The state bucking the national ‘dechurching’ trend

The Beehive State continues to have a higher rate of worship service attendance than any other U.S. state and most European countries.
A Deseret News/Hinckley Institute survey conducted by HarrisX from Aug. 2-9 asked 800 registered Utah voters how often they attend religious services, and 43% of voters said they attend weekly while 41% said they almost never attend.
But as churches are counting fewer congregants across the nation, 58% of Utah survey respondents said they are at religious services at least once a month.
The story of faith in Utah differs from national trends. While some churches are shutting down, the Beehive State is seeing congregations grow.
Different faith groups in the state, including Latter-day Saints, Hindus, Catholics, Buddhists, Muslims and nondenominational Christians, are seeing growth in their numbers — not decline.
Data scientist Ryan Burge calculated the weekly church attendance rates of every state and every European country by pulling from the European Social Survey and the Cooperative Election Study. The average rate of weekly attendance in the U.S. was 25%. And for Europe it was 14%.
Utah was 41%, second only to Poland, known for its large Catholic population.
The Deseret News/Hinckley Institute poll provided a religious breakdown of respondents. A slight majority (51%) identified as Latter-day Saints, the next highest categories were atheist and agnostic at 12%, other at 12%, other Christian at 10%, Roman Catholic at 6%, Evangelical Protestant at 4%, non-Evangelical Protestant at 2% and Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist each at 1%. A May 2024 report from the Kem C. Gardner Institute found Utah also has the highest rate of religious affiliation out of any U.S. state.
In the Deseret News/Hinckley Institute poll, Latter-day Saints in the state reported attending church weekly at a rate of 70%. (Gallup survey data from earlier this year found 67% of Latter-day Saints attend weekly or near weekly.) When asked about activity in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 66% said they considered themselves very active, 20% said they were somewhat active and 14% said they were not active at all.
All Christians across the state of Utah also have a high rate of weekly attendance at 58% with an additional 9% who say they attend a few times per month.
The survey also explored how important or unimportant religion is in the life of the respondent. A majority of all 800 respondents (71%) said religion was either very or somewhat important to them, while 29% said it was either somewhat unimportant or very unimportant.
America is still experiencing a “dechurching.”
Utah, however, has seen the number of congregations within the state grow, not shrink, from 2010 to 2020 (the year the latest U.S. Census data is available), according to the Kem C. Gardner Institute report.
In 2010, there were 5,557 congregations and in 2020, the number rose to 6,018. The state has the eighth most congregations in the country per 100,000 people, despite ranking only 30th in U.S. states population ranking, per census data. There are 19 religions that have 10 or more congregations in the state.
Trends in Utah run counter to what is happening in much of the nation.
Younger generations are leaving religion more rapidly than other generations, wrote Derek Thompson for The Atlantic. “There is no statistical record of any period in U.S. history where young people were less likely to attend religious services, and also no period when young people have spent more time on their own.”
Religion as an institution provides people with a built-in social safety net, not just a community where they can socialize. Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can work with their bishops to obtain food and other supplies if they need resources. The Church of Jesus Christ also has employment services available.
Catholic parishes in Brazil started operating as donation centers and shelters for people displaced by heavy floods earlier this year. Across different religions, Muslims, Jews, Protestants, Hindus and others contribute to their community and surrounding communities through service and material donations.
Utah has vibrant religious communities, comprised of different faiths, and there is evidence religion has impacted the state in a positive way. The United States Congress Joint Economic Committee said in a report that the Church of Jesus Christ’s history in the Beehive State has positively impacted the state’s social capital, with Utah ranking first in the nation on this metric, which measures positive relationships, not just between individuals but also with institutions.
“Its thriving associational life appears to be embedded into the culture of its people, a culture that is the lasting legacy of the original Latter-day Saint pioneers who settled the state back in the 19th century,” the report states.
Areas with large numbers of Latter-day Saints were found to have high rates of social capital by the American Enterprise Institute, too. Due to Latter-day Saints having regular family gatherings, a willingness to tithe one-tenth of their income, donating to welfare programs through monthly fast offerings and living near people in their church congregations, they typically have high social capital.
There are wide-ranging benefits to high social capital in communities — including improved physical, mental and emotional health outcomes as well as economic benefits. According to Pew Research Center, religious people tend to be happier, healthier and more civically engaged.
Suburban Utahns had the highest rate of weekly attendance at 49%. They were followed by rural Utahns at 41% and urban residents at 29%.
Tracking with other national data, people with college degrees said they attended church weekly at a higher rate than those without a college degree: 58% and 31%, respectively.
Among respondents with income either $50,000 to $99,000 or $100,000 and above, 49% said they attend church weekly. Among those who income is less than $50,000, only 28% said they were at weekly church services.
This is different slightly from national data where the middle class — those making $60,000 to $100,000 — are generally more likely to attend church weekly, according to Burge’s analysis of Cooperative Election Study data.
And this is where another unexpected benefit of attending services comes into play — churches can help develop cross-class friendships, which in turn may lead to more social mobility.
“If churches, synagogues and mosques were once again full of people from across the economic and political spectrum, it would help build bridges not just in the congregation but in the larger community,” said Burge in The Wall Street Journal.
Weekly church attendance has a positive outcome on tolerance — the more one attends services weekly, the more often tolerance increased, according to research published in Politics and Religion.