For most of the last 30 years, the story of religion in America has been a pretty steady one: a constant, and consistent, drop in religious affiliation every year.

Starting in the 1990s, the share of Americans who identified as Christian, or identified with any religion at all, began to drop precipitously. At the same time, those with no religious affiliation — nicknamed “nones” — began to spike.

Americans have been steadily losing their religion entirely. They haven’t been converting to other religions, or getting religion later in life.

That trend might be ending. Over the last five years, the share of Americans who are “nones” has stabilized at roughly 30 percent, across multiple tracking surveys — largely because of one group: zoomers.

Sometime around or after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, young Americans began to find, or at least retain, religious belief at higher rates than previous generations. The numbers tell this story quite cleanly. While the share of “nones” jumped by about 40 percent from 2008 to 2013, the rise began to slow between 2013 and 2018.

Then, in 2020, it stagnated.

According to associate professor of political science and data analyst Ryan Burge, who has been tracking this trend over the last few years, that stagnation can largely be traced to younger generations now losing their religion at slower rates than older generations.

“From a pure statistical standpoint, I don’t know if we can say with any certainty whether there’s a larger share of nones in the United States today than there was in 2019,” he wrote in 2024.

Gen Z seems to be the key. Recently, The Economist analyzed findings from the General Social Survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center, and found that zoomers are the only generation not losing their religious affiliation. Why? There’s no unifying explanation for this........

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