Three in 10 U.S. adults attend religious services regularly, led by Mormons at 67%
As Americans observe Ramadan and prepare to celebrate Easter and Passover, the percentage of adults who report regularly attending religious services remains low. Three in 10 Americans say they attend religious services every week (21%) or almost every week (9%), while 11% report attending about once a month and 56% seldom (25%) or never (31%) attend.
Among major U.S. religious groups, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also widely known as the Mormon Church, are the most observant, with two-thirds attending church weekly or nearly weekly. Protestants (including nondenominational Christians) rank second, with 44% attending services regularly, followed by Muslims (38%) and Catholics (33%).
Majorities of Jewish, Orthodox, Buddhist and Hindu Americans say they seldom or never attend religious services.
As an ex-Mormon, very few of them WANT to go every week, but the conditioning and social stigma are very real.
Old Mormon joke:
What’s the fastest way to go though a case of beer?
- Invite a Mormon fishing.
What’s the best way to keep that case of beer to yourself?
- invite two Mormons fishing
Also an exmo. I don’t believe 67% attend weekly. That is massively overstated. I’ve read estimates from John Dehlin maybe? It’s been a while) of 33% activity rate, which means attending once a month.
This is 67% of people who self identified as mormon in their poll. I would believe that number, as most who don’t attend wouldn’t say they’re mormon.
It’s all in how the poll is written.
Mormons only have around a 30% activity rate to what their records say or 3 out of 10. Right in line with the rest of them.
So if we assume that 55% of those don’t attend do not associate the corrupt organization known as the Mormon church on the poll. Then 67% of the remaining 45% is 30%. The 15% who associate but don’t attend are jackmo’s.
So, are they lying for the Lord, or maybe the poll is flawed, or the Church reports membership differently than the poll respondents did? Could be any or all, LOL.
For the poll being flawed, it was a telephone poll, and while they’ve tried to capture more cell phone numbers, you still have to answer and be willing to engage:
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews from combined surveys conducted in 2021-2023, with an aggregate random sample of 32,445 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia
Phone interviews are highly skewed towards older people. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the correct number for older generations.
More than you’d think. Many people base their entire social lives around their church. All of their friends go to the church. They spend a lot of time doing church activities and church events.
And in this very lonely world, even though I’m an atheist, I can’t really blame them.
There was partly an attempt at humor in my original comment, but Mormon services and activities in particular are long, boring, and motivate with a stick at least as much as a carrot.
Let’s just make a nice atheist church. “The Church of the Holy Nothing” or whatever.
We do already. It’s called the gym. Get. Swole. Save. Soul.
The leader will be the Seat of the Holy don’t-See
R’amen!
I want to go every week. I miss it. I love the music, the tradition, the community, and being part of something bigger than myself.
I do not want to be associated with the kind of people who scream at “sinners” entering abortion clinics but don’t actually do anything to solve the reason they go there. Nor with heriarchies that shuffle pedophiles around to avoid punishment instead of throwing the book at the. Nor with the mega churches who refuse to help flood or hurricane victims, but instead locked their doors. Nor with the cult of idolatry that venerates a fraudulent, adulterous, pathological lying narcissist.
Being associated with Christians made me stop wanting to go to church. I’m fucking pissed.
I left the Church when I realized that my Christian values were no longer welcomed.
Find some volunteering group, you’ll get tradition, community and being part of something bigger, prolly not the music though. Where I am we are big into Emergency services, they are mostly run by volunteers but really you can find whatever works for you from animal shelters to helping people with personal finance if that’s your niche. , No need to waste time idolatring an imaginary friend that doesn’t reciprocate, you can do some actual good and feel good!
The Christian religion has been hijacked by white supremacists
Sure, and yout point is?
While I’m not a church person at all, I’ve definitely heard from progressive church goers (even non-religious ones that like the social aspects) that there’s certainly options and denominations available that aren’t that.
If it’s something you actually miss or feel like would make your life more full, it might be worth church shopping for places that have a different attitude or approach from the churches that turned you off.
I think there’s even non-denominational offerings mirroring the social setup but with no religious beliefs incorporated.
Episcopal churches are generally inclusive, while going hard on tradition/ritual. If you like classical music and structure, that’s a good place to start. If you live near a university, you’re likely to see some students and faculty there.
United Methodist churches can be very welcoming and inclusive in the US, but there’s a schism going on over LGBT marriage/ordination, so it can vary by area/congregation. You’ll know pretty quickly what kind of place it is. In a few years, the “Global Methodist Church” will be conservative, and United Methodists should be reliably inclusive. You may even see gay and trans pastors at some UMCs.
