Even with Easter less than a week away, America just isn’t into churches anymore.
For the first time in eight decades, and likely ever, church membership for those in a country built on the freedom to worship has fallen below 50%.
The latest Gallup survey on church membership — a data point the polling firm first asked about in 1937 — said just 47% of Americans belong to a church, synagogue, or mosque.
The historic decline comes as fewer and fewer Americans are attending church, and more, especially younger adults, are claiming to have no affiliation with any religion.
Every group Gallup broke out suffered declines in church membership.
The group with the highest church membership was Republicans, at 65%. Just 46% of Democrats are church members. The group with the lowest percentage of membership was liberals at 35%.
Gallup said that America remains a religious nation but that people are getting further and further away from actively participating. And, Gallup added, the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictions on church attendance didn’t help.
“The U.S. remains a religious nation, with more than seven-in-10 affiliating with some type of organized religion. However, far fewer, now less than half, have a formal membership with a specific house of worship. While it is possible that part of the decline seen in 2020 was temporary and related to the coronavirus pandemic, continued decline in future decades seems inevitable, given the much lower levels of religiosity and church membership among younger versus older generations of adults,” said the polling outfit.
It also said that in America, possibly at least three churches close a day.
"While precise numbers of church closures are elusive, a conservative estimate is that thousands of U.S. churches are closing each year," said Gallup.
