in Kyoto for the last few years, reciting Buddhist sutras with which it has been programmed. The next step, says monk Tensho Goto, an excitable champion of the digital dharma, is to fit it with an AI system so that it can have real conversations, and offer spiritual advice. Goto is especially excited about the fact that Mindar is “immortal.” This means, he says, that it will be able to pass on the tradition in the future better than him.

Meanwhile, over in China, Xian’er is a touchscreen “robo-monk” who works in a temple near Beijing, spreading “kindness, compassion and wisdom to others through the internet and new media.”

In India, the Hindus are joining in, handing over duties in one of their major ceremonies to a robot arm, which performs in place of a priest.

In a Catholic church in Warsaw, Poland, sits SanTO, an AI robot which looks like a statue of a saint, and is “designed to help people pray” by offering Bible quotes in response to questions.

Not to be outdone, a protestant church in Germany has developed a robot called BlessU-2. BlessU-2, which looks like a character designed by Aardman Animations, can “forgive your sins in five different languages,” which must be handy if they’re too embarrassing to confess to a human.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Computer scientists and programmers pursue their goal of creating their own god from AI. They seek wisdom and guidance apart from the true source. “For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” (Jer. 2:13)

When Americans are asked to check a box indicating their religious affiliation, 28% now check “none.” A new study from Pew Research finds that the religiously unaffiliated is now the largest cohort in the U.S. They're more prevalent among American adults than Catholics (23%) or evangelical Protestants (24%). Researchers refer to this group as the "Nones."

Back in 2007, Nones made up just 16% of Americans, but Pew's new survey of more than 3,300 U.S. adults shows that number has now risen dramatically. Pew asked respondents what they believe. The research organization found that most Nones believe in God or another higher power, but very few attend any kind of religious service.

They aren't all anti-religious. Most Nones say religion does some harm, but many also think it does some good. Most have more positive views of science than those who are religiously affiliated; however, they reject the idea that science can explain everything.

Pew also asked respondents what they believe. While many people of faith say they rely on scripture, tradition, and the guidance of religious leaders to make moral decisions, Pew found that Nones say they're guided by logic or reason when making moral decisions. And huge numbers say the desire to avoid hurting other people factors prominently in how they think about right and wrong.

Demographically, Nones also stand out from the religiously affiliated:

• Nones are young. 69% are under the age of fifty.

• They're also less racially diverse. 63% of Nones are white.

• The Nones are comprised of three distinct groups – atheists, agnostics, and those who describe themselves as “nothing in particular.”

More millennials attend church weekly now than before the start of the pandemic. According to a Barna Group survey of 13,000 adults, roughly 16 percent of regular churchgoers have not returned to services at all in 2022, but weekly attendance among those born between 1981 and 1996 has risen from 21 percent to 39 percent this year.

The trend can be partly explained by life stage. Across age cohorts, church attendance is highest when people have young children, drops off for “empty nesters,” and then increases again when friends start to pass away. The oldest millennials are 40 and 41

The term “deaths of despair” was coined in 2015 by Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton. The researchers were seeking to find what was causing the decline in U.S. life expectancies in the later part of the 20th century. They discovered the dramatic increase in death rates for middle-aged, white non-Hispanic men and women was coming from three causes: drug overdoses, suicide, and alcoholic liver disease. Deaths from these causes have increased between 56 percent and 387 percent and average 70,000 per year.

The researchers said, “The pillars that once helped give life meaning—a good job, a stable home life, a voice in the community—have all eroded.” Those pillars are certainly important, but another factor may have an even more detrimental effect.

Research suggests a potential cause of deaths of despair could be the decline in religious participation that began in the late 1980s. The researchers found “there is a strong negative relationship between religiosity and mortality due to deaths of despair.”

In 2010, country singer Jason Aldean released a song called “Church Pew or Bar Stool” in which he complains about how he’s stuck in a “church pew or bar stool kind of town.” He sings, “There’s only two means of salvation around here that seem to work / Whiskey or the Bible, a shot glass or revival.” That’s a crude dichotomy, but it appears to increasingly be the choice many Americans face. They’ll either find hope from a community of faith or the lonely despair that leads them to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs.

Christianity could become a minority religion in the U.S. by 2070 if Americans continue to leave the faith at the current rate, according to new projections by the Pew Research Center.

