Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 24, 2025
Last week, I reported on a Pew Study that said that in several traditionally Christian countries, Christian self-identification has slipped below 50%. Those countries still have many Christians, but no longer have a Christian identity. What about the United States? Gallup, another respected sociological polling company, recently published a study that examines this very question. The Gallup news is both sobering and hopeful.
Here’s the hopeful news: After two decades of dramatic change in religious identity, the United States appears to have reached a kind of calm. The overall religious affiliations of Americans have remained largely unchanged over the past five years. In 2024, 45% of Americans identified as Protestant or non – denominational Christian, 21% as Catholic, and 10% with other religions. Meanwhile, 22% reported no religious affiliation at all. 2024 numbers mirror those from 2018 to 2020 almost exactly. There has not been a change, no decline from 2020-2024.
But this surface-level stability masks deeper generational currents. The long- term decline of Christian affiliation in the U.S.— particularly among Protestants—has been driven not by a sudden cultural shift, but by slow and steady generational change. Younger Americans are replacing older, more traditionally religious people with markedly different spiritual profiles. Back in 2000, over half of Americans—57%—identified as Protestant or non- denominational Christian. A quarter were Catholic, and only 8% claimed no religious affiliation. Today, the share of Protestants has dropped by 12 points and Catholics by 4. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated—often called “nones”--have nearly tripled. When asked about religious affiliation, these people respond “none” and hence, they are now called nones.
Catholics frequently lament that Catholics are leaving the church to become Evangelical. While this certainly happens, the data does not show that this is a major trend. Protestants are shedding members faster than the Catholic Church and we have all lost to non-affiliation. The good news is that the overall trend away from Christianity to non-affiliation stopped over the past few years. The bad news is that younger Americans are still shifting from religious affiliation to non-affiliation. The trend toward religious non-affiliation will almost certainly increase after the current lull has passed and after older Americans pass and younger Americans become older.
This shift is starkest among those under 44. More than 30% of millennials and members of Generation Z (ages 18–43 in 2024) say they have no religious preference. Among baby boomers, that number falls to around 13%, and to under 10% in the so called Silent Generation. In these youngest adult groups, the unaffiliated now rival Protestants as the largest spiritual category—a quiet but telling sign of transformation. Still, the majority of Americans—69%—continue to identify with a Christian denomination. While Protestantism has seen the sharpest declines across generations, Catholic identity has also thinned—though less dramatically. In older generations, over 70% still identify as Christian, often strongly tied to denominational traditions. In Generation Z and millennials, that number falls below 60%.
And this disaffiliation reduces Christian identification. For millennials, a 15- point increase in those with no religion since 2000 is matched by equivalent losses in Protestant and Catholic identities. What does this mean for the future of religion in the United States? If current patterns hold, Gallup suggests that Christian affiliation could dip below 50% once millennials become the nation’s senior generation—or even sooner, should Gen Z and the next cohorts maintain their distance from organized religion. There’s no evidence of a dramatic cultural revolt, no mass rejection of faith. But there is a quiet, generationally-driven reshaping of American religiosity—a redefinition not just of what people believe, but of whether they feel any need to belong. The Christian majority is not gone, but it is no longer a given.
What does this mean for Saint John’s? I am astonished and proud that at least 25%, perhaps as much as 33%, of our Sunday congregation are people in their 20s and 30s. People visiting Saint John’s remark on how young our congregation is. However, let’s be honest. The 100-150 young adults who attend Mass at Saint John’s each weekend are a drop in the huge bucket of young adults who live, study, work and visit Center City. Before we congratulate ourselves overmuch, we should take note of the vast number of young adults who walk by our church and never stop in.
Our 70-80 weddings each year are another amazing young adult outreach. Each wedding brings scores of young adults into our beautiful church and these young people experience welcome in the context of a beautiful old church.
Whatever plans we make for evangelization in response to the fresh Archdiocese of Philadelphia initiatives, at Saint John’s we must focus on young adults. They are the future of the Catholic Church and they cannot be taken for granted. We already have an effective young adult outreach. We must do more.
