44% With No Ties to Houses of Worship : ‘Unchurched’ Increase in 10 Years, Poll Says

More Americans have excluded churchgoing from their lives today than a decade ago, according to a Gallup poll released last week.

The study found that 44% of American adults have no ties to a church or synagogue--up from 41% 10 years ago. The poll defined “unchurched” adults as one who is not a member of a religious institution or, if a member, has not attended services for six months, exclusive of religious holidays, weddings, funerals or other special occasions.

The $163,000 study at 300 sites around the country was conducted for Congress 88, an interdenominational evangelism festival to be held in Chicago next month.

Gallup said the interviews of 2,556 adults nationwide has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points, making the change in results on church participation and religious belief statistically significant.

The study was paid for by a group of 22 Protestant and Catholic church organizations that ranged from Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network to the National Council of Churches.

Despite the increase in the unchurched found by the study, pollster George Gallup, who identifies himself with the evangelical wing of the Episcopal Church, found grounds for optimism.

“We are a remarkably religious nation, at least on the surface,” he said at a news conference. “The unchurched today are, by many measures, more religious than they were a decade ago.”

To support his argument, he cited a number of factors from the study:

- Three in 10 of the unchurched say religion is very important in their lives; 77% say they occasionally pray, and 58% say they believe in life after death.

- Nearly three out of four said they believe Jesus to be God, or the son of God; 44% said they have made a commitment to Christ.

- Of those who stay away from church services, 63% said they believe the Bible is the “inspired word of God.”

- Fifty-eight percent did not foreclose the possibility of returning to church involvement in the future.

Gallup said the poll shows the importance of churches’ actively seeking new recruits and the return of fallen-away members.

“Invitation and evangelism are virtually ignored by the mainline churches, certainly an important reason many of these churches have lost members in the last decade or two,” he said.