The projections used surveys and other data to figure out what religion in America would look like in the next 50 years. Pew estimates that nearly a third of people raised in the Christian faith currently leave the religion before turning 30 years old, and another seven percent do so after that age. If those rates continue, the group projects that 46% of Americans would identify as Christian by 2070 and those with no religious affiliation would stand at about 41%. That would mean Christianity would no longer be the majority religion in the U.S., according to Pew.

In the early 1990s, about 90% of Americans identified as Christians. By 2020, Pew estimated that about 64% of Americans were Christian; 30% had no religious affiliation (“nones”); and 6% were Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or part of another religion. If the latest projections become reality, the U.S. would fall more in line with other Western European countries, where Christianity has already lost its majority.

According to a 2021 study many young people consider themselves spiritual but don’t identify with an organized religion. The survey found that half of young people ages 13 to 25 don’t think that religious institutions care as much as they do about issues that matter to them. Those include issues related to racial justice, gender equity, immigration rights, income inequality, and gun control.

In an article in Vice, Brian Merchant argues that the first structure that humans will probably build on the Moon after they have completed building a base there will be a church. Indeed, Christian missionaries and clergymen have built churches in the harshest of climates, whether they be the tropical jungles of Africa or the sun-drenched deserts of Australia.

When the Ross Sea Party of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917 landed in Antarctica, among the men was an Anglican priest named Arnold Spencer-Smith. Spencer-Smith set up a small chapel in a dark room in Scott's Hut at Cape Evans. He built an altar with a cross and candlesticks and an aumbry where he reserved the Blessed Sacrament.

Today, there are eight churches in Antarctica. One is an Eastern Orthodox church built of wood in the Russian style. Another is The Chapel of Our Lady of the Snows which is a Catholic church located in a cave in the ice. It is the most southern place of worship of any religion in the world.

Churches have been erected in Antarctica since the 1950s. Extended stays in the region can be an extremely stressful experience for the researchers who often stay separated from their families for months at a time, which is one of the reasons why churches exist in this remote continent.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Living anywhere in the world (or space) is a stressful experience for believers. We need the church to give support, care, connectivity to others, and to center ourselves in worship of Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth.

In the book The Faith of Elvis, Billy Stanley, half-brother of Elvis, shares poignantly of the ups and downs of Elvis’ walk with the Jesus. On a more humorous side he shared this encounter between Elvis and Sammy Davis Jr.:

It was a kind of a funny thing, and also serious in a way, but one time in Las Vegas, he was talking to Sammy Davis Jr. Sammy noticed Elvis wearing both a Star of David and a cross necklace—two things that don’t normally go together because they represent two distinct religions: Judaism and Christianity.

Sammy said, “Elvis, isn’t that kind of a contradiction?”

Elvis looked at him and said, “I don’t want to miss heaven on a technicality.”

American evangelicals’ grasp on theology is slipping, and more than half affirmed heretical views of God in the 2022 State of Theology survey, released by Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway Research.

Overall, adults in the U.S. are moving away from orthodox understandings of God and his Word year after year. More than half of the country (53%) now believes Scripture “is not literally true,” up from 41 percent when the biannual survey began in 2014.

Researchers called the rejection of the divine authorship of the Bible the “clearest and most consistent trend” over the eight years of data. Researchers wrote, “This view makes it easy for individuals to accept biblical teaching that they resonate with while simultaneously rejecting any biblical teaching that is out of step with their own personal views or broader cultural values.”

Here are five of the most common mistaken beliefs held by evangelicals:

1. Jesus isn’t the only way to God. 56 percent of evangelical respondents affirmed that “God accepts the worship of all religions.” This answer indicates a bent toward universalism—believing there are ways to bypass Jesus in our approach to and acceptance by God.

2. Jesus was created by God. 73 percent agreed with the statement that “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.” This is a form of Arianism, a popular heresy that arose in the early fourth century.

3. Jesus is not God. 43 percent affirmed that “Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God,” which is another form of Arian heresy.

4. The Holy Spirit is not a personal being. 60 percent of the evangelical survey respondents believe that “The Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being.”

5. Humans aren’t sinful by nature. 57 percent also agreed to the statement that “Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.” In other words, humans might be capable of committing individual sins, but we do not have sinful natures. This denies the doctrine of original sin.

For decades, we’ve thought of women as more religious than men. Survey results, conventional wisdom, and anecdotal glimpses across our own congregations have shown us how women care more about their faith, though researchers haven’t been able to fully untangle the underlying causes for the gender gap across religious traditions and across the globe.

