Pew Research: Most Christians raised in the faith hold onto it in adulthood

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 28, 2025 / 12:45 pm (CNA).

Surveys in about three dozen countries compiled by the Pew Research Center found that most Christians who are raised in the faith hold onto it in adulthood. In fact, in every country surveyed the majority of people who are raised Christian still remain in the faith as adults.

However, the numbers vary widely, from a high of 99% Christian faith retention in the Philippines and 98% in Hungary and Nigeria to lows of 51% in South Korea and 53% in the Netherlands.

The United States was slightly lower than the average from the countries included in the research. About 73% of Americans who are raised Christian as children have kept the faith in their adult lives.

Pew’s data includes numbers from 10 European countries, 10 east and South Asian countries, eight countries in the Americas, five African countries, two west Asian countries, and one country in Oceania.

The broader report on religious retention rates included surveys from 36 countries, which polled nearly 40,000 Americans and slightly more than 40,000 people from other countries. However, the report only measured the Christian retention rate in 27 of those countries — the ones that had substantial Christian populations.

Based on the report, African and Eastern European countries surveyed had some of the highest retention rates for Christianity. Some of the lowest retention rates were in Western Europe, Canada, and Australia. 

Ghana, Kenya, Poland, and Sri Lanka all had retention rates between 92% and 97%. Peru had a retention rate of 89% and Greece was at 87%. Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa all had retention rates at 81%. Argentina’s retention rate was 80%.

Countries with Christianity retention rates between 72% and 79% included Colombia, Singapore, Italy, the United States, and Chile. 

The following countries had retention rates between 57% and 61%: Canada, Germany, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Sweden.

A large majority of the people in these countries who abandoned the Christian faith no longer identify with any religion at all. Only a small percentage switched to a different religion.

Numbers of those who fall away outpace incoming converts 

The surveys also reveal that in most countries the number of adults who have fallen away from the faith is substantially higher than the number of adults in those countries who convert to Christianity.

Some of the biggest net losses for the faith are happening in European countries, with six countries on the continent surveyed seeing more than 11 adults leave the faith for every one who converts to it. This trend is also prevalent, yet less pronounced, in the United States and other countries in North and South America.

Pew’s surveys only measure the number of people who adhere to a different religious faith than the one with which they grew up. It does not measure broader national shifts in religious beliefs that are caused by other factors, such as immigration and birth rates.

The only countries that had more adult conversions to the faith than departures were Singapore, Sri Lanka, Hungary, Ghana, and the Philippines. Nigeria had a 1:1 ratio. 

Assessing these numbers, Jimmy Akin, a senior apologist at Catholic Answers, told CNA that the Pew compilation is “not representative of global trends” as it only includes five African countries on a continent where “Christianity has been growing dramatically.” He also pointed out that “the Gospel is making progress in Muslim countries and in the communist world,” most of which are not included in these surveys and frequently undercounted due to repressive laws.

In the United States, about 73% of people who were raised Christian as children still identify as Christians as adults. However, about 23% no longer identify with any religion and another 4% identify with a non-Christian faith, which means 27% no longer call themselves Christian.

On top of this, conversion rates to Christianity in the country are quite low as a percentage. The surveys found that about 94% of current Christians were raised in the faith. Only about 4% of people who call themselves Christian were raised without any faith and just 2% were raised in a non-Christian household of a separate faith.

Multiple factors contribute to the religious makeup of a country. In spite of the net loss through “religious switching,” a separate Pew survey from May 2024 found that — in raw numbers — the percentage of Americans who identify as nonreligious has stabilized in recent years after a major surge in nonreligious identity through the 1990s and 2010s.

The data does not establish distinctions between Catholicism, Orthodoxy, or Protestantism. It does not categorize a change in Christian faith tradition or community as “religious switching.” 

For Catholicism specifically, data published by the Vatican earlier this month shows continued growth in the number of people in the world who are Catholic. According to the data, the total number of Catholics globally surpassed 1.4 billion people in 2023.

Source: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/263027/pew-research-most-christians-raised-in-the-faith-hold-onto-it-in-adulthood