Church attendance below pre-pandemic levels: Gallup

Church attendance in the United States is lower than it was before the Covid-19 pandemic, a new survey indicated.

In the Gallup survey, 31 percent of respondents said they have attended church, synagogue, mosque or temple in the past seven days.

In Gallup polls conducted from 2020 to the most recent poll — gathered May 1-24, 2023 — an average of 30 percent of respondents said they attended services in the past week.

This data represents a modest decline of an average of 4 points since the four years before the pandemic, when an average of 34 percent of respondents said they attended church, synagogue, mosque or temple in the past seven days.

Gallup’s surveys show attendance is down about 10 percentage points from 2012 and most prior years, according to the report.

It is unclear what role the pandemic played in the decline in churchgoing habits, but the data shows the trend extends across most subgroups, with the notable exception of groups that already had low attendance before the pandemic, including those with no religious affiliation and political liberals.

“It is not clear if the pandemic is the cause of the reduced attendance or if the decline is a continuation of trends that were already in motion. However, the temporary closure of churches and ongoing COVID-19 avoidance activities did get many Americans out of the habit of attending religious services weekly,” the Gallup survey found.

All political ideological groups showed similar declines in churchgoing habits, ranging from 3 to 5 points, though Republicans were still more likely than Democrats or independents to attend church.

Asked whether they had attended church, synagogue, mosque or temple in the last seven days, 45 percent of Republicans answered yes in the pre-pandemic years of 2016 through 2019, compared to 40 percent of Republicans between 2020 and 2023.

An average of 30 percent of Democrats answered yes in surveys between 2016 and 2019, compared to 25 percent between 2020 and 2023. An average of 28 percent of independents said yes in pre-pandemic surveys, while 25 percent said yes between 2020 and 2023.

In-person church attendance is now largely in person after the opposite was true at the start of the pandemic.

In April 2020, 31 percent of adults said they attended a religious service in the last seven days, with 27 percent attending virtually and 4 percent in person. By May 2021, once vaccines were widely available, church attendance was at 30 percent, with roughly twice as many people attending in person as virtually.

In the latest survey, 26 percent of respondents said they have attended a religious service in person in the last seven days, while 5 percent said they had done so virtually.

The survey interviewed a random sample of 1,011 adults from the U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

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