Non-Religious Americans Are Drinking Less, Challenging Old Assumptions

Bishop Karl Cardinal Lehman raises a goblet to bless the wine during a service in Mainz, Germany, Oct. 5, 2003. Lehmann is the President of the German bishops conference. (Photo: Boris Roessler/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)

Americans are drinking less alcohol than ever, and a new Gallup poll suggests the decline is being driven in part by changing habits among Catholics, people with no religious affiliation and those who attend religious services less than once a week.

The findings challenge the idea that declining religious participation would lead to more drinking. Historically, Americans who were less religious were more likely to consume alcohol. But as religious affiliation and church attendance have fallen, drinking has also declined among these groups.

According to the Gallup analysis, people who attend religious services less than weekly account for much of the overall decline because they make up a large and growing share of the U.S. population. Alcohol use among this group has fallen to its lowest level in Gallup’s tracking.

Drinking among people who attend religious services weekly has also declined from a high point between 2017 and 2022, though it has returned to levels recorded in some earlier periods. Weekly church attendees now account for about 20% of American adults, down from roughly 30% 15 years ago.

Drinking Habits Shift Across Religious Groups

Gallup’s analysis also found that the historical gap in alcohol use among Protestants, Catholics and Americans with no religious identity has narrowed.

Protestants have traditionally been less likely to drink than Catholics and people with no religious affiliation. That difference has largely disappeared as drinking has fallen among Catholics and those with no religious identity. Protestants and Catholics now report similar levels of alcohol use, while people with no religious affiliation remain somewhat more likely to drink.

The population shares of these groups have also changed. Protestants make up about 44% of U.S. adults, Catholics about 20% and people with no religious identity about 25%. The unaffiliated group has nearly doubled in size over the past 15 years, while the share of Catholics has declined and the Protestant share has fallen from levels above half the population.

Those demographic shifts alone would not explain the decline in drinking. Because people with no religious identity have historically been more likely to drink, their growing share of the population might have been expected to push alcohol use higher. Instead, drinking has fallen within the group.

More Americans See Moderate Drinking as Unhealthy

Changing perceptions of alcohol’s health effects may help explain the decline. Gallup has found that Americans are increasingly likely to say even moderate drinking is bad for their health. That shift appears across Protestants, Catholics and people with no religious identity.

People with no religious affiliation are now the most likely of the three groups to view moderate drinking as unhealthy, followed by Catholics and Protestants. Historically, weekly church attendees were more likely to consider moderate drinking harmful than those who rarely or never attended services. Those differences have narrowed in recent years as concern about alcohol’s health effects has increased across groups.

Newport said the decline in drinking among Catholics, people with no religious identity and infrequent churchgoers is a major factor in the national trend. The rising belief that moderate alcohol consumption can harm health may be one reason their habits have changed, though the data do not establish that these attitudes caused the decline.