About 65% of Americans say a belief in God is not required “in order to be moral and have good values,” according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.
That figure is 10 percentage points higher than what was reported in July 2014, Pew said. It is on par with percentages reported in 2017, as well as in September 2019 and January 2020 before the pandemic. Among those surveyed, 63% to 66% agreed with that statement.
According to the Pew survey, the importance of religion in a respondent’s life is one of several factors that influenced responses. Among those who said “religion is not important” in their lives, 92% said belief in God is not necessary for moral values. Among those who said they are religiously unaffiliated, 88% agreed with that statement.
Americans who said religion is an important factor in their lives were split on the question, with 51% in the “not necessary” camp and 48% saying belief in God is required.
About 71% of Democrats and those who lean Democratic said belief in God is not necessary, compared to 59% of Republicans and those who lean Republican. Moreover, 84% of self-identified liberal Democrats agreed with the statement, compared to 53% of self-described conservative Republicans.
Pew polled residents in 17 countries and said the American percentages are on par with those in Canada and 11 European nations.
Most respondents in Greece, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Belgium and Poland agreed with the “not necessary” statement, from 60% in Greece to 69% in Belgium. And most respondents in Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, France and Sweden agreed with the statement, from 73% in Canada to 90% in Sweden.
About 76% of respondents in the United Kingdom said belief in God is not necessary for moral life and 23% said belief in necessary, as King Charles III prepares for his May 6 coronation, an ancient ceremony based on a belief in the divine right of monarchs.
Meanwhile, 85% of respondents in Australia, a member of the U.K. commonwealth, said belief in God is not necessary and 15% said it is.
Pew said Israelis were “nearly evenly split” on the question, with 50% saying belief in God is not necessary and 47% saying it is.
Malaysia was the only nation of the 17 surveyed where an overwhelming majority embraced the idea that belief in God is a requirement to have good values and a moral life: 78% agreed, while 22% said belief isn’t necessary.
By contrast, Singapore was more divided: 54% said belief in God isn’t necessary for a moral life and 45% said it is.
The Rev. Canon J. John, who heads Britain’s Philo Trust evangelistic ministry, said those who dismiss a need for God might be deceiving themselves.
“Every human being has a God-given sense of what is right and wrong,” the Rev. John said in an email. “Yet these inbuilt moral standards are all too easily bent or broken. Human beings need a God who speaks to reinforce and reaffirm these rules, who offers his Spirit to help us keep them and who forgives us when we fail to keep them.”
Pew said its research came from a March 2022 survey in the United States and other polling across the world during that year.
The U.S. survey is managed by the Ipsos polling firm and relies on “self-administered web surveys” of members of its American Trends Panel, a “nationally representative sample” of adults selected at random, Pew said. The polling has a sampling error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.