Society and Religion

Slightly less than half of U.S. adults describe themselves as religious, while 33% say they are spiritual but not religious and 18% are neither.

Recent Gallup data confirm a significant and growing relationship between religiosity and partisan identity in the U.S.

Americans' belief in five religious entities -- God, angels, heaven, hell and the devil -- have all edged down since 2016, continuing a longer-term trend.

Americans' church attendance levels dipped at the beginning of the pandemic and have remained lower since then.

Survey researchers face the difficult challenge of meaningfully defining and measuring evangelicals in the U.S. today.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has been identified as an evangelical for most of his public career, but defining exactly what that means today faces a number of challenges.

Whether reflecting the remnants of the pandemic or the difficulty of inflation, Americans remain sour about the state of the union.

Although 67% of U.S. adults say they attended religious services regularly while they were growing up, 31% attend regularly today.

One in four Americans have interacted with a chaplain at some point in their lives. Among those who have, most say the interaction was valuable.

The percentage of Americans with no formal religious identity has increased dramatically since the 1950s, but that increase appears to have leveled off in Gallup's recent data.

Gauging Americans' belief in God depends on the threshold for "belief."

Eighty-one percent of U.S. adults say they believe in God, down six percentage points from 2017 and the lowest in Gallup's trend.

New Gallup data add evidence for the long-established connection between individual religiosity and wellbeing in the U.S.

About three in four Americans have a religious preference, but less than half say that religion is "very important" to them, that they belong to a church or that they regularly attend religious services.

After surging last spring to 38%, the percentage of U.S. adults who say religion is increasing its influence on society has fallen back to pre-pandemic levels at 16%.

Twenty percent of Americans report they have attended a church, synagogue, mosque or temple in person in the past week. Another 10% say they attended remotely.

The coronavirus pandemic has had little effect on Americans' attitudes and behaviors when it comes to their own religiosity, but they became more likely to think the influence of religion in society is rising.

While Pope Francis' comments supporting same sex civil unions were a drastic shift in Catholic church guidance, U.S. Catholics have supported gay marriage for about a decade.

Several factors help explain why Americans are four times as likely to see polygamy as morally acceptable now compared with 14 years ago.