(Photo Emily Elconin)
U.S. religiosity has fallen below 50% for the first time on record, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday, even as Americans remain more religious than most developed countries.
Gallup found 49% of U.S. adults consider religion “an important part of their daily life,” down from 66% in 2015. The 17-point drop marks one of the steepest decade-long drops Gallup has recorded, surpassed only by declines in Turkey, Chile, Poland, Italy and Greece, which each registered falls in the 20-point range between 2013 and 2023.
Although the U.S. is seeing one of the fastest drops in religiosity, Americans still report higher levels of religious commitment than many OECD countries. Gallup put the U.S. median at 51% in 2024, compared with a 36% median across OECD members. Globally, religiosity stood at 83% that year.
Gallup said the U.S. doesn’t fit neatly into any international category, ranking medium-high in Christian identity but squarely in the middle on religiosity.
With 64% of Americans identifying as Christian in 2024, the U.S. resembles Western and Northern European countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland and Denmark, though religion plays a far larger role in daily life for Americans than it does in those countries.
People arrive to vote at a polling station at St. David’s Baptist Church in the 9th Ward area of New Orleans, Louisiana, on Election Day, November 5, 2024. (Photo by SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP via Getty Images)
Countries including Italy, Argentina, Ireland, Poland, Chile, Slovakia and Greece report Christian identification at least 10 points higher than the U.S., while showing similar levels of religiosity.
Others, including Belgium, Sweden, Australia, the Netherlands and Uruguay, come in at least 10 points lower than the U.S. on both measures.
Despite those figures, Gallup found that global religiosity has climbed over the past five years, reaching 83% in 2024, one point higher than when the firm started tracking worldwide figures in 2008.
The boost is driven largely by rising religiosity in non-developed, majority-Christian countries such as Zambia, Rwanda, Eswatini, Zimbabwe and the Philippines, as well as in highly religious non-Christian countries such as Pakistan, the territory of Palestine, Jordan, Gambia, Tunisia and Nepal, the poll said.
Gallup said the global picture puts the U.S. trend in sharper relief, noting that the country “increasingly stands as an outlier: less religious than much of the world, but still more devout than most of its economic peers.”
Fr. Barnabas Powell, a parish priest in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, said the findings reflect a broader cultural rupture.
“When a culture abandons its coherent ‘story’ at its foundation, there is chaos and turmoil,” he said.
