Study shows group most likely to identify as 'low-attending Evangelicals'

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, October 01, 2024

A new study looking at church attendance among Evangelicals reveals that conservatives are the most likely to identify as “low-attending Evangelicals.”

In a post on his Substack Graphs About Religion on Monday, researcher Ryan Burge examined the church attendance rates of self-identified Evangelicals based on data from the Cooperative Election Study over the years. He began by highlighting an increase in the share of self-described Evangelicals who “never” attend church services from 3% in 2008 to 10% in 2023, while noting that the percentage of self-identified Evangelicals who “seldom” go to church has risen from 13% to 17% in the same time period.

Broken down by political affiliation, 5.5% of conservative self-identified Evangelicals said they either “seldom” or “never” attend church services in 2008. That figure rose to 12.6% in 2023. By contrast, the percentage of self-identified moderate Evangelicals who “seldom” or “never” go to church increased from 5% to 8.5%, while the share of self-described liberal Evangelicals with similarly low church attendance rates saw the smallest change over the years, jumping from 3.5% to 4.5%.

Burge explained that the gap between the percentage of liberal and conservative Evangelicals who either rarely or never go to church increased from 2 percentage points in 2008 to 8 percentage points in 2023. “This is pretty compelling evidence that this phenomenon is being driven, in no small part, by politics — not religion,” he wrote.

The post also looked at the relationship between education levels and church attendance within the Evangelical community, finding that only 1.8% of Evangelicals who had graduated college never or rarely went to church in 2008 compared to 7.7% of Evangelicals with a high school diploma or less. By 2023, 4.6% of Evangelicals with college degrees had low church attendance rates, along with 13.2% of Evangelicals with a high school education or less.

When examining church attendance among Evangelicals by race, Burge found that the share of white Evangelicals with low church attendance rates (5.8%) was the highest among all racial groups, followed by blacks (4.8%), Hispanics (2.5%) and Asians (1.5%).

However, by 2023, the share of black Evangelicals who never or rarely go to church (11.2%) had eclipsed the percentage of whites in the same category (9.2%). The percentage of Hispanics (7.4%) and Asians (4.8%) with low church attendance rates had also risen over the years.

Upon placing the variables he examined into a regression model, Burge found that “being a conservative” had “more predictive power (in either direction) than all the other ones thrown in this model” when it comes to forecasting the likelihood that someone is a “low-attending Evangelical.” He concluded that “low-attending evangelicalism is a phenomenon driven largely by political concerns not theological beliefs.”

Burge also determined that white conservatives were most likely to be “low-attending” Evangelicals, with 9% of those in that group fitting the label. Across all racial groups, conservatism was a strong predictor of whether someone was a “low-attending” Evangelical, with moderates less likely than conservatives to fall into that category and liberals less likely than moderates to do so.

Burge suggested that a difference in understanding about the meaning of the word “Evangelical” might explain the disparities in church attendance rates between racial groups and political ideology.

Burge’s research comes as religious affiliation and church attendance are widely seen as factors that influence an individual’s political preference. Exit polling from the 2020 presidential election shows that 76% of white Evangelical Christians supported Republican candidate and former President Donald Trump, while exit polling from the 2016 presidential election measured white Evangelical Christian support for Trump at 80%.

Exit polling from 2016 also documents a relationship between church attendance and voting behavior. Among those who attend religious services at least once a week, 55% supported Trump, while 41% backed Democratic candidate and former first lady Hillary Clinton. Forty-nine percent of respondents who attend church services at least once a month voted for Trump, while 47% supported Clinton.

By contrast, 48% of those who attend church a few times a year voted for Clinton, while 46% backed Trump. Among respondents who “never” go to church, a solid majority (62%) favored Clinton over Trump. Broken down more broadly, Trump won a majority (53%) of voters who go to church at least once a month, while Clinton won most (54%) who attend religious services “less often than that.”

Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com