Young women, traditionally a dominant group in churches, are now leaving places of worship, according to a report from USA Today.
Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodríguez told the outlet that women are “less inclined to be involved with churches that don’t want us speaking up, that don’t want us to be smart.”
Others attribute the droves of women leaving churches to social media, as women receive affirmation of their discontent in online spaces.
Daniel A. Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life, said the trend of women leaving churches is significant as “men have exhibited consistently lower levels of religious commitment than women – across cultures, class divisions, any way you cut it.”
Gen Z women are most likely to leave churches. According to April data from the Survey Center on American Life, 54% of Gen Z individuals who have disaffiliated themselves from churches are women.
Sixty-one percent of Gen Z women, the survey notes, also consider themselves to be feminists. “Younger women are more concerned about the unequal treatment of women in American society and are more suspicious of institutions that uphold traditional social arrangements,” the survey explained.
Church attendance in the United States is on the decline across all groups, however.
Between 2000-2003, 42% of U.S. all adults attended religious services. That number dropped to 38% between 2011-2013. Thirty percent of American adults attended religious services between 2021-2023, according to data from Gallup.
Twenty-one percent of Americans attend weekly services, 9% attend “almost every week,” and 11% attend church or religious services once a month.
More than a quarter of Americans identify as religious “nones,” according to Pew Research.
Of the 28% of Americans who are religious “nones,” 17% are atheists, 20% are agnostic, and 63% are “nothing in particular.”
