Faith

After years of decline, American faith levels off, new Pew data show

Washington • October 30, 2026 • By Press Pass USA

Editorial illustration

Religious identification and practice in the United States are holding steady after years of reported decline, according to a new Pew Research Center report released Wednesday — a plateau that researchers say has now lasted about six years.

The report, produced with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and based on Pew's 2026 National Public Opinion Reference Survey of 5,511 U.S. adults and its 2025 Cross-Sectional Engagement Survey of 5,393 adults, found that 70% of Americans surveyed in 2026 identify with a religion, compared with 71% in 2020. That is well below the 83% who said the same in 2007 and the 77% in 2014, but researchers said the last six years show "steady percentages" of Americans who identify with a religion, pray daily, consider religion very important and attend services at least monthly.

The share who pray daily held steady at 47%, versus 48% in 2020, while the share who say religion is "very important" in their lives was 44%, versus 45% in 2020. About one-third of respondents (34%) reported attending religious services in person in the last month, while 45% said they either attended in person, attended online or watched on television — up from 41% for that broader measure in 2021, a rebound from the lows of the COVID-19 era.

The most striking finding concerns the youngest adults. Those ages 18 to 22 — born between 2004 and 2008 — reported attending religious services at least monthly at a rate of 41%, higher than the U.S. public overall (33%) and higher than any other age group except those born before 1950 (43%). Pew senior researcher Chip Rotolo called the figure "pretty remarkably high." But the same group scored lower than most older cohorts on other measures: 34% pray daily and 59% identify with a religion. And their slightly older peers, ages 23 to 26, posted the lowest religion-related numbers of any age group: 27% attend services at least monthly, 26% pray daily, 27% call religion very important and 50% identify with a religion. Pew cautioned that the 18-to-22 subgroup numbered just 443 respondents, with a margin of error of about six percentage points.

The report also found that the gender gap in religious identification has narrowed sharply: 70% of both women and men now identify with a religion, down from 86% of women and 79% of men in 2007 — a convergence driven more by women becoming less religious at a faster rate than by men becoming more religious, according to Pew. The findings track broadly with other recent polling: the Public Religion Research Institute reported in April that 66% of Americans identify as Christian, 28% as religiously unaffiliated and 6% with non-Christian religious traditions.

Sources: Pew Research Center / Knight Foundation report, "Comparing Results Across Religious Landscape Studies," released Oct 28, 2026; The Christian Post (Oct 30, 2026); Religion News Service (Oct 28, 2026); Baptist News Global (Oct 30, 2026).