Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - With Easter being less than a week away, Gallup released a new study that shows a significant decrease in religious service attendance over the past two decades in the United States.
According to Gallup, between 2000-2003, 42% of U.S. adults said they attend religious services weekly or almost weekly. From 2021-2023, that number dropped to 30%.
The Catholic church has seen the largest decline, with weekly attendance going from 45% to 33%.
Father Paul Seil from the Newman Center at the University of Buffalo (UB) says he has personally seen a decline in attendance, but only in certain areas.
"Some places I've seen slight increases, some places I've seen and heard of great declines between coming out of COVID, and now trying to come back still, as many churches are," Seil said in an interview with WBEN. "There's a lot of other factors too. Sometimes it's referred to as the postmodern age, where religion is not that important or significant in the lives of a lot of people, or we hear a lot of times that people are spiritual, but not necessarily religious."
Seil says the Newman Center does do events, like providing weekly meals to students who are hungry as a way to help increase attendance. However, he explains he isn't concerned with increasing the number of attendees, but rather with building relationships within the community.
"If you don't have community, you can't have a church," Seil said. "When Jesus sent out his disciples, he sent them out in two's. Any sociologist, if I remember from college correctly, will tell you that the basic unit of a community has got to be two people. Jesus said, 'Wherever two or more are gathered in my name.'"
"I don't think we have to focus only on the numbers, but focus on the relationships that we do have, and not thinking of a lowering population of attendees, as a particular reason to complain or be sorrowful. The only thing we need to do is welcome people and welcome others back in an honest, straightforward, very open way. That's what we need to do."
Despite the decrease, Rabbi Alex Lazarus-Klein from the Congregation of Shir Shalom says his synagogue has actually seen an uptick of attendees in recent years.
Lazarus-Klein explained that a person doesn't necessarily need to attend in order to be apart of the community.
"I would say at any given time, about 20% of our membership are regular attendees. That doesn't mean that the other 80% are not involved," said Lazarus-Klein in an interview with WBEN. "I think part of the issue with the study is that it's not just services that make up a religious community, religious communities are about many different things, and services are just one component."
"We have a whole variety of ways for people to get involved and to support one another. While only about 20% regularly attend our religious services, I would say we reach almost all of our members at one time or another, especially over the course of the year."