Church growth is not measured by one number. It can mean the share of people who identify as Christian, regular participation, new converts, congregational involvement, or the expansion of a church organization. Recent U.S. data shows a large Christian population alongside uneven attendance, changing generational patterns, and substantial differences among religious groups.
In this article
- The religious landscape
- Belief and spiritual life
- Attendance in person and online
- Differences among religious groups
- Gender, families, and generational change
- Digital habits and church connection
- Organizational growth indicators
The religious landscape
The Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study found that 62% of U.S. adults describe themselves as Christians. That total includes 40% who identify as Protestant, 19% as Catholic, and 3% as other Christians. The same study measured a religiously unaffiliated population of 29%: 5% identified as atheist, 6% as agnostic, and 19% as “nothing in particular.”
Religions other than Christianity account for 7% of U.S. adults in the study. The reported shares include 2% Jewish, 1% Muslim, 1% Buddhist, and 1% Hindu. These figures describe religious identity, not church attendance, so they provide context for the potential audience of congregations rather than a direct measure of congregational growth.
The Pew study also reports a distinct picture among immigrants. Among foreign-born U.S. adults, 58% are Christian and 25% are religiously unaffiliated. Fourteen percent belong to religions other than Christianity. Within that group, 4% are Muslim, 4% Hindu, and 3% Buddhist. The geography here is the United States, and the population is adults; these measurements should not be read as a global religious profile.
Belief and spiritual life
Religious identity and participation do not capture every form of spiritual life. According to the Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study, 83% of U.S. adults believe in God or a universal spirit. A larger 86% believe people have a soul or spirit in addition to their physical body, while 79% believe there is something spiritual beyond the natural world.
Beliefs about the afterlife are also common: 70% of U.S. adults believe in heaven, hell, or both. Prayer is another broad measure of religious practice. In the same study, 44% of U.S. adults said they pray at least once a day.
These measures are useful when considering church growth because they show that spiritual belief can be broader than regular attendance. A person may affirm spiritual beliefs or pray daily without attending a congregation every week. The figures therefore point to several different audiences: committed attendees, occasional participants, people who practice privately, and people who identify with no religion.
Attendance in person and online
The Pew Research Center’s 2025 Religious Attendance and Congregational Involvement study measured both physical and mediated participation. Thirty-three percent of U.S. adults attend religious services in person at least once a month, including 25% who attend at least once a week. At the other end of the frequency range, 67% attend in person a few times a year or less often, and 49% seldom or never attend in person.
Online and television viewing adds another channel of contact. Twenty-three percent of U.S. adults watch religious services online or on TV at least once a month, while 16% do so at least once a week. Sixty-five percent seldom or never watch religious services online or on TV.
When in-person and online or television participation are combined, 40% of U.S. adults participate in religious services at least once a month. This combined measure is not interchangeable with weekly attendance or membership. It does, however, show why a church’s reach may be larger than the number of people in the room at a typical service.
| Measure among U.S. adults | Share | Source and period |
|---|---|---|
| In-person attendance at least monthly | 33% | Pew Research Center, 2025 |
| In-person attendance at least weekly | 25% | Pew Research Center, 2025 |
| Online or TV viewing at least monthly | 23% | Pew Research Center, 2025 |
| Online or TV viewing at least weekly | 16% | Pew Research Center, 2025 |
| Any in-person or online/TV participation at least monthly | 40% | Pew Research Center, 2025 |
| Seldom or never attend in person | 49% | Pew Research Center, 2025 |
Differences among religious groups
Monthly in-person attendance varies substantially by religious group in the Pew Research Center’s 2025 study. Latter-day Saints had the highest reported share in this set, at 76%. Evangelical Protestants followed at 60%.
