Gallup: Number of Americans Who Belong to a Church or House of Worship Plummets

(RNS) — Most Americans still say they believe in God, but their involvement in organized religion continues to wane.

A new Gallup report found that only half of Americans say they belong to a church or other religious body, down from 69% two decades earlier.

Most of the decline is tied to the rise of the so-called “nones” — those who claim no religious affiliation. Gallup found that the share of Americans who claim a religious identity declined from 90% to 77% in recent decades.

But even those who claim a faith tradition may not belong to a religious congregation or community, according to the report, which compared data from 1998-2000 to data from 2016-2018.

At the turn of the century, Gallup said, 73% of religious Americans belonged to a house of worship. That’s dropped to 64% today.

“The still-sizable proportion of religious Americans also contribute to declining church membership, as fewer in this group belong to a church than did so two decades ago,” the report states.

Being part of a house of worship is no longer necessary for a growing number of religious Americans, said Tim Carney, author of “Alienated America.”

“This data confirms what we’ve been seeing for decades: American life is becoming deinstitutionalized,” Carney said. “Americans are less likely to belong to anything. In America, historically, the thing most…