Now, data shows the long-held trend may finally be flipping: In the United States, young women are less likely to identify with religion than young men. The findings could have a profound impact on the future of the American church.

Percentage who identified as nones in 2021:

18 to 25-year-old men – 46%

18 to 25-year-old women – 49%

40-year-old men – 45%

40-year-old women – 44%

60-year-old men – 32%

60-year-old women – 36%

65-year-old men – 25%

65-year-old women – 20%

There’s also a gender gap in church attendance. This pattern has been so stark that Pew Research Center found in 2016 that Christian women around the world are on average seven percentage points more likely than men to attend services; there are no countries where men are significantly more likely to be religiously affiliated than women.

Each morning Alexander Chu awakened to the smell of incense burning offered in front of Buddha statues. His home was like a temple. On each wall hung a Buddha portrait, totaling more than 30 deities throughout the house.

You might think the family lived on a street in Thailand or China yet his home was in Lawrence, Kansas. His father was a science professor with a Guggenheim Award, and his mother was a so-called “tiger mom” who kept the pressure on Andrew and his two sisters for straight A’s.

My Taiwanese family lineage includes generations of Buddhists, so religion was destined to be integral to my identity formation. Yet outside our home, our neighbors pursued an entirely different faith. Somehow, I managed to go through 18 years of life without ever hearing the Good News of Jesus.

In the mid-1990s, Andrew arrived at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. His dorm was full of fervent Christians. These InterVarsity Christian Fellowship students were the first Asian American Christians he had ever met. Andrew said, “Living with them, I began to realize that the Buddhism of my upbringing was not in my heart.”

Growing curious about Christianity during his sophomore year, Andrew asked a friend if he could join him at an IVCF gathering. There for the first time he heard God’s promises declared in worship songs and saw men and women praising him. He joined GIG (Groups Investigating God) and began studying the Gospel of John. Andrew said, “The authority with which Jesus spoke amazed me; it’s as if his words jumped off the pages, addressing me directly.”

Before I could place faith in Jesus, I needed to know there was a rational basis for Christianity’s foundational truths. I attended a retreat sponsored by InterVarsity, where I took an apologetics track. I heard well-founded explanations of the inspiration of Scripture, the problem of evil, and the uniqueness of the gospel. I found that Christianity was the most intellectually stimulating worldview I had ever encountered.

During my junior year I started reading John Stott’s pamphlet “Becoming a Christian.” While reading, I grew convinced of my sin and need to be forgiven. I knelt down committed my life to Christ. I had grown up in a sea of deities, yet never had a relationship with any of them. On that day, I experienced the living God, Emmanuel: “God is with us.” A peace overtook me. That night I became the first Christian in our family’s lineage.

For months he prayed about how to tell his parents what had happened. When he was at home for winter break, he sat in the living room to read Following Jesus Without Dishonoring Your Parents. His father was stunned by his reading choice, but also pleased by the dutiful title of the book. When he asked why Andrew was reading it, he told him that he had become a Christian. His parents insisted that the family religion was Buddhism. Both parents held out hope that he would come to his senses and return to the Buddhist faith.

As the years passed, I started to discern a call to vocational ministry. My parents said that if I followed through with this plan, they would cut me off. Sensing disunity in our home, I decided to stay and care for my father, who was battling heart disease. My presence and devotion built mutual respect and helped preserve our relationship. In God’s timing, my family softened to my hopes of becoming a pastor. My parents continue to share their Buddhist experiences with me, and I continue to share my faith with them. My mom regularly prays to Jesus to bless and protect me.

Editor’s note: Andrew now serves on staff as pastor of outreach at a multisite church in the Chicago suburbs.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June of 2022, that a Bremerton, Wash., high-school football coach was improperly fired for praying with his players after games. That was only the most recent of high court cases involving the question of when prayer on public grounds is and isn’t permissible. Americans, especially American liberals, have been obsessed with the question for more than 60 years.

The idea that prayer is improper at big-time sporting events was forgotten one Monday night, (January 2, 2023). It happened nine minutes into the game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals. Bills safety Damar Hamlin, after a routine tackle, stood up and then collapsed. Minutes later, emergency medical staff delivered cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The game was suspended, and suddenly prayer was back on the list of things anybody could talk about or do on camera.

