New national survey data indicate that evangelical Protestants in the United States remain among the most religiously observant Christians, even as their share of the overall population continues a gradual decline.
The latest Religious Landscape Study from Pew Research Center, released in early 2025, reports that Christianity’s long-running decline has slowed and may even be leveling off, but the composition of American Christianity is shifting. Pew’s detailed look at religious identity finds that the evangelical Protestant share of U.S. adults has edged down from about 26% in 2007 to roughly 23% in 2023–24, while mainline Protestants have experienced a sharper drop from 18% to 11% over the same period. At the same time, Pew notes that certain evangelical subgroups, including nondenominational congregations, have seen modest gains, with one analysis highlighting that a “nondenominational evangelical family” grew by about one percentage point since 2014.
Across measures of personal devotion, however, evangelicals continue to stand out. Pew’s earlier iterations of the Religious Landscape Study have consistently found that evangelicals are more likely than other Christian traditions to say religion is very important in their lives, to attend services weekly, and to pray daily. Those patterns are echoed in the new study’s discussion of beliefs and practices, which underscores that evangelicals remain the most intensely engaged Christian group even as their numerical share inches downward.
Data from the Public Religion Research Institute’s 2024 report “Religious Change in America” offer a closer look at white evangelical Protestants, a core segment of the movement. PRRI estimates that white evangelicals declined from 17% of the population in 2013 to 14% in 2023, the largest drop among white Christian groups over the past decade. Yet PRRI also notes that their net loss of members has slowed since 2016 and highlights a retention rate of 76%, one of the highest among all religious groups, up from 66% seven years earlier. That combination of shrinking public share but strong internal retention points to an evangelical community that remains cohesive and committed even as fewer Americans adopt the label.
A separate analysis published by Probe Ministries in early 2024, drawing on two decades of survey data, similarly concludes that evangelicals are declining as a percentage of the U.S. population but “at a much slower rate” than many other Christian segments. Across all ages, Probe estimates that the proportion of Americans who identify as evangelical slipped from about 30% to 28% over twenty years. When the definition is tightened to include only those who both identify as evangelical and report regular church involvement and traditional doctrinal beliefs, the share drops more steeply—from around 9% to just over 7%—suggesting that the most highly committed subset is contracting even within an already devout community.
Institutional data from major evangelical denominations mirror these national trends. The American Survey Center has reported that the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical Protestant body in the country, has lost more than 2 million members over roughly the last decade and a half. Those declines have coincided with internal efforts to prioritize evangelism and church planting, as well as debates over theology, politics, and abuse reforms that have shaped how congregations engage both members and the broader culture.
Researchers are also tracking how evangelicals are perceived beyond their own pews. A 2023 Pew study on public views of religious groups found that Americans overall are split almost evenly between favorable and unfavorable views of evangelical Christians, but among non-evangelicals the balance of opinion is more negative. That reputational challenge forms part of the backdrop for the movement’s future witness and growth, even as surveys continue to show that evangelicals themselves remain deeply involved in congregational life and personal spiritual practice.
Pew, PRRI, and other research organizations plan to continue fielding large-scale surveys on religious identity and behavior, which will test whether the apparent plateau in Christian decline holds and how evangelicals navigate generational change, cultural polarization, and institutional flux. For now, the data portray a movement that is numerically smaller than in previous decades but still marked by high commitment, strong internal retention, and a distinctive profile within the wider U.S. Christian landscape.