Muslim Americans and historically Black Protestants each had a 46% monthly in-person attendance rate. Catholics were at 40%, Orthodox Christians at 37%, Hindus at 35%, and mainline Protestants at 34%. Jewish adults were at 23%, while Buddhist adults were at 17%.
| Religious group | In-person attendance at least monthly |
|---|---|
| Latter-day Saints | 76% |
| Evangelical Protestants | 60% |
| Muslim Americans | 46% |
| Historically Black Protestants | 46% |
| Catholics | 40% |
| Orthodox Christians | 37% |
| Hindus | 35% |
| Mainline Protestants | 34% |
| Jewish adults | 23% |
| Buddhist adults | 17% |
The figures describe attendance frequency, not whether a group is growing in total population. They also compare religious groups using the same monthly in-person measure, which makes them useful for participation comparisons but insufficient for explaining why the rates differ.
Gender, families, and generational change
Barna’s 2025 research, “New Research: Men vs Women at Church,” reported that 43% of men and 36% of women attend church regularly. Barna described the resulting 9-percentage-point difference as its largest recorded gender gap so far. A separate Barna report, “Is Church Attendance Turning Upward? And a Surprising Gender Gap,” reported 45% weekly attendance for men and 36% for women as of mid-2025. These are Barna measures with different wording and timing, so they should not be treated as identical estimates.
Family circumstances also matter. Among parents of children under 18, Barna reported that only 24% of single mothers attend church weekly. That figure describes a specific subgroup and should not be generalized to all parents or all women.
Barna’s “How to Help Gen Z Connect Spiritually Online and at Church” reported that weekly church attendance among young adults ages 13-24 fell from 22% in 2020 to 16% in 2024. Over the same measurement period, the share of Gen Z not attending church at all rose from 28% in 2020 to 37% in 2024. Yet 54% of Gen Z strongly agreed that in-person relationships are more valuable than digital ones. The combination suggests a measurable gap between valuing personal connection and attending church weekly.
Longer-term Barna tracking reported weekly church attendance hovering around 43% in the 1990s. In the same “Signs of Decline & Hope Among Key Metrics of Faith” report, the percentage of Americans who prayed stayed around 83% from 1996 to 2010. These are historical Barna tracking figures and are presented as reported legacy measurements, not as independently verified estimates here.
Digital habits and church connection
Digital behavior can shape how people experience a service. In Barna’s “The Uncertain Digital & Physical Realities of Churches,” 17% of practicing Christians said they often get distracted during church by something on their phone or another device. Ten percent said they fact check a pastor’s message during church, and 7% said they browse texts, emails, or social media on their phone during church.
Barna’s “Do Americans Replace Traditional Church with Digital Faith Expressions?” reported that 34% of Millennials often replace church attendance with other forms of Christian content. This does not measure whether those alternatives lead to growth or decline; it measures a reported substitution pattern.
The attendance data and digital behavior data together distinguish access from involvement. Twenty-three percent of U.S. adults watched religious services online or on TV at least monthly in the Pew Research Center’s 2025 study, but 65% seldom or never did so. Meanwhile, the Barna device-use figures describe behavior among practicing Christians during church. The populations and measurement approaches differ, so the figures should be read side by side rather than combined arithmetically.
Organizational growth indicators
Membership, new baptisms, missionaries, congregational units, and facilities are different ways an organization can report expansion. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ 2024 Statistical Report recorded 17,509,781 total members as of December 31, 2024. During 2024, it reported 308,682 converts baptized and 91,617 new children of record.
The same report listed 3,608 stakes, 494 districts, and 31,676 wards and branches in 2024. It also reported 450 missions. These organizational counts describe the church’s structure at the reporting period; they are not equivalent to the U.S. attendance percentages above.
Missionary and service figures provide another view of organizational capacity. In 2024, the report listed 74,127 full-time teaching missionaries, 31,120 senior service missionaries, and 4,192 young service missionaries.
Facilities were also reported by status. The 2024 Statistical Report listed 194 temples in operation, 59 temples under construction, and 114 additional temples announced. “In operation,” “under construction,” and “announced” are separate statuses, so the three counts should not be treated as one completed-facility total.
Taken together, the available measures show why church growth requires a defined denominator and time period. Identity, belief, attendance, online viewing, conversion, membership, missionary activity, congregational units, and facilities each describe a different part of religious life. For Faith & Everyday Life readers, the clearest comparison is therefore not a single growth score but a set of measures tied to a specific population, geography, source, and date.