More Young Men Say Religion Is ‘Very Important’ to Them, Poll Finds

““I wanted something new and something traditional and something that felt holy.”

 

For several years, many pastors across the country have noticed young adults, especially men, filling their pews. Leaders have welcomed these new worshipers, even if their arrival has remained something of a mystery.

 

A new Gallup survey adds muscle to those 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.

 

Gallup’s survey, which combined polling data across multiple years, seems to confirm that young men are indeed becoming more religious.

 

But it has found that religion is dropping in importance among young women, widening a surprising gender gap for young adults. For decades, surveys have found that women are consistently more religious than their male peers.

 

As a teenager living outside Houston, Mason Gubser found himself increasingly disillusioned by a life that seemed to revolve around scrolling through his phone.

 

“All my entertainment is right here in front of me, but there’s no fulfillment from that,” Mr. Gubser said. “I wanted something new and something traditional and something that felt holy.”

 

He found what he was looking for at the Catholic center on campus at Texas A&M University, where he is a petroleum engineering major. Now 21, Mr. Gubser has been a confirmed Catholic for two years and is engaged to be married. He attends Mass once or twice a week.

 

“What I was really looking for, and still am, was purpose,” he said. “The church definitely provides that.”

 

He is far from alone.

 

Catholic dioceses across the country are reporting an influx of people joining the church. Attendance and membership at many Orthodox churches are also rising, a shift driven in large part by young men. Bible sales are surging.

 

Last year, a major national survey from Pew Research Center found that the Christian population in the United States had recently stabilized after a long period of decline, in part because of young adults. Adults born between 2000 and 2006 — the survey’s youngest cohort — were no less likely to identify as religious than those in the cohort just above them.

 

The new Gallup survey also suggests that the decline in American religiosity seems to be leveling off. (The survey did not break this down by religious tradition.)

 

The survey has also found that young women, ages 18 to 29, are now the least religious across all age groups by far. They are less than half as likely as women over 65 to say religion is very important to their lives.

 

The reverse gender gap among young adults is “a very powerful historical finding,” said Frank Newport, a pollster for Gallup and one of the authors of the study.

 

“One of the most long-lasting and seemingly permanent findings in the study of religion going back to the 1950s was that women were more religious than men,” Mr. Newport added.

 

The reasons for the growing gender gap are complex, but the split mirrors a similar divide in their politics. Christian identity in particular has become increasingly associated with right-wing political beliefs.

 

Bailie Gregory was raised in a conservative evangelical church where her father worked as a musician. She joined a more progressive denomination as an adult, and enrolled in seminary to pursue being a pastor. But she realized along the way that she did not feel at home in church anymore, in part because of her experiences feeling subtly unwelcome as a disabled person.

 

“I don’t see myself in the church; I don’t see the things I enjoy in the church,” said Ms. Gregory, 36, who now lives in Baltimore.

 

She still considers herself a Christian, but rarely attends services these days. She said that many of her female friends who became more politically active in recent years followed a similar trajectory.

 

The survey suggests that much of the growth in religiosity is concentrated among Republicans.

 

More than half of young Republican men and women say they attend religious services at least monthly, an increase over the last several years. And while the numbers for Democrats are much lower, religious attendance for young men in that group has also ticked a few percentage points upward since 2023. Young Democratic women were the only group not to see an increase in religious attendance.

 

The broader story of American religion remains one of continued decline. And some experts question the claim that the country is undergoing a spiritual revival that would meaningfully shift that trajectory. Young adults today remain significantly less likely to identify as Christians than their grandparents’ generation. And, according to Pew, more than a quarter of American adults — 28 percent — now claim no religious identity at all.” [1]

 

1. More Young Men Say Religion Is ‘Very Important’ to Them, Poll Finds. Igielnik, Ruth; Graham, Ruth.  New York Times (Online) New York Times Company. Apr 16, 2026.