THE WEST HAS STOPPED LOSING ITS RELIGION / THE ECONOMIST

Secular stagnation

The West has stopped losing its religion

After decades of rising secularism, Christianity is holding its ground—and gaining among the young

FOR DECADES America’s fastest-growing religious affiliation was no religion at all. 

In 1990 just 5% of Americans said they were atheists, agnostics or believed in “nothing in particular”. 

By 2019 some 30% ticked those boxes. 

Those who left the pews became more socially liberal, married later and had fewer children. 

Churches, where once half of Americans mingled every Sunday, faded in civic life. 

Yet for the first time in half a century, the march of secularism has stopped (see chart 1).

The same is true elsewhere. 

In Canada, Britain and France, the share of people telling pollsters they are irreligious has stopped growing. 

Across another seven western European countries it has slowed markedly, rising by just three percentage points since 2020, compared with a 14-point surge in the previous five years. 

The stall coincides with a pause in the long-term decline of the Christian share of the population in the same places. 

This suggests that slowing secularisation is caused by fewer people leaving Christianity—rather than the growth of other faiths, such as Islam—alongside a surprising increase in Christian faith among younger people, particularly those from Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012).

“I’ve tried alcohol, I’ve tried parties, I’ve tried sex...none of these work,” says Eric Curry at Pace University, recounting what his peers say about trying to overcome depression, ennui and loneliness. 

“Young people are looking and searching deeply for the truth.” 

Mr Curry says his recent baptism was the best decision of his life.

The long rise of secularism, which Ryan Burge of Eastern Illinois University calls “a dominant trend in demography of recent decades” has shaped many aspects of Western society. 

These range from more liberal attitudes towards gay marriage and abortion to prospects for economic growth. 

Its sudden stall—and possible reversal in some places—is unexpected.

A woman is baptized during a Mayday USA rally organized by Tetelestai Ministries at the Hollywood and Highland in Los Angeles. / Photograph: Carrie Schreck/Redux/eyevine

The most plausible explanation for the changing trend is the covid-19 pandemic. 

Lockdowns, social isolation and economic shocks affected almost all countries and age cohorts at about the time that the data on religious belief hit an inflection point. 

This is especially the case for Gen Z, whose years of early adulthood were disrupted, leaving many young people lonely or depressed and looking for meaning.

“The pandemic really was a catalyst” for becoming religious, says Sarah, a 20-year-old student at Liberty University, who grew up outside the Church but converted after joining a Bible-study group on Zoom during the lockdowns. 

“Probably over 75% of my friends who are Christians became Christian since the pandemic.”

This trend seems to have persisted beyond the tumult of covid-19. 

Across three surveys in 2023-24, the share of young Americans identifying as Christian rose from 45% to 51%. 

The “nones” fell by four points, to 41%. 

At Harvard, a progressive bastion that started as a Puritan seminary, half of undergraduates attended a chaplain-run event or religious service this academic year. 

Tammy McLeod, a chaplain at the university for 25 years, also sees covid-19 as a turning-point: “People were sick of being alone.” 

Since then, “our numbers are higher and they don’t drop off after the beginning of the semester.” 

Chaplains on other campuses are seeing the same.

In all 14 Western countries surveyed by Pew, a pollster, more people (often twice as many) said their faith was strengthened by the pandemic rather than weakened. 

More than a quarter of Americans had their faith fortified, says Gregory Smith, an expert in religion at Pew. 

Research by Jeanet Sinding Bentzen, an economist at the University of Copenhagen, shows internet searches for prayer and other religious practices shot up in almost every country in 2020 (see chart 2).

Pippa Norris of Harvard and the late Ronald Inglehart argued that in times of existential insecurity, people tend to turn to religion for comfort. 

Religion can explain suffering, offer hope and provide a sense of moral order and communal solidarity, they wrote. 

Religious attendance (often online) increased in Italy in 2020, particularly in places hardest hit by the virus. 

Ms Bentzen’s previous research on devotion following earthquakes—a different sort of shock—shows that religiosity tends to remain elevated for up to 12 years after a catastrophic event.

That’s me in the corner

Young men are becoming particularly keen on God, overturning a norm that spans cultures and time: that women are the more devout sex. 

In America Gen Z women are now more likely to have no religious affiliation than their male peers, according to a study by the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank. 

