Study indicates these numbers may drop further in the future.

In a poll about church attendance and religious affiliation in the country, it was found only 50 percent of Americans actively practice any religion and attend religious places of worship. This number is a steep 69 percent decline from church attendance results from two decades ago.

The years from the early 1930s and all through the 1970s experienced church membership rates that were 70 percent higher than the current membership rates in 2019. While 68 percent of the poll respondents born before 1945 continue to practice religion actively and attend church, this number drops to 42 percent for people born between 1980 and 2000. The poll results revealed that more people in the U.S.A. consider themselves as atheists or as people with no religious preference.

The decline in church membership, attendance, and the religious following has been anticipated for some time. The recent slew of scandalizing events involving the highest echelons of the Catholic, Baptist and Evangelical churches have made believers reconsider their beliefs. The establishment of the highly-conservative Trump Government has added momentum to the public exodus from the church. The Republican Party’s highly-orthodox views about abortion, LGBTQ issues, sex education, and scientific advancement have been received with distaste by the general public. The Gallup poll revealed this to be one of the reasons for the slowdown in church membership.

Additional insights showed over 29 percent of millennial poll takers to have “no religion.” Of these, one in every ten claimed to belong to a church, despite having no religious leanings of their own.

The poll also revealed that the religious few in America don’t feel the need to be members of organized religious institutions. In the early 2000s, 73 percent of religious Americans were active members of a church, compared to today’s 64 percent. This is true across generations, with people from Baby Boomers to Gen X ending their affiliation with religious institutions.

Other findings of the poll state that Protestants are more likely to be affiliated to a church than Catholics and non-denominational Christians, Mormons have the highest affiliation rate at 90 percent, and American Jewish populations have experienced no change in religious attendance and affiliation for the last two decades.

Resources

Follow the Conversation on Twitter