The percentage of Americans who believe in God, heaven and angels hit a record low in a new Gallup survey that also found belief in hell and the devil reaching a record low, too.
The new survey, released Thursday, found that 74 percent of Americans say they believe in God, a decline from 79 percent in 2016 and 90 percent in 2004 who answered that way. Similarly, 69 percent of Americans say they believe in angels and 67 percent in heaven – both significant declines from earlier polls. (In 2007, 75 percent believed in angels and 81 percent in heaven.)
“Gallup has documented sharp declines in church attendance, confidence in organized religion and religious identification in recent years,” Gallup’s Megan Brenan wrote. “Americans’ beliefs regarding God, angels, heaven, hell and the devil have also fallen by double digits since 2001. Still, U.S. adults’ belief in each entity remains at the majority level, and regular churchgoers, Protestants and Republicans, in particular, remain largely resolute in their beliefs.”
The 2023 survey is different from Gallup’s other survey that gave Americans only two options for belief in God (“yes” or “no.”) In the latest survey, Americans were offered a third option, “not sure.” A total of 74 percent say they believe in God, while 14 percent say they aren’t sure, and 12 percent say they don’t believe in God. In Gallup’s 2022 survey that gave Americans only two options, 81 percent said they believed in God, although that also was a record low for that specific wording.
“As the percentage of believers has dropped over the past two decades, the corresponding increases have occurred mostly in nonbelief, with much smaller increases in uncertainty,” Brenan wrote. “This is true for all but belief in God, which has seen nearly equal increases in uncertainty and nonbelief.”
Americans’ belief in hell (59 percent) and the devil (58 percent) also reached new lows.
The more money and education Americans have, the less likely they are to believe in God, Gallup said.
Only 51 percent of Americans say they believe in the existence of all five spiritual entities: God, angels, heaven, hell and the devil.
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Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
