The Research
One in Three
Roughly one in three American adults hide their religious doubts or exaggerate how religious they are. That is over 80 million people. Parents and grandparents, coworkers and neighbors, people in the pews, and people who quietly stopped going. Most are not activists. They are people managing the distance between what they privately believe and what the people they love expect.
Schnabel et al., Cornell University, 2024. Nationally representative survey of 1,199 U.S. adults. Findings under peer review.
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Not who you might expect
It would be easy to assume that the people managing their image are the ones with the least faith. They are not. Among Americans who say they know God exists and have no doubts at all, one in four still reports managing how religious they appear. The highest rate belongs not to atheists but to people who say they sometimes believe. Uncertainty, it turns out, is the hardest thing to say out loud in a room that expects certainty.
Findings under peer review.
The weight of the room
The strongest predictor of concealment is not what someone believes. It is what they sense the people around them expect. Among Americans who feel no particular pressure to appear religious, 23 percent report hiding doubts or exaggerating how religious they are. Among those who do feel that pressure, the number is 52 percent. In the study's statistical models, perceived community pressure more than triples the odds of concealment, a larger effect than any measure of personal belief or affiliation.
The mirror effect
Ask Americans to compare themselves with their communities, and something strange appears in the data. 45% say they are less religious than the people around them. Only 21% say they are more religious. Both cannot be true. If everyone were seeing their neighbors clearly, those numbers would balance. The arithmetic points to a simple conclusion: American communities look more religious from the outside than they are on the inside, and each person who edits themselves makes the next person more certain they are the only one.
Why people stay quiet
- Protecting a parent from worry
- Keeping the peace in a marriage
- Belonging in a workplace
- Living in a town where church is assumed
In hundreds of open-ended responses, a recurring thread was not fear of strangers, but care for loved ones. Roughly one in five anticipate real consequences if their true beliefs were known, strained relationships or worse, and a smaller group describes stress, shame, and isolation.
For some, the pressure leaves a deeper mark. A separate 2023 study in the journal Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry, surveying 1,581 U.S. adults, estimated that roughly one in three Americans experiences religious trauma at some point in life, and that 10 to 15 percent may be living with it now.
What polls measure vs. What they miss
Pew measures affiliation
In early 2025, the Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Study reported that the long decline of American Christianity has leveled off. Pew measures the labels people claim.
Cornell measures concealment
The Cornell study measures something different: how people manage private conviction, whatever their label. The two findings are not in conflict. They are different instruments pointed at different layers of the same country. Read together, they suggest that the public surface of American religion may be smoother than the private landscape underneath.
Note about the research
This research is not a critique of faith or people of faith. It documents the social pressures around doubt and belonging. We present it in the spirit of a pluralistic society where believers and nonbelievers have an equal seat at the table.
About the study
The findings on this page come from a nationally representative survey of 1,199 U.S. adults, fielded in July 2024 through the probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel of NORC at the University of Chicago, which covers roughly 97% of American households. Researchers at Cornell University designed and analyzed the study, pairing statistical analysis with hundreds of open-ended responses in participants' own words. The paper is currently under peer review at Sociology of Religion, the journal of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. We will link to the published article when it appears. Cite as Schnabel et al., Cornell University, 2024.
Where the film begins
Heathens follows five Americans who live inside this statistic. Some arriving under assumed names, they gather at a retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, each navigating family, community, and a faith they no longer hold. What they find there is not emptiness. It is honesty, community, music, and joy.
About the filmData Sources and Methodology
- Pew Research Center: Religious Landscape Study (Feb 2025).
- NORC at the University of Chicago: AmeriSpeak® Omnibus
(July 2024; n=1,199).
Study Design: Cornell University. - SHERM Journal: Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry (Vol 5, no 1, 2023; n=1,581).