Gallup Poll: Fewer Than Half of Americans Say Religion is 'Very Important' in Their Lives

The Banner has a subscription to republish articles from Religion News Service. This story by Yonat Shimron, was published March 3, 2026 on religionnews.com. It has been edited for length and Banner style.

The percentage of Americans who say religion is “very important” in their lives seems to have leveled off, having been up or down 1 percentage point since 2021, and sitting at 47% in 2025, according to a new Gallup Poll released March 3.

A majority of U.S. residents polled—57%—say they rarely or never attend religious services. (By comparison, in 1992, only 42% said they rarely or never attend services.)

“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.” (Burge contributed to a 2023 book called The Great Dechurching.)

Most polled groups have experienced declines in the percentage who say religion is “very important” in their lives. Among the biggest declines was the percentage of Black Americans who say religion is “very important” in their lives. Between 2001 and 2005, 85% of polled U.S. Black people said religion was very important, compared with 63% in 2021-2025, a drop of 22 percentage points over two decades.

Among the groups that experienced virtually no decline were those who identify as Republicans—66% said religion was very important to them 20 years ago and 64% of Republicans said the same in 2025. (Those identified as Democrats reporting religion was “very important” to them fell from 60% to 37% over the past two decades.)

But Burge said that although identified Republicans continue to say religion is very important in their lives, their self-reported church attendance has dropped.

“They like the idea of religion—that hasn’t changed—but they don’t actually go as much,” Burge interpreted. “So it’s sort of like a symbolic religion.”

The number of men who said religion was “very important” in their lives fell from 51% over the past 20 years to 43%, an 8 percentage point drop. Even more significant, the number of women who say religion is “very important” fell from 66% to 51% over the past two decades, a 15 percentage point drop.

Women are still reporting as more religious than men, but the importance of religion is falling fast among females, suggesting the gender gap may eventually disappear, if trends continue.

The question about the importance of religion was based on telephone interviews conducted between May and December 2025, with a random sample of 2,019 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 states. That question had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The finding on religious service attendance was also based on telephone interviews, with a sample of 13,454 U.S. adults. It showed weekly attendance at religious services dropped to 31%, down from 44% in 1992.

Young adults are particularly less likely to participate in religious services, with 61% seldom or never going.

According to the report: “Younger adults are both less likely to identify with a religion and less likely to attend services, reshaping the nation’s religious landscape as they constitute a growing share of the population.”

c. 2026 Religion News Service