Anything with Baptist in the name is most likely going to be terrible. There are some rare exceptions though. If they’re politically conservative, you’ll hear about it 5 minutes into the sermon. If you like “contemporary” Christian music then they’re more likely to do that better than others.
Since COVID, you can church shop online lol. Don’t need to wake up early or go travel. You can see the sermon and music any time from home. If a church hasn’t invested in streaming their services at this point, they probably skipped COVID guidelines and killed a bunch of their people, so it’s a decent filter.
The MAGA led culture wars have exposed many churches and many christian’s as insufferable bigots who are far more obsessed with making sure everyone in their group agrees on who to hate than they are with sharing such concepts as grace or love. The Methodist split has been especially damning. It is insane to me to see so many otherwise normal people frothing at the mouth with hate and anger because the main denomination dared to even consider being more accepting of homosexuality.
I was recently told about a woman who was glad her church disaffiliated from United Methodist because she didn’t want to have to find another church. I thought, but bit my tongue, “woman, had your church stayed it would still be the exact same church it always was, it changed by leaving…” these people have been manipulated into thinking any church that stays somehow becomes a satanic cult… because maybe, one day in the future, the main governing body might allow gay preachers… it’s so stupid…
They’ve been insufferable since at least the 80’s with the Moral Majority and all that other shit.
I’m not religious now, but I was raised in a Methodist household and know the dogma and culture.
Church membership and attendance is kind of an interesting phenomenon to me. It’s a form of community that I think has ancient roots and satisfies a social need that we don’t have many other good structures for. A church is a tribe. You don’t have to like everyone in your tribe but they’re your tribe and people enjoy a psychological benefit from clearly distinguishing their ‘us’ and ‘them’. This structure has some modern analogies- sports teams, clubs, professional groups, etc, but a church also has a larger connection to a denomination and a religion. This extends the ‘tribe’ out such that even if you leave your city and have to find an entirely new tribe- you can find a church that will more-or-less treat you as a local member of the tribe.
That’s pretty comforting and helps a lot of people define their life- having a group of people they know will accept you as ‘one of them’. Other modern social structures don’t really have this assumed tribal acceptance feature. Coming into a new team or club from the outside doesn’t share the connection that churches have with other denominations. Granted a lot of that is ceremonial and not reality- churches have in\out groups and even the most polite congregations will quietly ostracize people, but it’s all within the framework of the church\tribe. Not many people ever really get tossed out of the tribe.
I wish we could recapture some of the positive aspects for community building without the dogma, but I’m afraid it’s two sides of the same coin and you really can’t separate the positive community aspects from the dangers of dogma.
Part of the problem though is that out-group exclusion is baked in, and if you wrap that up in anything important, it gets toxic even if the dogma is kinda loose. I mean, why aren’t UU churches absolutely bursting at the seams? In part, it’s because they refuse to reject anyone.
Yeah and weirdly that’s about the only thing I respect about Catholics- they actually can and do tell mofos “you aint Catholic, those aint Catholic beliefs” so they can kind of ‘police their own’. Whereas I can say I’m a Baptist Zoroastrian that believes Jesus was actually Zeus and nobody can tell me that’s not a Baptist belief. Not that I think Catholic dogma makes an sense on its own but at least they don’t allow any old shmuck to fork it.
But yeah I don’t think there’s a way to keep the secular community and drop the religious tribalism, at least not without a Moon Haven style guided cultural reboot but to me that’s less plausible than Jesus actually being Zeus.
Other modern social structures don’t really have this assumed tribal acceptance feature.
Citizenship. You’re literally a citizen of the entire country.
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30% is much too high.
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Sadly irrational thinking takes other forms. Look at MAGA, or QAnon or any other weird belief system. They all share traits with religions or cults in one sense or another.
30℅ regular church attendance is still crazy, blows my European mind. I personally don’t think I have ever met a person who attends it even once a year nor I ever knew of such people through friends.
In Netherlands church attendance has gone down, but it should still be relatively easy to find someone who goes to church. The attendance isn’t divided equally across the Netherlands though. Meaning, it is way higher in small villages than in a city. Which is sometimes easy to see by seeing what political party people have voted for.
For NL apparently 12% regularly goes to church. And 43% is “aligned” with a church, don’t know what they exactly meant. See https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/longread/statistische-trends/2023/religieuze-betrokkenheid-in-nederland for a Dutch source.
Aligned likely means that if they have need of religious services they know what church they’re going to. Shit like weddings and funerals.
I stopped going YEARS ago, but even my mom and dad broke the habit once the pandemic happened.
C A P I T A L I S M
Who needs to go to church when you can read the $60 Trump Bible at home? Complete with Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Pledge of Allegiance!!!
