The National Catholic Reporter (NCR) reported on a poll by Gallup which found the proportion of Americans who say religion is “very important” in their lives levelled off at 47% in 2025, with 57% saying they rarely or never attend religious services (cf 42% in 1992). And this at a time when Donald Trump is claiming that, “We’re bringing back religion in our country, and we’re bringing it back quickly and strongly”.
“I think this is another piece of evidence about how there is no religious revival happening in America,” said Ryan Burge, a political scientist who is professor of the practice at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. “There’s nothing here that would represent any sort of major reversal or significant change in the trajectory of religion in America.”
Apparently there was much less decline among Republicans than other groups. 66% of Republican voters said religion was very important to them 20 years ago and 64% said the same in this recent survey. Democrats, however, fell from 60% to 37% in the same time frame. But Burge was rather cynical about the figure for Republicans: “They like the idea of religion — that hasn’t changed — but they don’t actually go as much,…So it’s sort of like a symbolic religion.”
Read the article in the National Catholic Reporter, here.