New poll shows that Americans’ faith in God has hit an all-time low, citing lack of belief among young people and COVID-19 lockdowns.
According to a survey conducted by Gallup, 81 percent of Americans believe in God, a six-point drop from 2017 and the lowest percentage ever recorded.
The biggest drop in faith in terms of age groups was a 10 percent decline in 18 to 29-year-olds who say they believe in God.
Religious leaders in the U.S. claim that young people filling their lives with things besides God and anxiety from the ongoing pandemic have contributed to the decline.
“People are continuing to search and continuing to think about the larger questions, but the lack of dedicated spaces and time set aside for that leads to the chaos that we see around us presently,” said Rev. Lawrence R. Rast Jr., president of Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
While Catholic Bishop Robert Barron said that young people are the demographic he “worries about the most” because they have “inherited the attenuation of religious practice” that is widespread in society.
“When I was a kid, my parents took it for granted that we’d be brought to mass, we’d be taught the ways of prayer, we learned about the saints. They just immersed us in that world,” Barron recalled, who is the bishop-designate of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester and founder of Word on Fire.
“When you don’t immerse people in that world, you say things like, ‘Oh, it’s up to you, you decide what you want to do when you’re 16.’ You lose all that. And then we’re surprised that young people are adrift and young people have lost their sense of purpose and meaning?” he continued.
Bickerton added that COVID-19 lockdowns “moved the needle” for him when a grandmother in his congregation urged him to reopen the sanctuary because her son was struggling mentally and emotionally after losing his father.
“COVID, when you throw that in, people are even more isolated and people are also removed from church,” Barber said. “COVID accelerated these things that were already trends before that.”
Barber, however, feels optimistic that people will eventually find God once again after a generation of atheists has passed.
“I remain optimistic,” he said. “I’m a long-term optimist and a short-term realist about the situation with regard to people and their faith in the United States right now.”
