Is there a resurgence of religion among young adults in the United States?

David Voas

7 December 2025

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A number of commentators have claimed that young adults in the United States are returning to religion (and Christianity in particular). We can use the General Social Survey (GSS) to test this hypothesis.

The datasets include a number of relevant variables:

Has a religion

Attends services (monthly or more often)

Prays (at least daily)

Considers self to be a religious person (very or moderately)

Considers self to be a spiritual person (very or moderately)

Believes in God (with no doubts)

Believes in life after death

The following comparisons help to show whether there has been a turn to religion among the youngest cohort of adults (born since 2000).

  • For people born since 2000, was religious involvement higher in 2024 than in 2022?

  • In the 2024 survey, do people born since 2000 seem to be more religious than those born in the 1990s?

  • Are people born since 2000 surveyed in 2024 more religious than previous cohorts were at the same age (specifically, people born in the 1990s surveyed in 2014)?

With few exceptions, the answer to these questions is ‘no’. For the variables listed above, most of the differences go in the opposite direction (and do not look significant in any case).

The youngest cohort is not becoming more religious, is not more religious than the previous cohort, and is not more religious than the previous cohort was at the same age.

To hunt for an exception, the best that can be found may be “To what extent do you consider yourself a spiritual person?”, where the proportion saying “very spiritual” or “moderately spiritual” rises in 2024 (though the figures for people born in the 1990s show large fluctuations). Belief in God without doubts has gone up substantially between 2022 and 2024 for both recent cohorts, but as the question appeared on just two out of three GSS ballots, the confidence intervals are wide.

Tables and notes on methods are in Appendix 1.

 

Are emerging adults really more religious than people aged 25-34?

Although the General Social Survey suggests that the youngest generation of adults is also the least religious, it is not uncommon to find surveys pointing to a different conclusion. Adolescents and emerging adults sometimes appear to be more religious than people a few years older. Such findings are then cited by some commentators to support the idea that Gen Z (people born 1997 onwards) is leading a religious revival.

Young adults, however, are what survey researchers call a hard-to-reach population. They are typically in transition between the parental home and education or employment. As a practical matter, they are often out of the house and difficult for interviewers to find. They tend not to volunteer for online panels.

As shown in the first table in Appendix 1, the General Social Survey samples include far too few young adults, with the result that each such respondent has to be assigned a weight of 1.5 or higher. Those who do participate in surveys may not be representative of their age group. They are more likely to be living with their parents, less likely to be out with friends, more likely to be compliant, less likely to be suspicious of authority, and so on. Such characteristics are associated with a higher likelihood of being religious.

Perhaps more importantly, data suggest that families of origin have a continuing influence on religious identity, belief and practice through the teens and into the early 20s. Even if survey respondents less than 25 years old are representative of their peers, their religiosity may be unsettled and relatively high until their mid-20s.

For some or all of the reasons above, we often find that young adults appear to be as or more religious than slightly older cohorts. Evidence for that assertion can be found in the 2008 and 2018 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) datasets.

In ISSP 2008, the youngest cohort (aged 17-24) had higher monthly attendance than the one above (aged 25-34) in 18 countries; it was lower in 22 countries. In ISSP 2018, the youngest cohort had higher monthly attendance than the one above in 16 countries; it was lower in 17 countries. Full lists of countries in both years and both categories are in Appendix 2. There is no consistent pattern; different countries appear on each list in different years. The picture is similar for other indicators of religiosity.

The youngest cohort thus appears to be more religious than the one above nearly half the time; the phenomenon can be observed at different times and places. In a few countries (e.g. Israel, Bulgaria or Philippines) that intergenerational difference might be real and persistent. Generally, though, we can see that the secular transition is well established, and that cohort replacement is driving secularization. Over an extended period, each cohort shows itself to be less religious than previous ones. The bar charts in Appendix 2 relate to countries where we know that secularization is in progress.