Religiosity Across Generations

All findings are drawn from publicly available survey and academic research: Pew Research Center, Arab Barometer, the European Values Study / European Social Survey, the World Values Survey, Ipsos, PRRI, the European Parliament's Eurobarometer Youth Survey, and peer-reviewed journals. Figures reported by secondary outlets are marked as such. Charts labelled “indicative” visualise the direction of change described in those sources rather than exact published percentages.

Multiple long-running datasets — the European Values Study, the European Social Survey and Pew Research — converge on the same pattern: each successive European generation is less religious than the one before it on standard measures such as worship attendance, self-rated importance of religion and religious belonging.

Academic research attributes this primarily to generational (cohort) replacement rather than people becoming less religious as they age. A 2022 study using European Social Survey data found that shifting human values help explain the decline beyond age alone.

A 2025 Nature Communications study found that secularization can unfold in stages: declining public ritual participation, then declining personal importance of religion, and finally declining formal belonging. Eastern Europe is a partial exception, as some post-communist countries experienced religious revival after the end of state atheism.

Institutionally, religion's public role has receded across most of Western and Northern Europe. At the same time, religion continues to shape debates on migration, integration and national identity in several countries.

A notable nuance: migrants and their children in Europe often show higher and more stable religiosity than native populations, particularly among some non-Western religious groups.

European youth surveys show that human rights, democracy, peace, freedom of speech and freedom of thought rank highly among Gen Z political priorities. A minority countertrend of renewed religious interest exists among some young Europeans, but it remains small against the larger secularizing pattern.

Arab Barometer shows a non-linear pattern that differs from Europe's steady decline. Between the post–Arab Spring period and 2018–2019 the share identifying as “not religious” rose, especially among youth. The trend partially reversed in 2021–2022, when youth in several countries became less likely to describe themselves as not religious.

Algeria also appears in recent academic analysis as one of the countries showing a strong rise in self-identification as religious across later Arab Barometer waves.

Public opinion on whether religion should shape governance remains closely divided and highly context-dependent. The 2025 Arab Opinion Index found 42% supporting separation of religion from politics versus 47% opposing it.

Recent scholarship also describes a movement among some young people toward individualized or digitally mediated religious understanding, alongside declining trust in traditional political and religious institutions.

MENA youth are heavy internet users, but online political expression remains much lower than general internet use. Taken together, these patterns suggest young people are becoming more selective and individualized in their relationship with religious authority, while personal faith remains resilient.