A person could be forgiven for thinking that an outbreak of a deadly disease causing serious social disruption might lead people to turn to God for help, or that a period of a year or more when attending houses of worship seemed dangerous might lead congregants to return to churches, synagogues, and mosques with renewed appreciation. Unfortunately, recent surveys point to the opposite conclusion, as Mark Silk writes:
The great influenza pandemic, which carried off an estimated 675,000 Americans after World War I, did nothing to reverse the secularization of American culture that had been underway since the late 19th century. Indeed, the 1920s and 1930s were a period of religious depression in the U.S.
A century later, the COVID-19 pandemic swept over America amid a decades-long religious decline as the percentage of adults who claim no religious identity—the nones—rose from the single digits in the 1980s to a quarter of the population. In a just-released survey, the Public Religion Research Institute reports that between 2020 and 2022 the proportion of nones jumped 15 percent, from 23.3 percent to 26.8 percent. That’s the largest two-year increase registered by PRRI since it began measuring in 2006.
Correlation is not causality, of course, but when it comes to the gold standard of religious commitment—in-person worship attendance—COVID-19 was most definitely the causal factor. Whether voluntarily or under orders from their governments or simply because their churches had closed, a large number of Americans stopped attending after the pandemic hit—and many have not returned.
Read more on Religion News Service: https://religionnews.com/2023/05/17/covid-19-and-the-decline-of-religion-in-america/