According to a survey conducted in 2023, 74 percent of Americans in the United States said that they believed in God. In comparison, 87 percent of Americans who identified as Republicans and 66 percent of Americans who identified as Democrats shared this belief.

Belief in God has historically been a persistent aspect of American society, with 96 percent of surveyed Americans saying that they believed in God in 1944. However, the share of Americans who believed in God has decreased steadily over time after reaching a peak of 98 percent in the 1950s and 60s. As of 2022, the share of Americans who believed in God had fallen to 81 percent. Religious participation and practice There has been a significant reduction in participation within religious organizations in the United States, with Americans found less likely to attend church or become members of a church. While 70 percent of Americans belonged to a church, synagogue, mosque, or temple in 1999, this number dropped to 47 percent by 2021. This decline in church membership may have contributed to Americans’ waning belief in God, as continuous religious practice has been attributed to greater faith and religious conviction. 74 percent of Americans who attended religious services weekly believed that God hears prayers and intervenes, in comparison to 28 percent of Americans who seldom or never attended religious services. Younger Americans less likely to believe While most U.S. adults still believe in God, younger Americans are less likely to share this belief. Older generations of Americans were more likely to participate in religious services while growing up, with 68 percent of the Silent Generation reporting that they attended Sunday school or another religious education program, while Generation Z were more likely to have lacked any sort of religious upbringing in the United States. In 2021, 15 percent of Gen Z said that they had never been religious.

In Brazil, 70 percent of the respondents believed in God as described in the holy scriptures, and another 19 percent believed in a higher power or spirit. In South Africa, the figures were 73 and 16 percent respectively. By contrast, less than one in five in Japan and only one in three in South Korea believed in God or some form of spirit or higher power.

Nearly 70 percent of both white evangelical Protestants and Hispanic Protestants believe that God has granted America a special role in human history. This is also true of more than half of African American Protestants, and other non-white Protestants. Only 16 percent of religiously unaffiliated individuals hold the same belief.

A survey from 2021 found that 11 percent of Americans read the Bible daily. Trends in reading habits over four years showed that the majority of Americans never read the Bible, however in 2021 this number dropped to 29 percent of respondents. Bible readership demographics Bible readership varies across each demographic, with Millennials most likely to have never read the Bible, whereas the most frequent readers were those aged over 70 years old. Looking at the preferences of the older readers, traditional books were favored, with 91 percent opting for a print version of the Bible to read over other formats.

Although figures show that fewer people are reading the Bible, there is still a genuine desire to read the Bible amongst the American population, with 56 percent of those asked in 2019 expressing a wish to read it. Changes in attitudes have not been drastic, but rather it seems that disengagement with the Christian scripture has been a gradual process. Why are fewer people reading the Bible? Certainly, it is no small undertaking, as with approximately 1,200 pages the Bible is of comparable length to the popular epic ‘Lord of the Rings’ series by J.R.R. Tolkien. Other possible frustrations with the Bible and reasons for disengagement could come from complexities in language or simply not knowing when to use it. However, despite these challenges in reading the text, a significant proportion of the U.S. population consider their belief in God to be compatible with the representation in the Bible.

From 2021 to 2023, Republicans were found much more likely than Democrats to be Protestants in the United States, with 56 percent of surveyed Republicans identifying as Protestants compared to 38 percent of Democrats. However, Democrats were found more likely than Republicans to identify with no religion, with 26 percent of Democrats saying that they have no religious identity compared to 11 percent of Republicans.

According to a survey conducted in 2024, 32 percent of Americans said that they would not vote for a presidential candidate who was atheist, and 32 percent also said they would not vote for a presidential candidate who was Muslim in the United States. A further 25 percent said that they would not vote for a candidate who was Hindu.

According to a 2022 survey, 31 percent of Americans never attend church or synagogue, compared to 20 percent of Americans who attend every week.

Religiosity in the United States

Despite only about a fifth of Americans attending church or synagogue on a weekly basis, almost 40 percent consider themselves to be very religious. Additionally, states in the Deep South such as Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana had the most residents identifying as very religious. In contrast, New England states like Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire had the most people identifying as nonreligious.

A Christian nation?

Despite the official separation of church and state embedded in the Constitution, many would still consider the United States to be a Christian nation. Catholicism has the largest number of adherents in the United States, due to there being many different Protestant denominations. The Southern Baptist Convention had the largest number of Evangelical adherents, while the United Methodist Church was the largest Mainline Protestant denomination.