Paycor Stadium, where the Bengals play, is owned by Hamilton County; it’s public property. But no one, so far as I am aware, raised any objection to the midfield prayers offered up that Monday night. That is because the fall of Damar Hamlin demanded a religious response. The ominous way in which the lithe 24-year-old dropped to the turf—not slumping down but falling backward—visibly shocked nearby players and appalled viewers.

Any legal or cultural prohibitions attaching to sporting-event prayers were rescinded. Players knelt, many plainly in prayer. Commentators, rightly sensing the need to go beyond conventional references to “thoughts,” spoke repeatedly of “prayers.” A Bengals fan held up a hastily made placard bearing the words “Pray for Buffalo #3 Hamlin.” Fans from both teams gathered outside the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, to which Mr. Hamlin had been taken, and collectively prayed for the young man.

Suddenly prayer—the ancient activity of speaking to God in the belief that he can hear and respond—was everywhere. Top-level coaches and players, former and present, posted appeals to “Pray for Damar.” Former quarterback Dan Orlovsky, discussing the game with two panelists on ESPN, did the until-now unthinkable: He bowed his head and actually prayed—with two other commentators. The prayer concluded, each said “Amen,” and you felt they meant it.

There is something natural and beautiful in the desire to entreat God to aid a gravely injured man. News reports on Thursday (January 5, 2023) indicate that Mr. Hamlin, against every expectation, is cognizant and able to communicate. Not everyone is surprised.

The vast majority of US adults believe in God, but the 81% who do so is down six percentage points from 2017 and is the lowest in Gallup's trend. Between 1944 and 2011, more than 90% of Americans believed in God. Gallup's May 2022 Values and Beliefs poll finds 17% of Americans saying they do not believe in God.

Gallup first asked this question in 1944, repeating it again in 1947 and twice each in the 1950s and 1960s. In those latter four surveys, a consistent 98% said they believed in God. When Gallup asked the question nearly five decades later, in 2011, 92% of Americans said they believed in God.

A subsequent survey in 2013 found belief in God dipping below 90% to 87%, roughly where it stood in three subsequent updates between 2014 and 2017 before this year's drop to 81%.

The groups with the largest declines are liberals (62%), young adults (68%), and Democrats (72%). Belief in God is highest among political conservatives (94%) and Republicans (92%), reflecting that religiosity is a major determinant of political divisions in the US.

The bottom line is that fewer Americans today, than five years ago, believe in God, and the percentage is down even more from the 1950s and 1960s when almost all Americans did. Still, the vast majority of Americans believe in God. And while belief in God has declined in recent years, Gallup has documented steeper drops in church attendance, church membership, and confidence in organized religion, suggesting that the practice of religious faith may be changing more than basic faith in God.

The opening lines of a recent article in INews reads: “Those of us without traditional religion are left to make our peace with uncertainty. ... There’s nothing comforting about being agnostic.” In the article, Eleanor Margolis laments her agnosticism and muses about the benefits of faith.

It was in February, and while Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, that I started to wonder if it was time to find God. Definite God, that is. Not the half-hearted agnostic one built on a Jenga tower of uncertainty. The addition of a heightened nuclear threat from Putin made me desperate for a vengeful Old Testament God. Someone (to) smite the warmongers and oligarchs, the evil ones “know not what they do.” When nothing is left of civilization but the cockroaches.

The last time I felt so envious of religious people was when my mum was dying of cancer. Certainty about an afterlife sure would’ve come in handy then. And prayer might have created the illusion that I had some power over the situation. Instead, I was treated to the spiritual equivalent of the shrug emoji. I became a devout follower of one true religion of the 21st century: uncertainty. Those of us without traditional religion are left to make our peace with uncertainty.

Want your kids to do better in school? Church might be the answer, according to a study conducted by the University of Notre Dame. An article titled, “God, Grades, and Graduation,” suggests that religion can play a critical role for success.

According to the study, abiders are youth who remain active in religious communities and who have adopted their family’s faith as their own. They “are likely to have an academic advantage because religion and schools are complementary institutions.” In particular, “adolescents who thrive in one institution are likely to thrive in the other.”

Among the survey’s participants, the probability of getting grades of all or mostly A’s was about 10% higher among "abiders" than among non-religious students in the same socioeconomic group. According to Professor Horwitz, at Tulane University, a religious foundation can actually overcome challenges associated with growing up in lower socioeconomic circumstances.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Our society treats faith as a game people choose to play, a tradition to be mindlessly followed. But a foundation of faith has far-reaching implications. When we lose faith, we lose our way.