Is the Rise of the Religious "Nones" Over?

You may recall headlines over the years exploring "the rise of the nones", the phenomenon of America’s fastest growing religion being… well, no religion at all.

For a decade, polls have shown that the percentage of faithful in the United States was on a sharp decline, as younger generations eschewed the worlds of organized religion for agnosticism, atheism, or forms of secular spiritualism.

Faith leaders have long fretted about how to win these young people back into the pews, with some even fearing that Christianity could turn into a minority religion in the United States in the coming decades.

Perhaps they may not need to fret any longer. A new poll from the Pew Research Center indicates that the "nones" are done growing.

Could a new age of religious revival be upon us?

Drifting Away From Church

To set the scene: As recently as the early 1990s, 90% of Americans identified as Christian. But around the turn of the century that number began dropping, while the percentage of Americans who identify as having no faith at all rose dramatically. In 2024, just 63% of Americans identified themselves as Christian, and a whopping 28% said they were religiously unaffiliated.

The trend line was clear: from Baby Boomer to Gen-X to Millennials, each generation identified as significantly less Christian than the one before. But according to Pew’s new Religious Landscape Survey, it may have plateaued. You can see that in the data:

"Nones" Pull Back

Young adults still remain, by far, less religious than elder generations. But those born between 2000 and 2006, the youngest adults surveyed, are not significantly less religious than the generation before. 

Study authors found that the rate of those who identified as nonreligious grew about seven or eight percent with each successive decade. For example, 29% of those born in the 1970s identify as not religiously affiliated. For those born in the 1980s that figure was 37%. For the 1990s, it was 44%.

But the trend stops with those born after 2000. For this next generation, 43% identify as not religiously affiliated – just one percentage point greater than the generation before.

“If you look to the long term, it’s a story of decline in American religion,” explained Gregory Smith, a senior associate director of research at Pew. “But it’s a completely different story if you look at the short term, which is a story of stability over the last four or five years.”

Could this be a sign of religious revival?

A New Era

“We’re entering a new era of the American religious landscape,” said Dr. Ryan Burge, political scientist at Eastern Illinois University.  “Now that growth has either slowed or stopped completely.”

But why? Many have speculated that it dovetails with larger trends shaping Gen-Z.

Across nearly every culture and age group, women are more likely to be religious than men. However, the study found that the gender gap is much smaller in Gen-Z. Experts say it's evidence that young men are doing much of the heavy lifting when it comes to reigniting the spark of faith. 

For many young people, it can be as simple as aligning their personal faith with an overall cultural shift.

As Dr. David Campbell, a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame, puts it, “if you’re a young white male these days and you think of yourself as conservative, then being religious is a part of that.”

Others point to another key factor: churches have gotten better at reaching young people. Individual congregations are leveraging social media platforms like TikTok to catch the attention of younger audiences with content that ties religious messaging to popular culture. One recent viral video leans on Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us" to spread the word about Lent:

What Next?

So is "the rise of the nones" over? Has America’s loss of faith plateaued? Will it reverse?

“It’s striking to have observed this recent period of stability in American religion after that long period of decline,” said study co-author Gregory Smith. “One thing we can’t know for sure is whether these short-term signs of stabilization will prove to be a lasting change in the country’s religious trajectory.”

In other words: It's too soon to tell. But buckle in, the future of faith in the United States is going to be interesting.

What is your reaction? Do you have any theories for why religion is mounting a comeback?