Christianity at a crossroads: Decline slows; could renewal lie ahead?

Consider this: A recent Barna Group survey found that 66% of U.S. adults say they’ve made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that remains important in their life today, compared with 54% in 2021. Yet, the people who identified as Christian and those who expressed a commitment to Christ weren’t always the same people — nearly three in 10 who didn’t identify as Christian claimed a commitment to Christ.¹ Perhaps those nearly three in 10 represent an opportunity for congregational outreach. 

Theologians, sociologists, political scientists — all have weighed in on the debate over the future of Christianity in America. Have the clergy scandals and politicalization of religion driven worshipers away from traditional forms of church? Has the true mission of the Church been muddled in the scramble to fill the pews by keeping up with an evolving culture and ever-shifting preferences?  

Data from the Pew Research Center in the early 2000s showed a decline in Christianity and an increase in non-believers. In 2007, 78% of adult Americans identified as Christian, the Pew Research Center says. In 2014, that was down 7%, to 71%. In comparison, the nones — atheists, agnostics, and “nothing in particular” — were 16% in 2007 and had grown to 23% by 2014.² 

But Pew’s more recent research shows little change over the past five years,³ a finding of five-year stability generally suggested by Gallup polling.⁴ Pew’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study found that 62% of American adults identify as Christian and 29% are nones. There’s also a bright spot in the research of Ryan Burge and Tony Jones. They’ve found that 21% of the nones are nones in name only (NiNO), 66% of whom are drawn to spirituality, over half who say they pray daily, and a third who attend a religious service at least once a year.⁵ 

Still, there’s a lack of “generational replacement,” signaling further decline ahead, Pew says. And political scientist Dr. Burge, who’s researched the nones extensively, states flatly that their presence will only grow.⁶ The number of young adult Christians is not great enough to replace aging Christian adults. Whereas 80% of Americans 74 and older identify as Christian, only 46% of those ages 18-24 do — and no recent birth cohort has grown more religious as it aged, Pew says. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, 43% consider themselves religiously unaffiliated, or nones, compared with 13% of those 74 and older.⁷ 

Statistics from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) present a similar picture. A reported 25% of the membership in 2024 were ages 56 to 70, and 34% were 71 or older. Ages 18 to 25 were 7% of the membership, with the 26- to 40-year-olds accounting for 13%.⁸ 

Pew’s Religious Landscape Study found that 79% of all Americans, adults of all ages, say there’s something spiritual beyond the natural world, even if we can’t see it, and 83% believe in God or a universal spirit.⁹ Among 18- to 29-year-olds, 76% believe in God or a universal spirit, compared with 89% of those 65 or older, according to Pew.¹⁰  

“Religious and/or spiritual beliefs are an incredibly persistent aspect of life in the United States, and that’s true even among people who distance themselves from the traditional trappings of religious life,” according to Drs. Burge and Jones.¹¹  

The Barna survey found that Millennials and Gen Z are driving an increase in the commitment to Christ; Gen Xers and Boomers changed little in their commitment from 2019 to 2025. In 2019, just over 50% of the two younger generations expressed a commitment to Christ. By 2025, 64% of Gen Z and 68% of Millennials said they had committed to Christ, compared with 65% of Gen Xers and 64% of Boomers. Barna said its latest findings “may be the clearest indication of meaningful spiritual renewal in the United States.”¹² 

Many young people are passionate about fairness, equality, and standing up for those in need. These are Gospel values. Jesus championed justice, welcoming the outcasts, challenging corrupt leaders, and preaching love that transcends barriers. But trust in religious institutions has eroded, and post-Boomers tend to see churches as businesses, at best, and at worst, hypocritical. 

“Organized religion, they charge, too fervently pursues money, power, and partisan politics,” research sociologist Steven Tipton says. “It imposes too many rules and claims too much truth in the name of God.”¹³ 

Researchers who followed a cohort of adolescents coming of age during the rapid rise of the nones and shifting social values said that “when young people perceive religious institutions as stifling self-actualization, marginalizing sexual minorities, constraining women, or demonstrating hypocrisy, they experience conflict between their religious commitments and deeply held values related to concern for others and the sacredness of the individual.”¹⁴  

One young man in the cohort these researchers followed was raised in a working-class farming community in rural Pennsylvania and deeply involved in the Catholic Church as a teen. His worldview began evolving after entering college, and he gradually left Catholicism over its politicization and treatment of sexual minorities. The researchers reported that he ultimately told his priest, “For a church that says they’re accepting, we pride ourselves on being holier than thou, you guys are pretty discriminatory.”¹⁴ 

Russell D. Moore, editor of Christianity Today and former Southern Baptist pastor, said young Christians thinking about leaving their faith used to be wrestling with doubt over church teachings or chafing under the moral requirements. Today?  “I have people who are coming and saying it’s not that I don’t believe what the Church teaches. I don’t believe the Church believes what the Church teaches,” said Dr. Moore, who broke with the Southern Baptist Convention over race and sexual abuse issues in 2021.¹⁵  

Sociologist Christian Smith, who argues that traditional religion has become obsolete, said that in recent decades, denominations found themselves “caught in complicated webs of no-win situations,” faced with the assorted complaints and criticisms born of a rapidly changing culture, including growing political polarization, as well as scandals like those that plagued the SBC.¹⁶ 

Dr. Burge, the political scientist who is also an American Baptist preacher, says trying to please everyone leads to, “‘If we don’t agree on every issue, then we agree on no issue and we cannot be in fellowship with each other.’”¹⁷ He says congregations used to be places where “you can believe differently than us. We just want you to be part of our community because maybe we can help you, and you can help us, and we can build the kingdom. Now, it’s you either get to where we’re going or get off.”¹⁸   

The prominent theologian Reverend Dr. Darrell L. Guder, a PC(USA)-ordained minister, says the Church has strayed from its historical mission as witness to the Gospel, failing to equip followers of Christ to be “a part of the good news for the world.” Western Christendom has a “compromised and reductionist” Gospel with a focus on individual salvation, as managed by the Church, he says.¹⁹ 

“What is going on when members are treated like customers and begin to understand themselves that way?” Dr. Guder asks. “What kind of ecclesiology have we developed if our sense of ourselves is that we should be user-friendly, full-service, consumer-sensitive churches?”²⁰ 

The real crisis in Christianity, as Dr. Guder sees it, is the loss of the essential link between the gathered church, which is the congregational setting, and the scattered church, the congregants flowing out from the congregation to spread the Gospel.²¹ 

Dr. Smith seems to similarly see the Church as lost. While working on his latest book, Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America, he was asked whether a religious revival was possible. “Among the more unlikely but not impossible of history’s surprises,” he concludes, “would be if American traditional religions turned their difficult predicament into an opportunity for self-critical soul-searching. What, finally, are they trying to do and why?”²²