A generational shift is reshaping Black religious life in America: roughly a third of Black millennials say they have no religious affiliation, compared with just 11 percent of Black baby boomers, according to Pew Research Center’s landmark “Faith Among Black Americans” study, published in February 2021 from surveys conducted in 2019 and 2020. But the same body of research shows that most of those who walked out of the church did not walk away from God.
The generational gap is not a straight line. In Pew’s survey, 28 percent of Black Gen Z adults were unaffiliated — slightly fewer than millennials — while overall about 21 percent of Black Americans identified as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular”. Sociologist Jason E. Shelton, in his 2024 book “The Contemporary Black Church,” writes that Black millennials — born between 1981 and 1996 — make up the first generation of Black Americans that is not majority Baptist. Shelton has voiced concern that the loss will have a disproportionate impact on Black America, which has relied so heavily on the church, according to Christianity Today.
What distinguishes Black “nones” from other unaffiliated Americans is how much faith they keep. Among the roughly 20 percent of Black Americans who are religiously unaffiliated, about one-third believe in the God of the Bible and more than half believe in some other higher power, according to a January 2024 Pew study; 88 percent believe humans have a soul or spirit, and 71 percent describe themselves as spiritual. Christianity Today, reporting on the same data, called Black Americans “the most religious non-religious group in the country,” noting that barely any Black nones consider themselves atheists.
The reasons for leaving, documented across reporting from 2021 through 2024, cluster around harm and silence: departures tied to moments of grief, often coupled with ongoing threats of police brutality, mental health crises, and churches’ silence on queer identity and women in leadership. A recurring theme in this coverage is that many young people felt their congregations were unwilling to make room for questions and doubt.
Spiritual community has not disappeared; it has relocated. Teddy Reeves, curator of religion at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and leader of its “gOD-Talk” series on Black millennials and faith, told Religion News Service in February 2024 that Black millennials are gathering elsewhere — meeting up at music festivals such as Coachella, AfroTech and Afropunk, and getting together regularly for brunch.
Inside the church, a younger generation of pastors is working to respond. The Rev. Dr. Justin Lester, senior pastor of Congdon Street Baptist Church in Providence, Rhode Island, discussed his efforts to bring young Black people back to church with NPR in February 2022. The Rev. Carlyle F. Stewart IV, an associate pastor focused on youth and community outreach at Empowerment Church in Southfield, Michigan, told NBC News in June 2021 that his Black peers are abandoning traditional faith communities because they are not finding solace in churches or meaning in religion the way their parents did.
One newer data point requires careful reading. Research from Barna Group published in October 2025 found that millennial and Gen Z Christians who attend church are now attending more frequently than older generations — the typical Gen Z churchgoer attends about 1.9 weekends per month. That finding measures how often churchgoers show up, not what share of a generation attends at all. It does not contradict the affiliation numbers: fewer young Black Americans belong to a church, but those who remain appear more engaged.
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