{"id":30447,"date":"2026-01-08T13:28:52","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T18:28:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?p=30447"},"modified":"2026-01-08T13:28:52","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T18:28:52","slug":"the-great-unchurching-of-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2026\/01\/the-great-unchurching-of-america","title":{"rendered":"The Great Unchurching of America"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_30459\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-30459\" style=\"width: 1200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2026\/01\/Unchurch-America_credit-Adobe-Stock.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-30459\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/140\/2026\/01\/Unchurch-America_credit-Adobe-Stock.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"900\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-30459\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Adobe Stock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The U.S. is undergoing its fastest religious shift in modern history, marked by a rapid increase in the religiously unaffiliated and numerous church closures nationwide.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Why it matters:<\/strong> The great unchurching of America comes as identity and reality are increasingly shaped by non-institutional spiritual sources \u2014 YouTube mystics, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.boshemiamagazine.com\/blog\/tik-tok-tarot-jennifer-cartwright\">TikTok tarot<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@poetryofreality\">digital skeptics<\/a>, folk saints and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2025\/11\/12\/christian-ai-chatbot-jesus-god-satan-churches\">AI-generated prayer bots<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a tectonic transformation that has profound implications for race, civic identity, political persuasion and the ability to govern a fracturing moral landscape.<\/p>\n<p><strong>By the numbers:<\/strong> Nearly three in 10 American adults today identify as religiously unaffiliated \u2014 a 33% jump since 2013, according to the nonpartisan <a href=\"https:\/\/prri.org\/spotlight\/2024-prri-census-of-american-religion\/\">Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>That&#8217;s quicker than almost any major religious shift in modern U.S. history, and it&#8217;s happening across racial groups, an Axios analysis found.<\/li>\n<li>About four in ten Americans ages 18 to 29 identify as religiously unaffiliated (38%), an increase from 32% in 2013, PRRI said.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Driving the news:<\/strong> The religious shift has made it harder for political parties and candidates to reach voters, Sisto Abeyta, a Democratic political consultant based in New Mexico with the Nevada-based firm <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tri-strategies.com\/\">TriStrategies<\/a>, tells Axios.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have to find (religiously unaffiliated voters), engage them and answer their skeptical questions, rather than just go to a church and pass out campaign literature,&#8221; Abeyta said. &#8220;And they&#8217;re growing in numbers.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It costs campaigns about $1.40 to reach out to a single religiously unaffiliated voter, compared to $0.45 per faith-based voter, he said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Zoom in:<\/strong> Around 57% of Americans today seldom or never attend religious services, a jump from 40% in 2000, per a recent <a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/1690\/Religion.aspx\">Gallup survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>An unprecedented 15,000 churches are expected to shut their doors this year, far more than the few thousand expected to open, according to denominational reports and church consultants.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/nickblevins.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/09\/church-retention-whats-a-healthy-retention-percentage\/\">Leading experts<\/a> say that \u2014 before the pandemic \u2014 a church should expect to lose about 15% of its members year over year \u2014 a rate of 1.2 million leaving churches annually nationally. That number has likely accelerated since then.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Between the lines:<\/strong> The racial makeup of Christians within each party is vastly different, and that is shaping the influence of faith voters on Democrats&#8217; and Republicans&#8217; platforms.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Within the Republican party, the largest group is white Christians (68%) and only 12% identify as religiously unaffiliated, per PRRI.<\/li>\n<li>Among Democrats, Christians of color (35%) and religiously unaffiliated (34%) make up the bulk of the party.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Zoom out:<\/strong> The shift in religious activity also is leaving behind a trail of &#8220;church graveyards,&#8221; or empty buildings that are now difficult to sell or have been abandoned.<\/p>\n<p>These churches once served as community gathering places for Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, voting precincts, or town halls, leaving a void. Megachurches show signs of stability but not enough to reverse overall declines.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The intrigue:<\/strong> As Americans unchurch, YouTube channels like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@SpiritualManifestation\">Spiritual Manifestation<\/a> attract hundreds of thousands of subscribers who share mysticism, spiritual insight, and &#8220;inner wisdom&#8221; content online.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>YouTube videos of speeches by the late agnostic and astronomer <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/-EdmF4OyoKI?si=ibOUeyN3k6VB1oD4\">Carl Sagan<\/a> and atheist and biologist <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/IKnZw7byEgY?si=NorTvfOEi_vLFjpU\">Richard Dawkins<\/a> attacking religion have drawn millions of views.<\/li>\n<li>Devotees to unofficial Catholic Latino folk saints such as Santa Muerte and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/02\/08\/us\/08narcosaint.html\">Jes\u00fas Malverde<\/a> have also become increasingly prominent outside official religion, with tens of millions of devotees across the Americas.<\/li>\n<li>AI and chatbot technology are being used by millions for spiritual guidance, confession and prayer, with apps like <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/ai\/2025\/09\/millions-turn-to-ai-chatbots-for-spiritual-guidance-and-confession\">Bible Chat<\/a> reaching more than 30 million downloads.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Yes, but:<\/strong> Some Christian conservatives have framed the Sept. 10 assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk as a potential inflection point for a religious &#8220;awakening&#8221; and for Gen Z to revitalize churches.<\/p>\n<p>At a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.deseret.com\/faith\/2025\/09\/15\/faith-charlie-kirk-vigil-harvard\/\">candlelight vigil<\/a> in Cambridge, Mass., for example, attendees prayed and shared stories of renewed church attendance, including a TikTok user saying Kirk&#8217;s death motivated him to go to church after years away.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reality check:<\/strong> There is no widespread academic or mainstream evidence of a large-scale national religious awakening, PRRI CEO Melissa Deckman tells Axios.<\/p>\n<p>Despite anecdotal and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/nation\/2025\/12\/09\/young-adults-religion-campuses-kirk\/\">media reports<\/a> about Gen Z men returning to church, there&#8217;s little evidence it&#8217;s happening beyond scattered examples to reverse the overall decline, she said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The bottom line:<\/strong> The old religious map is disappearing. The new one \u2014 digital, more secular, decentralized and deeply fragmented \u2014 is only beginning to take shape.<\/p>\n<p><em>This article was written by\u00a0Russell Contreras and originally appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2025\/12\/26\/great-unchurching-america-religiously-unaffiliated\">Axios.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The U.S. is undergoing its fastest religious shift in modern history, marked by a rapid increase in the religiously unaffiliated and numerous church closures nationwide. Why it matters: The great unchurching of America comes as identity and reality are increasingly shaped by non-institutional spiritual sources \u2014 YouTube mystics, TikTok tarot, digital skeptics, folk saints and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":630,"featured_media":30459,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Great Unchurching of America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A record number of Americans are abandoning church as digital spirituality rises, reshaping politics, identity and the nation\u2019s moral landscape.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, 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