Researcher Ryan Burge examined the church attendance over the years of self-identified Evangelicals based on data from the Cooperative Election Study.
He began by highlighting an increase in the share of self-described Evangelicals who “never” attend church services from 3% in 2008 to 10% in 2023, while noting that the percentage of self-identified Evangelicals who “seldom” go to church has risen from 13% to 17% in the same time period.
Broken down by political affiliation, 5.5% of conservative self-identified Evangelicals said they either “seldom” or “never” attend church services in 2008. That figure rose to 12.6% in 2023. By contrast, the percentage of self-identified moderate Evangelicals who “seldom” or “never” go to church increased from 5% to 8.5%, while the share of self-described liberal Evangelicals with similarly low church attendance rates saw the smallest change over the years, jumping from 3.5% to 4.5%.
Burge said, “This is pretty compelling evidence that this phenomenon is being driven, in no small part, by politics — not religion.”
Burge suggested that a difference in understanding about the meaning of the word “Evangelical” might explain the disparities in church attendance rates.