Has COVID Really Hastened the Demise of American Religion?

The latest Pew Research Center survey on American religion reflects a familiar trend in recent years: declining levels of Christian affiliation and growing numbers of religiously unaffiliated (the "nones"). Almost 30% of those surveyed told Pew that they identify with no particular religion, compared to 16% in 2007. Similarly, the Barna Group has estimated that in-person church attendance may be 30% to 50% lower than before the pandemic began. Many question whether American churches will ever get back to pre-pandemic levels. Has COVID-19 accelerated preexisting patterns of Christian decline? The answer is probably yes, but with a multitude of caveats. Polling on religion is notoriously difficult to interpret. What do people mean when they say they have "no religion in particular"? (For that matter, what do respondents mean when they say that they are "evangelical" or "Catholic"?) Only small numbers of the nones are atheists: The total number of American atheists has remained steady at about 2% to 4% of the population for decades. Slightly larger numbers of the nones identify as agnostics, leaving a strong majority of the nones in the murky religious category of "nothing in particular."