Trump fails to 'bring back religion' as church attendance in America death spirals

Religion News Service writer Yonat Shimron recalls President Donald Trump actively courting Christian evangelicals during his 2024 campaign and as president in 2025.

“We’re bringing back religion in our country, and we’re bringing it back quickly and strongly,” Shimron cites Trump saying at a National Day of Prayer event last year.

Since then, “many federal departments have held prayer services or Bible studies. Trump created a task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias, and his Supreme Court appointees continue to deliver for Christian conservatives and their allies,” said Shimron.

Despite all this, a new Gallup Poll, reveals no significant change in the importance of religion to Americans. Plus, church attendance continues to plummet. The percentage of Americans who classify religion as “very important” in their lives is still flat since its 2021 report, at 47 percent.

Religious service attendance, however, reveals churches are still very much in trouble, with 57 percent of U.S. residents saying they rarely or never attend religious services. Shiron said that number was only 42 percent in 1992.

“There’s nothing here that would represent any sort of major reversal or significant change in the trajectory of religion in America,” said Ryan Burge, a political scientist who is professor of the practice at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis.

Most polled groups continue to experience declines in the percentage who considers religion “very important” in their lives. Among the biggest declines, according to surveys, was the percentage of Black Americans who fell from 85 percent to 63 percent since 2005. Democrats fell from 60 percent to 37 percent over the past two decades.

“Republicans experienced virtually no decline with 66 percent claiming religion was still very important to them — but Burge reported an important caveat to that info: Republicans’ self-reported church attendance dropped.

“They like the idea of religion — that hasn’t changed — but they don’t actually go as much. So it’s sort of like a symbolic religion,” Burge told Religion News Service.

Women’s growing indifference appears to be matching that of men. And with American youth rejecting religious service by 61 percent, Gallup predicted generational replacement leading to a “long-term trajectory of decline.”