A higher percentage of Generation Z adults identify as religious when compared with other generations, according to a new poll.
A third of Gen Z respondents to a Harris Poll over the summer said they are religious. That was higher than the 19 percent of millennials, 22 percent of Generation X, and 18 percent of older people, described by pollsters as Boomers.
Gen Z was also the least likely generation to say they were neither spiritual nor religious, according to the survey.
The results run counter to some previous polls. In combined data from Gallup surveys carried out from 2020 to 2024, 34.2 percent of Gen Z respondents said they were not religious, compared with 30.7 percent of millennials, 18.6 percent of Generation X, 13.2 percent of Baby Boomers, and 8.5 percent of the Silent Generation.
In the new survey, respondents were asked details about their religious practice.
When it comes to reading Scripture or religious texts, 54 percent of Gen Z respondents said they do it regularly, and about half said they regularly attend religious services. That was the highest percentage among any generation.
And 67 percent of Gen Z respondents said they regularly prayed on their own. That was lower than the percentage of Generation X and Boomers.
Some Gen Z adults favored other practices, such as meditation or astrology.
Eighty-eight percent of Gen Z respondents said they regularly engage in at least one of the following: prayer, scripture reading, religious services, meditation, manifestation, astrology, tarot, or energy work. That was compared to 84 percent of millennials, 84 percent of Generation X, and 82 percent of older people.
“Gen Z self-identifies as the most religious generation in America, with the practices to back it up,” Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer at The Harris Poll, said in a statement. “But that doesn’t show you the whole story, because they aren’t choosing religion instead of everything else. They’re stacking it. Church on Sunday, manifestation on Wednesday, tarot on Friday. The old assumption was that each generation picks less faith than the last. Gen Z picked more of everything.”
The survey was conducted online from July 1–4 among 2,136 American adults that The Harris Poll said was nationally representative. The respondent breakdown was 372 Gen Z adults, or those aged 18 to 29; 736 millennials aged 30 to 45; 532 Generation X members, or those aged 46 to 61; and 496 older people.
“Because this was an online, weighted survey rather than a traditional probability-based sample, a conventional margin of error is not applicable/was not reported,” The Harris Poll said.
