Church Attendance Has Declined in Most U.S. Religious Groups
Church Attendance Has Declined in Most U.S. Religious Groups
Three in 10 Americans, but 67% of Mormons, attend church regularly. Most religious groups show declines in attendance over the past two decades.
Three in 10 U.S. adults attend religious services regularly, led by Mormons at 67%
As Americans observe Ramadan and prepare to celebrate Easter and Passover, the percentage of adults who report regularly attending religious services remains low. Three in 10 Americans say they attend religious services every week (21%) or almost every week (9%), while 11% report attending about once a month and 56% seldom (25%) or never (31%) attend.
Among major U.S. religious groups, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also widely known as the Mormon Church, are the most observant, with two-thirds attending church weekly or nearly weekly. Protestants (including nondenominational Christians) rank second, with 44% attending services regularly, followed by Muslims (38%) and Catholics (33%).
Majorities of Jewish, Orthodox, Buddhist and Hindu Americans say they seldom or never attend religious services.
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As an ex-Mormon, very few of them WANT to go every week, but the conditioning and social stigma are very real.
More than you'd think. Many people base their entire social lives around their church. All of their friends go to the church. They spend a lot of time doing church activities and church events.
And in this very lonely world, even though I'm an atheist, I can't really blame them.
Let’s just make a nice atheist church. “The Church of the Holy Nothing” or whatever.
R'amen!
Why don't we just call it idk.. a community center???
We do already. It's called the gym. Get. Swole. Save. Soul.
Instructions unclear created a multi-religious crew and built a longship gonna go burn down a random coast town.
The leader will be the Seat of the Holy don't-See
I'm not convinced, sounds very much like when they say if you don't follow religious morality, how can you have any morality at all.
There can be, and in many places there is, community, social life, sense of belonging and all that stuff outside of groups of lunatic happy clappers.
There can be community outside of church, but if you're raised in a church, your whole family is in the church, all your friends are in the church... Why would you think to look outside of the church for community?
Yeah, the high school I went to required at least one semester of religious studies each year, but we had some very cool classes (like a class on cults that included looking at early Christianity through the lens of a cult), and the sociological aspects were massive. In fact, the journals relating to religion with the highest impact factor are all sociological based.
The social component of religion is an underappreciated factor and influential over even the beliefs usually.
All that said, I can't fathom ever obligating myself to a pre-noon social gathering on my weekends by choice. Even Sunday 'brunch' was only ever attended if around 1pm.
If rewriting the rules for church anyways, let's at least add mimosas and have it start way later than it does.
There was partly an attempt at humor in my original comment, but Mormon services and activities in particular are long, boring, and motivate with a stick at least as much as a carrot.
Old Mormon joke:
What’s the fastest way to go though a case of beer?
- Invite a Mormon fishing.
What’s the best way to keep that case of beer to yourself?
- invite two Mormons fishing
Also an exmo. I don't believe 67% attend weekly. That is massively overstated. I've read estimates from John Dehlin maybe? It's been a while) of 33% activity rate, which means attending once a month.
This is 67% of people who self identified as mormon in their poll. I would believe that number, as most who don't attend wouldn't say they're mormon.
It's all in how the poll is written.
Mormons only have around a 30% activity rate to what their records say or 3 out of 10. Right in line with the rest of them.
So if we assume that 55% of those don't attend do not associate the corrupt organization known as the Mormon church on the poll. Then 67% of the remaining 45% is 30%. The 15% who associate but don't attend are jackmo's.
So, are they lying for the Lord, or maybe the poll is flawed, or the Church reports membership differently than the poll respondents did? Could be any or all, LOL.
For the poll being flawed, it was a telephone poll, and while they've tried to capture more cell phone numbers, you still have to answer and be willing to engage:
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews from combined surveys conducted in 2021-2023, with an aggregate random sample of 32,445 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia
Phone interviews are highly skewed towards older people. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the correct number for older generations.
I think the flaw is that "attendance" is self reported. Mormons know they are supposed to attend, and there's no harm is saying that they do to a pollster. There's no way for the pollster to validate that.