Members of the clergy arrive to celebrate an Easter Sunday mass in front of empty pews at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC on April 12, 2020 as the Basilica remained closed to the public due to the CO The percentage of Americans who say they believe in God has dipped to the lowest number in the past nearly 80 years, according to a new Gallup poll published Friday.
The Values and Belief poll, conducted from May 2 to 22, showed 81% of people answered that they believe in God. That is down six percentage points from the 87% of respondents who said they believed in God in the 2017 poll.
This year is the lowest percentage in Gallup’s trend since the public opinion polling company first asked the question in 1944.
This year’s poll found 17% of Americans said they do not believe in God. When asking the question first in 1944, again in 1947, and twice each in the 1950s and 1960s, a consistent 98% of respondents said they believed in God.