In Britain a YouGov poll of some 13,000 people found 21% of young men who identify as Christian now attend church—up from just 4% in 2018, compared with 12% of young women. 

One reason for the divergence is that women have increasingly found the Church out of step with their more liberal views.

At the same time as younger Americans are finding religion, fewer older Americans are giving it up. 

Between 2020 and 2024 the share of Christians in the population as a whole fell by just one percentage point. 

Before then, it had been dropping by that much every year. 

Look more closely at each generation and the Christian share either held steady or increased over the four years across all age groups except millennials. 

Baby boomers, for example, were seven points more Christian (at 79%) than they were in 2020. 

Taken together, the slowdown in religious exits across several generations and the unexpected rise among the young have caused the Christian share of America’s population to stabilise at around 62% since 2020.

Similar forces are at work elsewhere (see chart 3). 

Spain, Portugal, Italy and Finland, among others, are no less Christian today than they were in 2019, according to our analysis of large European surveys (see chart 4). 

Some countries, such as Austria and Ireland, are still becoming less Christian, but at a slower rate than before. 

The share of people in the West who told Gallup, a pollster, that religion was important in their daily lives steadily declined between 2006 and 2019. 

But over the past five years this figure has stabilised. 

In Ireland, for instance, 58% said religion mattered in daily life two decades ago; by 2018, that figure was 48%, and has remained there since.

As in America, a slowdown in religious exits and resurgence among the young are responsible. 

Active withdrawals from the Church of Sweden have fallen for the past five years, and baptisms among young adults have more than doubled since 2019, notes Andreas Sandberg, its record-keeper. 

Our analysis of the British Election Survey shows both the secular and Christian share of the population have been flat since 2020. 

More interesting is that the irreligious share of Gen Zs has fallen every year over the same period.

Because there are fewer cradle-Christians these days, many Gen Zs who now identify with a religion are doing so for the first time in their lives. 

Some are diving right in, literally. 

Adult baptisms in France at Easter this year jumped by 45% to more than 10,000, the most in 20 years. 

Two in every five of these were Gen Zs, double the share in 2019. 

Baptisms in Austria and Belgium also rose. 

In 2023, the last year for which data are available, converts to the Church of Norway doubled to 4,000.

A girl wrapped in a US flag stand on a chair before a Holy Mass for the Beginning of the Pontificate of Pope Leo XIV, in St Peter's square in The Vatican. / Photograph: Getty Images

The data pointing to a levelling off of secularism are clear. 

These findings are consistent across several large annual surveys, including samples of almost 25,000 adults in a study from Harvard, 37,000 in a survey by Pew and 12,000 in one by Gallup. 

But what is less clear is whether they mark a plateau or a sustained inflection. 

Part of the answer may depend on what other causes are contributing to the shift besides the pandemic. 

“We don’t know if this is a temporary lull or if we are seeing the end of the long secular surge,” says David Campbell of the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. 

And no one knows for sure why people have stopped leaving the Church or how to account for youthful piety.

Can immigration explain why secularism has stood still in many Western countries? Probably not. 

In America newcomers tend to be less Christian than the native-born, making them a drag, not a boost, for the Christian share, notes Mr Smith. 

Migrants to Europe also tend to be non-Christian, and younger than the local population. 

Their presence does not explain the plateau in the Christian share of the population, or secularism’s pause across a broad range of age groups.

That was just a dream

Instead, wider cultural changes appear to be playing a role. 

For most of the past two decades, God was on the receiving end of bad publicity, while atheism found pop-culture swagger. 

Books such as “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins, an Oxford don who in 1996 compared religion to the smallpox virus, or “God is Not Great” by the late Christopher Hitchens, a journalist, became bestsellers. 

Now, however, it is sales of the Bible that are booming (up by 22% in America last year).

The most important driver of secularisation in the West in recent decades has been people abandoning their religion, says Stephanie Kramer, also of Pew. 

Loss of faith has had a far bigger effect on the numbers than ageing, migration or fertility. 

So if the net outflow of the devout were to end, as now appears to be happening, then Christians would retain their majority in America for at least the next 50 years, Ms Kramer predicts, rather than falling below 45% as previously expected. 

Hardly anyone saw this coming, just as hardly anyone predicted the pandemic. 

God moves in mysterious ways—and so do people.