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Poll: Religious service attendance a bit down after pandemic

FILE - The Rev. Manuel Rodriguez sits in the pews of his church, Our Lady of Sorrows, on March 5, 2021, in the Queens borough of New York. A new survey by the Pew Research Center, Tuesday, March 28, 2023, says in-person attendance at religious services in the U.S. declined during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Rodriguez says attendance is now higher at his Catholic church than before the pandemic, even though more than 100 of his parishioners died of COVID. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski, File)
FILE - The Rev. Manuel Rodriguez sits in the pews of his church, Our Lady of Sorrows, on March 5, 2021, in the Queens borough of New York. A new survey by the Pew Research Center, Tuesday, March 28, 2023, says in-person attendance at religious services in the U.S. declined during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Rodriguez says attendance is now higher at his Catholic church than before the pandemic, even though more than 100 of his parishioners died of COVID. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski, File) FILE - The Rev. Manuel Rodriguez sits in the pews of his church, Our Lady of Sorrows, on March 5, 2021, in the Queens borough of New York. A new survey by the Pew Research Center, Tuesday, March 28, 2023, says in-person attendance at religious services in the U.S. declined during the COVID-19 pandemic. But Rodriguez says attendance is now higher at his Catholic church than before the pandemic, even though more than 100 of his parishioners died of COVID. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski, File)

By LUIS ANDRES HENAO / Associated Press 4 min read


A “stable share” of Americans has participated in religious services in some way – virtually or in person – during the coronavirus pandemic, though in-person attendance is slightly lower than before the COVID-19 outbreak.

Those are among the key findings in a comprehensive report released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center titled: “How the Pandemic Has Affected Attendance at U.S. Religious Services.” The poll surveyed 11,377 U.S. adults in November last year. Its margin of error for the full sample of respondents is plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.

The poll found that the share of U.S. adults typically attending religious services at least once a month dropped from 33% in 2019, before the COVID-19 outbreak, to 30% in 2022. About 20% of Americans say they now attend in person less often than they did before the pandemic.

But the survey also found that the percentage of U.S. adults who take part in religious services in some way each month — in person, virtually or both — remained steady since the early days of the pandemic.