By Kurt Jensen
OSV News
Results of two national surveys of American adults released in 2025 indicated contrasting trends — more belief in God and spirituality, but no indication of any organized religious revival.
Last February, a Pew Research Center report said that 92% of U.S. adults say they hold one or more spiritual beliefs that Pew asked about: the existence of a soul, God or a universal spirit, something spiritual beyond the natural world, and an afterlife containing heaven, hell or both.
This has not created a stampede to church pews, however. But the long-feared trend of secularization appears to be, for now, in retreat.
In December, Pew’s analysis from its third Religious Landscape Study, which polled more than 35,000 randomly selected adults, said only that religious affiliation in the U.S. is “holding steady,” with recent steep declines leveling off. However, there’s no evidence a religious revival is underway and, furthermore, that Christianity continues to lose more members than it gains.
This apparent paradox in the perception of a religious revival in the West was explored in a panel discussion at the annual New York Encounter, held Feb. 13-15 and organized by the lay movement Communion and Liberation.
The panel, moderated by Brandon Vaidyanathan, a sociology professor at The Catholic University of America in Washington, included British writer and podcaster Justin Brierley; The New York Times religion journalist and podcaster Lauren Jackson; and Chip Rotolo, a research associate at the Pew Research Center.
Rotolo outlined the picture found in three Pew Religious Landscape Studies. The first, in 2007, found that 78% of U.S. adults identified as Christians “of one sort or another.” In 2014, the number was 71%, and the latest one, conducted over seven months in 2023-24, found that 62% of U.S. adults identify as Christians.
Between 2019 and 2024, he observed, the Christian share of the adult population has been relatively stable, hovering between 60% and 64%.
“Something is definitely shifting in American religious life,” he added. “We can disagree and have to continue figuring out exactly what that is. It’s definitely an interesting time to study religion.”