Black protestants experiencing positive ‘bounce’ in church attendance

According to a Pew Research study released last week, Black Protestants have experienced a substantial bounce in physical attendance in church, from a low of 14% in July 2020 to 41% in the recent survey.

But Black Americans also have suffered a disproportionately high share of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths relative to White Americans, and Black Protestants remain the U.S. religious group most likely to be viewing services virtually.

In the most recent survey, about half of Black Protestants (54%) say they participated in services online or on TV in the last month, compared with 46% of White evangelical Protestants and smaller shares of Catholics (20%), White non-evangelical Protestants (19%) and Jews (16%). 

The report could not analyze the attendance patterns of Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and other smaller non-Christian religious groups due to sample size limitations.

The share of Black Protestants who say they generally attend religious services at least once a month is now 15 points lower than in 2019 (46% vs. 61% then). No other religious group has registered a decline of this magnitude.

Pew Research Center has conducted five surveys since the summer of 2020 in which we asked U.S. adults whether they attended religious services in person in the prior month and, separately, whether they took part virtually (by streaming online or watching on TV). The latest was in November 2022.

Black Protestants stand out as being particularly likely to say they attend in-person services less often than they did before the pandemic (35%), although an identical share say they now watch religious services online or on TV more often than they used to – a number that is also higher than in other U.S. religious groups.

Overall, 15% of U.S. adults say they now watch religious services online or on TV more often than they did before the pandemic, compared with just 5% who report doing this less often. About eight-in-10 say their participation in virtual worship is little changed, including 59% who say they did not do this at any time.

Older Americans tend to be more religious than young adults, and despite being at greater risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19, Americans ages 65 and older have generally been somewhat more inclined than young adults (ages 18 to 29) to go to religious services in person. Older Americans also report participating in religious services virtually at higher rates than the youngest adults.

Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have been much more likely than Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents to attend religious services in person – as well as somewhat more likely to participate virtually – throughout the pandemic.

The November 2022 survey shows how much things have changed: About two-thirds of U.S. adults who said they typically went to church or other religious services at least monthly prior to the pandemic (67%) say in the new survey that they actually attended in person in the last month, while 46% watched virtually (including 31% who did both). But, in total, the share who took part in religious services either in person or virtually (81%) is nearly identical to what it was in July 2020.

While half of pre-pandemic regular attenders said in July 2020 that they only watched religious services virtually, this percentage dropped to 15% in November 2022. Meanwhile, the share who attended only in person has risen from 9% in July 2020 to 36% in November 2022.