Fewer than half of Americans now view religion as an essential part of daily life, a sharp 17% point plunge since 2015 that ranks as one of the steepest global drops in nearly two decades, according to a new Gallup poll.

The survey found 49% of U.S. adults consider religion very important to them, down from 66% a decade earlier. Gallup researchers Benedict Vigers and Julie Ray noted the rarity of such a shift.

“Such large declines in religiosity are rare,” Vigers and Ray wrote. “The U.S. increasingly stands as an outlier: less religious than much of the world, but still more devout than most of its economic peers.”

The findings place the U.S. in uncharted territory.

With a medium-high share of Christians at 62% — down from 78% in 2007, according to the Pew Research Center — yet middling daily religiosity, it defies typical global patterns of high or low faith paired with specific identities.

Among 38 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations surveyed in 2024, a median of 36% of adults prioritize religion, a level that the U.S. now approaches. Globally, the median has remained steady at around 81% since 2007.

Only 14 of over 160 countries tracked since 2007 have seen 15-point-or-greater drops over any decade. Larger declines were observed in Greece, down 28 points from 2013 to 2023; Italy, 23 points from 2012 to 2022; and Poland, 22 points from 2013 to 2023. Chile, Turkey, and Portugal posted similar U.S.-scale falls.

The trend is tied to broader changes: A record 29% of Americans claim no religious affiliation, up from earlier Pew figures, fueling an estimated 15,000 church closures this year — far outpacing openings, per denominational reports and consultants.

Yet faith’s sway endures in politics and society. President Trump captured 85% of white evangelical voters and 57% of white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants in the 2024 election, according to a Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) survey.

PRRI CEO Melissa Deckman told Axios that Gen Z women are increasingly avoiding organized religion and leading the shift away from Christianity. She dismissed widespread reports of young men returning to churches as unsubstantiated and minor in scale.

The Gallup poll, conducted June 14 to July 16 among 1,000 adults age 15 and older, carries a ±4.4 percentage point margin of error.

Against this backdrop, some churches report attendance spikes after Charlie Kirk’s assassination on September 10 at Utah Valley University. Kirk, 31, was the co-founder of Turning Point USA.

“[There has been] a lot of anecdotal feedback from churches in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Douglas County, Colorado, reporting that they’ve seen an increase [in attendance] over the last two Sundays,” JP De Gance, founder of ministry group Communio, said in late September.

Matt Zerrusen, co-founder of Newman Ministry on 250 college campuses, noted 15% gains in Mass attendance at some schools following Kirk’s assassination, with students seeking guidance on evil and faith.

Social media buzz, including X posts and TikToks, reflects the “Charlie Kirk effect,” although experts like Deckman view it as too limited to halt the overall decline.

The U.S., once a religious standout among wealthy nations, now mirrors secular Western Europe in Christian identification but exceeds it in daily faith practice — while trailing Catholic-heavy nations like Argentina or Ireland in religiosity, despite lower Christian ties.