Military Church Attendance Surges, Outpacing Civilian Rates

The faith of members of the U.S. Military is on the increase, including church attendance, a study by a Missouri researcher finds.

The number of military personnel who attended church weekly has increased from 21 percent from 2010 to 2012 to 28 percent from 2022 to 2024, according to Ryan Burge, a professor of practice at the John C. Danforth Center at Washington University in St. Louis. By contrast, the number of surveyed civilians who attended church weekly remained at 16 percent.

“A member of the military is about twice as likely as a civilian to be a weekly church attender,” Burge said. “And remember, we’re comparing only 18- to 45-year-olds in both samples here. There are two really noteworthy findings here — military folks have always been more religiously active than other Americans, and the devotion of military members has gone up, while the rest of the population has secularized.”

In addition, the percentage of active military members who consider religion to be “very important” increased from 39 percent from 2010 to 2012 to 44 percent from 2022 to 2024. However, the number of civilian respondents who considered religion “very important” dropped from 37 percent to 30 percent during the same time period.

“It doesn’t take a whole lot of guesswork to figure out what’s happening here,” Burge said. “The military has an easier time recruiting in areas of the country that tend to lean right on Election Day. Those areas also tend to be more religiously active. It’s not that the military is making its men and women more inclined toward a faith community; they were already that way before they swore the oath.”

This trend highlights how religious affiliation remains a persistent feature within the armed forces, reflecting national patterns and regional recruitment

Approximately 70 percent of the U.S. military identifies as Christian, while about one quarter identify as “other/unclassified/unknown,” a 2019 congressional report found. This predominance of Christianity within the military is consistent with long-standing demographic data, and chaplains continue to play a vital role in service members’ lives, offering support that extends beyond religious instruction.

–Alan Goforth