A Reversal of the Religious Gender Gap

It may come as a surprise to learn that, in the same couple of weeks in which the U.S. Secretary of Defense repeatedly used religious language to describe the actions of the U.S. military in Iran; the U.S. President posted an AI-generated image of himself on Truth Social that resembled pictures of Jesus (an image which at least one prominent American Christian labeled “blasphemous”); the U.S. Vice President (a recent convert to Catholicism) advised Pope Leo to “be careful when he talks about matters of theology”; and a marathon public reading of the entire Hebrew and Protestant Bibles by various notable figures, including the President, is slated, there were much more arresting developments concerning religion in America—at least for scholars of American religions.

They would surely reserve that distinction, instead, for some startling new findings from a recent Gallup survey about religiosity among adults in America.

The Importance of Religion in the Lives of Young Adult Males in America

Focusing on what columnist Christine Emba, in a piece for the New York Times, describes as “highly networked urban areas... and Ivy League campuses,” various journalists have speculated that religiosity appears to be on the rise recently in America. Emba notes, however, that although conversions may be up in those settings, overall, the long-term trends have not changed. Polls and surveys have tracked a many-decades-long, gradual decline in self-reported religiosity and attendance at religious services among Americans.

It is precisely because of those long-standing trends that the results of this recent Gallup survey have piqued scholars’ interest. Although they do not indicate any reversal of those patterns, they did reveal two unanticipated developments.

The first was a comparatively sudden leap in the percentage of young adult males (ages 18 to 29), from 28 percent in 2023 to 42 percent in 2025, who reported that religion was “very important” in their lives. The survey also found, within that same demographic group, an increase (from 33 percent to 40 percent) in Gallup’s principal behavioral measure of religiosity, namely, attendance at religious services once or more each month.

These findings raise two obvious questions:

1. Is this a temporary blip or does it signal some new alignment in the making?
2. What explains this change of heart (whether a blip or a new alignment) among young male adults in America?

Is the Religion Gender Gap Reversing?

Such a surge in religiosity among young American men is certainly noteworthy, but it is the second unexpected finding in the Gallup survey that is even more attention-grabbing. It is young American women (again, ages 18-29) who are now the least likely demographic group that the Gallup survey measured to say that religion is important in their lives, and these same young women (39 percent) now report attending religious services less often than do males (40 percent) of the same age.

These findings reverse what is, perhaps, the best-known pattern in all of social scientific research on religions. In most cultures and most religions, females are more likely than males to affirm the importance of religion in their lives and more likely to pray daily. Women are also more likely to attend religious services. The only exceptions to that pattern of attendance arise among religious groups, for example, Muslims and Orthodox Jews, that restrict (at least some) public expressions of religiosity to males.

The Gallup finding about declining religiosity among young American women is all the more striking because all of these gender gaps—about prayer, attendance, and the importance of religion—have generally proven more pronounced among Christians, compared with other major religions (and of course, Christians remain the largest religious group in the U.S.).

Even more telling, perhaps: All of these gender gaps (until now!) have generally proven more pronounced among American Christians, in particular, compared with Christians in other developed countries, such as Canada and the United Kingdom.

Theoretical proposals for explaining the familiar gender gap in religiosity have appealed to various biological, psychological, familial, social, and economic variables or to combinations of some or all of the variables to which these theories point. This new gender gap reversal in America poses an explanatory challenge for them all.