For many years, studies into Americans’ religious affiliations have all painted a similar picture: we are becoming an increasingly secular country, with membership in almost every Christian denomination steadily decreasing. Many assume that this trend will simply continue into the future and church attendance will fall even lower.

However, a recent study tells a very different story—one that sheds light on how America’s relationship with religion might be shifting.

According to data from the Pew Research Center’s most recent Religious Landscape Study (RLS), the decades-long decline in the number of Americans who identify as Christian has not continued to the extent that some expected it to.

“After many years of steady decline, the share of Americans who identify as Christians shows signs of leveling off—at least temporarily,” the study explains. The study, which took place from 2023 to 2024, surveyed 66,908 randomly sampled American adults. Pew has conducted three of these surveys in the past 17 years.

The first RLS, conducted in 2007, found that 78% of U.S. adults identified “as Christians of one sort or another.” That number ticked downward in subsequent years and was found to be only 71% in the RLS conducted in 2014.

But for the last five years, the Christian share of the adult population has been relatively stable, hovering between 60% and 64%. This includes 40% who identify as Protestant Christians and 19% who identify as Catholic, according to the study.

Although the number of Americans who identify as religious has not increased, some see this recent leveling-off as a sign that organized religion could be experiencing a revival.

“If you look to the long term, it’s a story of decline in American religion,” said Gregory Smith, a senior associate director of research at Pew who was involved in the most recent RLS. “But it’s a completely different story if you look at the short term, which is a story of stability over the last four or five years.”

One factor in the stabilizing of religious affiliation is young people, who made up a sizable portion of the survey. In the first two RLS studies, each age group was shown to be less religious than the previous generation; for example, 80% of those born in the 1940s or earlier now identify as Christian, compared with 75% of those born in the 1950s and 73% of those born in the 1960s.

However, the generation of young people in the most recent survey seem to have bucked that trend—there has been no drop in religious affiliation between Americans born in the 1990s and those born after 2000.

Although there could be a number of reasons why some young Americans are returning to organized religion, many point to a desire for community at a time when many Americans report feelings of loneliness and isolation. According to a 2023 study from healthcare company The Cigna Group, 73% of Gen-Z say they feel alone sometimes or always.

“It does comport with the fact that young peoples’ desire to be part of something meaningful, especially since the pandemic, is increasing,” said Rev. Matilda Rose Cantwell, an ordained minister and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life at Smith College.

Cantwell noted that while members of Gen-Z often get a bad rap for excessive social media use, it is often younger people who are the most interested in returning to in-person communities.

“Belonging is a major issue for this generation,” she said. “And we think of them as being so attached to social media, but many in Gen-Z are worried about it too. Even as they are such consumers of it, they can also say, ‘I want an in-person connection with something that is meaningful.’”

The interest in joining communities outside social media, Cantwell says, could also be the result of people feeling isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They are aware that online groups did a lot for people for a long time, like during COVID, but they are are also realizing that there are limitations to that, and that social media can also cause loneliness,” she said.

Even among young people who do not identify with a particular religion, there are some who are still drawn to the idea of some sort of higher power.

According to a 2018 study also conducted by Pew Research Center, 80% of Americans say they believe in God, but only 56% believe in God as described in the Bible; the remaining 23% who believe in God say they believe in some other higher power/spiritual force.

As these numbers help illustrate, it’s not just religiously affiliated Americans who believe in God—many unaffiliated Americans, who Pew refers to as “nones,” also believe in a higher power.

“The thing that I have found in my research and experience is that along with the recent trend of the ‘nones’ going up in the last decade, even when that was still going on, the desire for a higher power was going up,” Cantwell told The Willistonian.

Despite the recent steadying of religious affiliation, many churches and religious organizations still struggle to appeal to young people, many of whom do not feel like religious communities are designed for them.

Part of this issue can be traced back to political divisions within religious communities; many young, liberal Americans associate church attendance with conservatism, and there is a deep divide between progressive and more conservative approaches to organized religion.

Dr. David Campbell, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame, attributes some Americans’ trepidations about Christianity to the religion’s perception as a primarily conservative form of worship.

“If you think of yourself as conservative, then being religious is a part of that,” Campbell told The New York Times.

Cantwell believes that some churches have failed to appeal to less conservative young people who are interested in Christianity, which could be a cause for some young peoples’ hesitation about joining a church.

“Churches, since the late 50s and early 60s have not kept up with a progressive social agenda, so people who care about social issues didn’t feel like they had a place,” Cantwell said.

Cantwell also believes that more progressive churches bear some responsibility for failing to connect with young people.

“As a progressive Christian, I would say that progressive Christians haven’t done enough to try to keep people connected,” she explained.

In recent years, even as religious affiliation has declined, the number of Americans identifying as “spiritual but not religious” has increased, leading to a rise in alternative communities like 12-step programs, which members describe as spiritual.

“I found the 12-step program to be sort of a spirituality that worked for me,” said an anonymous member of a 12-step group who was interviewed as a part of another research project on those who are “spiritual but not religious.” “It’s about making a connection with a higher power. It’s about trying to improve that connection with prayer and meditation,” she said.