The largest survey of American religion ever conducted asked 36,908 adults what they believe and what they do. The two answers are a long way apart.
Every number here comes from Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, conducted between July 2023 and March 2024. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 0.8 percentage points.
Where figures are compared with 2007 and 2014, those come from the two earlier Religious Landscape Studies. Pew cautions that the earlier studies were conducted entirely by telephone while the latest was administered mainly online and on paper. Comparisons of religious identity hold up across the three studies; comparisons of attendance do not, and Pew says so directly, so no attendance trend is shown here.
This page reports other people’s research. Nothing on it is derived from the cross-reference dataset used elsewhere on this site.
83% say they believe in God or a universal spirit.
33% attend religious services even once a month.
Belief is close to universal. Regular practice is a minority activity. That distance — not the much-reported decline in Christian identity — is the largest single finding in the data.
Ordered to show belief and practice against each other rather than grouped by kind.
Belief
Eighty-six percent of U.S. adults say people have a soul or spirit in addition to a physical body — the single most widely held belief measured in the study, and one that barely varies by age.
Pew Research Center · 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study · sourceBelief
More than four-fifths say they believe in God or a universal spirit. Among adults who say their spirituality has grown over their lifetime, three-quarters hold that belief with absolute certainty.
Pew Research Center · 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study · sourcePractice
Forty-four percent pray at least once a day. The figure has held between 44 and 46 percent since 2021, so the recent trend is flat rather than falling.
Pew Research Center · 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study · sourcePractice
Thirty-three percent go to religious services at least monthly, and a quarter go weekly. Half of U.S. adults say they seldom or never attend.
Pew Research Center · 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study · sourceChange
Thirty-five percent of U.S. adults identify with a religion — or with none — different from the one they were raised in. Counting moves within Protestantism and within the unaffiliated, that figure rises to 49 percent.
Pew Research Center · 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study · sourceBelief
Seventy percent believe in heaven, hell or both. Belief in an afterlife holds up markedly better than any measure of religious practice.
Pew Research Center · 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study · sourceChange
Forty percent say they attend religious services less often now than they did as children. Five percent say more often, and just over half attend at about the same rate.
Pew Research Center · 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study · sourcePractice
Thirty-seven percent are a member of a church, synagogue, mosque or other house of worship. Among adults 74 and older it is 57 percent; among those 18 to 24, 27 percent.
Pew Research Center · 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study · sourceAcross three Religious Landscape Studies spanning seventeen years. Pew notes the decline has slowed and may have leveled off since 2019.
Christian share in teal, religiously unaffiliated in amber
Christianity loses considerably more people through religious switching than it gains.
Former Christians for every convert to Christianity.
The ratio for Catholicism — the most lopsided measured.
The ratio for Protestantism, which also loses more than it gains.
Percent raised Christian, against percent still Christian.
Pew Research Center · 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study
Adults 74 and over in amber, adults 18 to 24 in teal. The gap is wide on practice and identity, and much narrower on belief.
Pew Research Center · 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study
Among adults raised attending weekly services in families where religion was very important, 51% of the oldest cohort are still highly religious today. Among the youngest adults raised the same way, 28% are.
The reverse has strengthened. Among those raised seldom or never attending, in families where religion was unimportant, 50% of the oldest cohort remain non-religious. Among the youngest, 76% do.
Pew’s own reading is cautious: the youngest cohort may grow more religious with age, but none of the three studies since 2007 shows any birth cohort becoming more religious over time.
Pew Research Center · 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study
All figures are from Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, published February 26, 2025, based on 36,908 respondents surveyed between July 17, 2023 and March 4, 2024. Pew is a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy research organization that does not take policy positions.
Figures are reported here in our own words with the source named. Pew’s full report, charts and methodology should be consulted before citing any of these numbers elsewhere.
This page will go out of date. It describes a single moment measured over seven months. Unlike the rest of this site, which counts a fixed historical compilation, these figures change with each new survey.