Pew: US religion holds steady, youngest adults attend more

Since 2020, Pew says, steady percentages of American adults have told it they identify with a religion, pray daily, consider religion very important in their lives and attend services at least monthly. That's a change from the decades before, when each of those numbers was sliding.

Attendance is the measure moving up. In a June 2026 survey, 34% of US adults said they had gone to religious services in person in the last month. A total of 45% said they had either gone in person or watched services online or on TV. Both are the highest Pew has recorded since it first asked those questions in July 2020, early in the COVID outbreak.

The youngest adults stand out

This is where the report gets complicated.

Pew splits young adults into two groups. The very youngest, born from 2004 to 2008 and now roughly 18 to 22, report relatively high attendance. Overall, 41% of them say they go to services at a church, synagogue, mosque or other house of worship at least once or twice a month. That's higher than the public as a whole, at 33%.

But the group just above them, born from 2000 to 2003 and now about 23 to 26, look very different. Pew says they're the least religious age group on how often they pray, how important religion is to them and whether they identify with a religion at all. Only 27% of them attend monthly, among the lowest of any age group.

So two groups of young people, a few years apart, are heading in very different directions on attendance.

Not a revival yet

Pew is careful not to call this a revival. It says the youngest adults "are no more religious today than young adults in this age range were in 2014." Those aged 23 to 26 are less religious than people that age were in 2014. And both groups are significantly less religious than young adults of the same ages in 2007.

It also says there's "no clear evidence" that any group of Americans it can follow over time has become more religious in recent years. To check, Pew compared how 5,835 adults answered religion questions in 2020 with how the same people answered in 2025. It found no clear signs of growth or decline in any birth group.

There's a history lesson here too. Pew notes this isn't the first time surveys have shown the youngest Americans entering adulthood with relatively high religiousness. "When this has happened in the past, the religiousness of the youngest adults has tended to fade with time," it says. It adds: "We have no way of knowing whether today's youngest adults will follow that pattern or break it."

Young men in the pews

One finding is new. In Pew's recent surveys, the youngest men report going to services more often than the youngest women. "This is something we have not seen before in our surveys," the report says. Historically, American women have been more religious than men.

The youngest men also attend at significantly higher rates than almost all older groups of men. But the youngest women attend at fairly high rates as well. Pew says 35% of women aged roughly 18 to 22 go at least monthly. That's higher than women born in the 1990s and early 2000s, and about the same as women born from the 1950s through the 1980s.

The broader gender gap has been shrinking for a while. When Pew ran its first Religious Landscape Study in 2007, the share of women who said religion was very important to them was 14 points higher than among men. By 2023 and 2024 the gap was 9 points. In the 2026 survey it's 6 points.

Pew is clear about why. The narrowing "is not caused by an increase in the religiousness of men." Both men and women have become less religious over time on those measures, with women declining more.

Is it about politics?

Some commentators have suggested any religious upswing among the young is tied to conservative politics. Pew tested that.

Among the youngest adults, Republicans and those who lean Republican are substantially more religious than Democrats. And 55% of the youngest Republicans say they attend services at least monthly, more than any other age group of Republicans except the very oldest.

But it's not only Republicans. The youngest Democrats also attend at relatively high rates compared with Democrats born from the 1970s through the early 2000s. Pew concludes it "cannot conclude that the relatively high attendance rate of young adults is an exclusively Republican phenomenon."

And the youngest adults aren't more Republican overall. In Pew's 2025 and 2026 surveys, 34% of 18 to 22 year olds identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, and 56% identify with or lean Democratic.

What other surveys show

Pew compares its numbers with other good surveys. Gallup polls show a rise in the share of men aged 18 to 29 who say religion is very important to them and who attend regularly. Gallup also finds more young men than young women now say religion is very important.

The American Time Use Survey, run for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, works differently. It asks people to describe the previous day like a diary. Its 2025 data finds 14% of adults born in 2000 or later say they went to services on the prior Sunday, about the same as older age groups.

Why the numbers deserve care

Pew is upfront about the limits. The youngest adults are hard to reach in surveys, and they make up a small share of respondents. Its combined 2025 and 2026 data includes 443 people born between 2004 and 2008. The margin of error for that group is plus or minus 5.7 percentage points, and it grows when you split them into men and women or by party.

The main survey, the National Public Opinion Reference Survey, had a 30% response rate, which Pew says is much higher than most polls today. Pew also notes some of the higher religiousness among young people may reflect a rebound from the pandemic.

What it means for churches

For churches, Pew's numbers point two ways. Adults in their late teens and early twenties report going to services at higher rates than the country as a whole. The group a few years older reports some of the lowest attendance of any age group. Pew says it can't yet tell whether the youngest group's habits will last.

We looked at a related question earlier this month, when a Scripture Union survey found adults rated the Christian faith as more relevant to young people than the church itself.

If this story helped, you can help keep the paper going: Support the paper.