(The Hill) – Gen Z appears to have a more complicated relationship with organized religion than the generations that preceded it, and experts are divided on whether the changes will result in fuller church pews.
Younger Americans in surveys seem to be more open to religion in general, but the jury is still out on how they will practice.
The most recent survey out last month by the Barna Group, a Christian polling firm which has tracked church attendance for years, found that Gen Z and millennials are going to church more than Gen X and Boomers, though still far less frequently than every week.
The survey found that the typical Zoomer goes to church 23 times a year on average, millennials attend 22 services annually, Gen Xers attend around 19 times per year, and Boomers go less than 17 times.
“It’s really encouraging, really fascinating, and opens up a lot of questions about what the future of the church looks like, or might feel like, if some of our preconceived notions and some of the trends that have happened the last 10, 15, 20 years by young peoples drop off,” said Daniel Copeland, vice president of research at the Barna Group.
The flip, Copeland contends, seemed to hit right around the pandemic, with multiple theories on why it seems younger men are engaging more with the church while older women are dropping off.
Copeland theorizes that young people had a “wake-up call” during COVID-19 where they saw their social media life amplified, and realized they did not want their “entire life disconnected” from others, while older Americans who went to church in person before felt they were “slowing down in life” and online services would be sufficient.
Other studies have also shown Gen Z could buck trends, but not everyone is convinced about them overtaking older worshipers.
Nabil Tueme, a senior research associate at Springtide Research Institute, said the nationwide decrease in church attendance really hit millennials, but Gen Z was the first generation in which nearly a third of them were never involved in a faith community at all.
“In our interviews with young people, we’ve seen a generational shift when it comes to young people’s willingness to engage in a religious community. Because Gen Zers were less likely to be raised religious, many of them don’t carry the negative experiences, perceptions, or trauma that prompted their millennial parents’ disaffiliation. As a result, some of those who fall into this group and are curious about religion feel freer to explore it. That doesn’t always translate to service attendance, but there’s a posture of openness there,” Tueme said.
Ryan Burge, a data analyst and professor at the John C. Danforth Center at Washington University in St. Louis, said Zoomers aren’t inherently more religious, but they represent a smaller decline than most other age groups.
“Gen Z is slightly less religious than millennials overall, which is a big change, because its been a huge gap from one generation to the next,” Burge said.
One of his theories is that for older generations, it was more likely for someone to say they were Christian just because of social stigma, which does not really exist with Gen Z.
This means those in Gen Z who say they are Christians are more likely to be devout than what was seen in previous generations, according to Burge.
Others say the ebb and flow of church attendance is not significantly different from the past, and there are not huge reasons to believe Gen Z will change the course of decades of church decline.
Church attendance has been a growing topic of conversation online after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who often foregrounded his faith. His wife, Erika Kirk, posted on X for people to “go to church” last Sunday.
“It is not uncommon to see a temporary increase in religious service attendance in the wake of a tragedy. Charlie Kirk was a visible and regarded political and cultural figure on the right. I would not be surprised if church attendance were to temporarily increase among conservatives and the center-right” following the shooting, said Jonathan Abbamonte, policy analyst at the Center for Data Analysis for the Heritage Foundation.
But as for overall trends and where Gen Z may be in the future, optimism from a pandemic bump, some argue, could be premature.
“Despite the recent increase in religious service attendance, however, current attendance levels are still showing a substantial and significant decline relative to the long-term trend. It appears that religious service attendance levels are converging to their pre-pandemic levels in some cases, and to their pre-pandemic downward trends in other cases,” Abbamonte said.
“If religious service attendance is in fact increasing and continues to increase for several years, it could be indicative of a broader cultural shift, but for now, it’s too soon to tell. For now, I would say that any apparent recent rise in religious service attendance is due primarily to a slow, gradual post-pandemic return to in-person attendance,” he added.
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