In reports about growth in worship attendance, it helps to keep asking questions
By Terry Mattingly
When hot trends emerge in American life, headlines usually focus on the extremes while missing subtle shifts in the middle of the culture.
That was the message political scientist John C. Green offered a global circle of journalists at a 2008 Washington Journalism Center seminar. For decades, including with Pew Research, Green has studied religion trends in politics.
During that lecture, Green focused on early signs of a sharp rise in "religiously unaffiliated" Americans, a trend that would create waves of headlines after the 2012 Pew Forum report, "'Nones' on the Rise."
While this growing coalition of "nones," atheists and agnostics was important, Green stressed that America's flocks of "traditional" believers were not vanishing. What was shrinking, he said, was the "mushy" middle of the religious marketplace.
Signs of change demand coverage, Green reminded me in 2025, but journalists and news consumers should not get carried away. "When it comes to doing surveys about what believers say and what they do," he added, "you can never ask too many questions."
Green's wisdom is timely because of a rush of reports about a "revival" that is supposedly pulling millions of Americans into pews, especially in conservative settings. One New York Times feature proclaimed: "Roman Catholic Churches See a Surge of New Converts."
Another Timesstory noted: “More Young Men Say Religion Is ‘Very Important’ to Them, Poll Finds.”
In that Times piece, reporters Ruth Igielnik and Ruth Graham wrote: "A new Gallup survey adds muscle to … anecdotal reports. The poll finds a sharp rise in the share of men under 30 who say that religion is 'very important' to them: 42 percent in 2025, from 28 percent in 2023. Scholars, activists and faith leaders have hotly debated whether the phenomenon is real and lasting. Some have brushed it away as a blip, and others have celebrated it as a revival."
In a sweeping survey of these debates, New York Timescolumnist Ross Douthat, himself a Catholic convert, cited another plotline in this drama – evidence the earlier rising tide of secularism and the "nones" may be receding, at least for now.
What many commentators forget, he wrote, is that it's "entirely possible for a faith to experience revival and decline simultaneously. It's entirely possible to have a spirit of revival or intensified belief among the restless and spiritually curious – yet also a continued decline in religious practice among cradle believers."
Douthat added this blitz: "First, new data showing that in 2025 the nonreligious share of the American population declined yet again, with the atheist-agnostic share back down to the levels of 2014. (A point for the revivalists!) Second, a retraction of a much-cited study in Britain that purported to show a Christian revival among younger people. … (A point for the no-revivalists!) Third, a story by my colleagues tracking a big rise in conversions to Roman Catholicism across many American dioceses. Fourth, a Pew Research Center survey showing that Catholicism loses far more lapsed Catholics than it gains in converts."
In my national "On Religion" columns, I have noted complex questions about the surging conversion numbers in Eastern Orthodoxy, my own church.
It's true that enrollment numbers in Orthodox classes for converts have been staggering. Some convert-friendly parishes have doubled or tripled in size, with between 30 and 100 newcomers. In one column I noted: "Many parishes – especially Sunbelt parishes – have catechumenate classes larger than average mainline Protestant congregations. For example, a 2022 Episcopal Church report said 85% of its parishes averaged attendance figures under 100." The median was 37.
Preliminary numbers suggest a surge in converts, in some places more than 38% or hitting 100%. However, many other Orthodox parishes are shrinking or have hit plateaus.
When covering "revival" stories, journalists should remember Green's advice – that it's wise to keep asking questions, especially hard questions about changes in religious practice. It's not enough to chart trends on the religious "left" or "right" or to accept vague claims, in polling, that believers make about their own lives.
Yes, there are surges. But many other churches are shrinking or dying -- often in the same religious traditions.
Revivals are news, but so are funerals. What can reporters investigate? Let's look at some Catholic questions.
Church attendance is safer to track than memberships. Among U.S. Catholics, about 34% of adults raised as Catholics were attending Mass weekly in 1973. By 2002, that statistic fell to 20%. It crashed to 11% by 2022.
In one related column, I noted that there were 59,000 U.S. Catholic priests in 1970, but only 35,000 by the 2020s. However, some Bible Belt and Midwestern dioceses yield far more priests than the norm. Meanwhile, large families produce more priests, but the Catholic fertility rate remains about 1.9, below the 2.1 population "replacement rate." Also, Catholic weddings have fallen from 426,000 in 1970 to 107,051 in 2024, with 85,171 Catholic rites and 21,880 involving other faiths.
Practical questions will find similar trends in other flocks. Churches experiencing "revivals" tend to have more infant and adult baptisms, more weddings, more converts and produce more pastors. "Funeral" churches? Exactly the opposite.
Brendan Hodge, a contributing editor at The Pillar, a Catholic news website, was blunt: "If you want to talk about the future, then the big news story is which churches are growing and why they are growing and which churches are dying and why they are dying."
————————————————————-
Terry Mattingly writes the national "On Religion" column for the Andrews McMeel Universal syndicate and "Rational Sheep," a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media. He is a member of the Overby Center panel of experts.
