While fewer than half of American adults responding to a recent poll said they are members of a Church, synagogue or mosque, the findings do not necessarily mean that people have lost faith in God, a pair of Church observers said.
Church membership in 2020 dropped to 47% of the more than 6,100 respondents to a Gallup Poll. It is the first time since the polling firm started measuring Church membership in 1937 that a minority of adults said they belonged to a formal religious institution.
Back then, in the midst of the Great Depression, 73% of adults said they belonged to a Church. Over the next six decades, membership levels remained steady at about 70% before a measured decline began.
The number of non-Church members continues a downward trend that began at the turn of the 21st century.
“The poll doesn’t note that fewer than 50% of American’s don’t believe in God. It’s important to note that across society institutional belonging is not high right now,” said Timothy O’Malley, director of education at the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame.
“It’s becoming quite clear that at least Church membership is not the way most Americans are practicing religiosity,” he said.
Matthew Manion, faculty director of the Centre for Church Management at Villanova University, agreed, saying the polling results confirm what many Church leaders already knew.
“Membership in a Church is not seen as relevant or worth people’s time in a growing portion of the country,” Mr Manion said. “It (the poll) does not say that a belief in God does not exist among these people.”
The trend of declining Church membership parallels similar drop-offs in membership in clubs, organisations and professional associations in much of American society.
The poll’s findings show that the number of Catholics belonging to a parish dropped from 76% in 2000 to 58% in 2020. Among Protestants, the membership decline in the same period was smaller – from 73% to 64%.
Mr Manion noted that the poll showed the Catholic falloff in membership has accelerated since 2010, when 73% of Catholics said they still belonged to a parish.