Young American men now go to worship more often than young women, a first in Pew's surveys. Yet they remain overlooked by the bishops.
A Pew Research Center report released Oct. 28 found that 47% of men ages 18 to 22 say they attend religious services at least once or twice a month, against 35% of women the same age. Pew said the gap runs against the old pattern. "This is something we have not seen before in our surveys," the report said. "In the past, American women have tended to be more religious than American men."
The report, by Gregory A. Smith, Chip Rotolo and Alan Cooperman, draws on three Pew surveys conducted from February 2025 through June 2026. Among all adults ages 18 to 22, 41% attend services at least monthly, above the 33% of the U.S. public as a whole.
Rotolo, a senior researcher on Pew's religion and public life team, called that finding "pretty remarkably high," according to a Religion News Service report published by the National Catholic Reporter. "This is the first time we have seen young men actually look a little bit more religious than young women on some measures," he said.
Young Republicans attend at an even higher rate. Pew found 55% of Republicans and Republican leaners ages 18 to 22 attend at least monthly, against 31% of Democrats and Democratic leaners the same age. But the youngest adults are no Republican bloc: 56% identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party and 34% toward the GOP. "Higher religious attendance is especially evident among young men and young Republicans, but it is not limited to these groups," Pew wrote. The youngest women, at 35%, also attend more often than women born in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Pew states the limits of its data plainly. Its surveys reached 443 adults ages 18 to 22, for a margin of error of plus or minus 5.7 percentage points; the margin grows to 8.4 points for young men and 7.7 points for young women taken alone. "Religious services" means services at "a church, synagogue, mosque or other house of worship," not the Mass alone, and the report gives no Catholic breakdown for the youngest adults. Pew does not call the finding a revival. Nor are today's youngest adults more religious than those who came before them. They "are no more religious today than young adults in this age range were in 2014," the report said.
The next group up gives reason for caution. Adults ages 23 to 26 are "the least religious age group when it comes to how often they pray, how important religion is in their lives and how many of them identify with a religion," Pew found. Only half identify with a religion, and 27% attend services at least monthly. Rotolo asked "how could this only be affecting 18- to 22-year-olds with a hard cut off at ages 23 and older?"
Pew's sharpest warning concerns time. Earlier surveys also caught the youngest Americans entering adulthood with high religiousness, and "the religiousness of the youngest adults has tended to fade with time, leaving them less religious than people in the preceding birth cohort." Pew's own tracking points the same way. Teens it surveyed in 2019, now about 20 to 24, have seen monthly attendance fall from 44% to 33%. "We have no way of knowing whether today's youngest adults will follow that pattern or break it," the report said.
The young men are arriving at a moment the bishops say they have planned for. In November 2024 the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted, by a 225-7 vote, a single Mission Directive for 2025 through 2028 (Crux). It pledges to help "in evangelizing those who are religiously unaffiliated or disaffiliated from the Church, with special focus on young adults and the youth" (USCCB). It says nothing of young men. Archbishop Paul Coakley, who presented it, said, "Certainly, of paramount pastoral concern are those who are disaffiliated, or unaffiliated with the Church, especially the young." Crux reported that he named the environment as a key issue among the young and disaffiliated, and that Cardinal Seán O'Malley stressed women's issues and making women feel part of the Church (Crux). No one in that account spoke of young men.
The bishops' national plan for youth ministry speaks of young people on nearly every page, yet never of young men as such. "Listen, Teach, Send," the pastoral framework for ministries with youth and young adults approved in June 2024, runs more than 18,000 words (USCCB). The phrase "young men" never appears in it. The one place it speaks of young people by sex, it pairs them: "the young women and men who we know or with whom we interact on a regular basis" (USCCB).
Rome's synod set the same course. The October 2024 final document of the Synod on Synodality gives a full paragraph to women. "[W]omen continue to encounter obstacles in obtaining a fuller recognition of their charisms, vocation and place in all the various areas of the Church's life," it says, and "Women make up the majority of churchgoers and are often the first witnesses to the faith in families" (Synod of Bishops). The document runs more than 30,000 words. It never mentions young men. Among Americans ages 18 to 22, Pew now finds that the men attend more.
Some bishops have seen it. In a talk to the Knights of Columbus that his archdiocese published in November 2025, Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore said, "Many dioceses report an increase of young people, especially young men, coming back to the Church or entering the Church for the first time. I'm seeing it in my Archdiocese" (Archdiocese of Baltimore). Pew's numbers bear out what he sees in young men. The conference's plans have not caught up with him.
Christ described what happens to faith that is not tended. In the parable of the sower, the seed on rocky ground springs up fast and dies. "As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away" (Mt 13:20-21).
A young man who walks into church at 19 needs root. The Church has it to give. Bishops who plan for young people in general but never name him will not give it.
It begins with doctrine. The Catechism calls catechesis "the totality of the Church's efforts to make disciples," and defines it as "an education in the faith of children, young people and adults which includes especially the teaching of Christian doctrine imparted, generally speaking, in an organic and systematic way, with a view to initiating the hearers into the fullness of Christian life." Young men who come to a parish deserve that education: the creed, the commandments, the sacraments and prayer, taught whole and without apology.
It continues at the altar. Monthly attendance is a start, not the standard. "On Sundays and other holy days of obligation the faithful are bound to participate in the Mass," the Catechism teaches, and "The Sunday Eucharist is the foundation and confirmation of all Christian practice." Pastors should tell young men so plainly, and keep the confessional open for them.
It bears fruit in marriage and fatherhood. The young men in these pews are the husbands and fathers of the next generation. "Through the grace of the sacrament of marriage, parents receive the responsibility and privilege of evangelizing their children," the Catechism teaches. "Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children." It calls the Christian family a "domestic church" and says "believing families are of primary importance as centers of living, radiant faith."
The faith these men need is not soft. Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians: "Be watchful, stand firm in your faith, be courageous, be strong" (1 Cor 16:13). Men answer a call to stand firm. A faith trimmed to fit the moment gives them nothing to stand on. The Church's teaching does not change, because its Lord does not: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever" (Heb 13:8).
Pew closes with patience. "Time will tell whether the relatively high religiousness of today's youngest adults is a turning point or a blip in the data," the report said. The bishops will help write that answer. The young men have come through the doors. Shepherds who will not name them cannot keep them.
