ATLANTA (RNS) — The past 25 years have been rough for American churches and other houses of worship.
The median worship attendance dropped by more than half. Church closures and the rise of the nones — those who claim no religion — have grabbed all the headlines. And faith in institutions like organized religion has plummeted.
Yet a new report from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research shows signs of a shift — for the first time in two decades, attendance is up. More people are volunteering, and there also seems to be a renewed sense of optimism among pastors and other clergy.
“The headline finding is cautious optimism,” Alison Norton, co-director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, told reporters at the annual conference of the Religion News Association, meeting in Atlanta. She added that the data showed a story of resilience and recalibration.
“Across a range of indicators, there are signs of recovery and, in some cases, renewal,” the study’s authors wrote in a report released Friday (April 24), which surveyed a representative sample of leaders at 7,453 congregations between September and December of 2025.
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Median in-person attendance, which dropped from 137 in 2000 to 45 during COVID-19, is now at 70 adults, which is higher than the 2020 Faith Communities Today survey from the Hartford Center for Religious Research. That report found that the median attendance was 65.
Researchers said the attendance growth, which is self-reported by the surveyed congregations, is not enough to reverse years of decline. Still, said Scott Thumma, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, it has been a long time since there has been any uptick.
Thumma said researchers had expected to see continued decline and withdrawal. “We were pretty surprised when we saw the 2025 data.” He added that for many congregations, this might be the first sign that the trajectory of decline might be shifted. As the report noted, “this is the first positive gain in median attendance in 25 years.”
Catholic and Orthodox congregations had the highest reported median attendance (200), in part because those traditions have fewer parishes than Protestants. The median evangelical congregation reported 75 worshippers, while the median Mainline church reported 50.
Just under half of the congregations (43%) said they grew by at least 5%, while a similar number (46%) reported declining by at least 5%. The rest said they were stable. “For the first time in decades, more congregations are stabilizing or growing rather than shrinking,” the authors wrote.
Thumma said that larger congregations are more likely to grow, while smaller churches are more likely to decline.
“After years of constraint, even modest gains can feel like recovery for these congregations,” Thumma said at the Religion News Association conference.
The report is part of a long-term study of congregations during the COVID-19 era and beyond. The survey asked about attendance, giving, volunteers and demographics, as well as how church members and leaders felt about the future of their congregations. About half of the congregations were in the South, with the rest split between the Midwest, the Western U.S. and the Northeast.
Earlier studies by Hartford showed that at first, congregations responded to the pandemic by adapting quickly to streaming and finding ways to minister when they could not gather in person. Then there was a lull as the pandemic stretched on and churches went into survival mode.
Now that period seems to be over, said Charissa Mikoski, an assistant professor at Hartford Institute for Religion Research, who also worked on the study. And the churches that are growing, said Mikoski, are implementing the lessons of resilience they learned during the pandemic.
“This is not just recovery, it’s adaptation and experimentation,” said Mikoski.
When the data showed attendance was up, researchers were skeptical.
“We did go back and check very thoroughly,” Mikoski said. Other groups, like the Pew Research Center, have shown that the decline of religion in the U.S. has stabilized, at least for now, she said.
The study also found that fewer clergy are thinking about leaving the ministry.
“It’s not too surprising if the congregations are feeling better and more volunteers are showing up, the clergy are going to start feeling better,” said Thumma.
Thumma suspects the pandemic acted a little bit like a wake-up call for churches. They could no longer pretend that everything was OK and had to start making changes for the future.
One other positive coming out of the pandemic? Giving is up, in large part because of a growth in online giving, said Thumma.
“People no longer need to be physically present or even remember to give in the moment,” said Thumma.
Median income grew from $120,000 in 2020 to $205,000 in 2025. The number of churches offering online giving rose from 58% in 2020 to 76% in 2025. As of 2025, about 40% of revenue came from online giving. Evangelical and non-Christian congregations were most likely to report a surplus. Mainline churches were more likely to report deficits. Thumma also noted that church expenses — especially for insurance and other building expenses — have grown.
Thumma said that it will take some time to know if this growth will continue. The center is planning for a major survey of congregations in 2030 that may shed more light.
The authors of the report were quick to say there’s no major revival in Christianity. The longer trajectory of decline remains in place, they noted. But congregations do seem to be moving past survival mode and planning for the future.
“What it is not is a story of revival or return to a previous era of sort of congregational glory in the United States,” said Norton. “Congregations have been through an extraordinary period of disruption, and though it has taken a while, many have come out of it with greater clarity about who they are and what they’re called to do. That’s showing up in the data in ways that are genuinely encouraging.”
FILE - Members of St. Moses the Black Orthodox Church worship together during service on Nov. 9, 2025, in Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski, File)
The title match in soccer’s biggest club competition is underway: Paris Saint-Germain vs. Arsenal in the Champions League final in Budapest, Hungary.
PSG is looking to win Europe’s elite competition for a second straight year while Arsenal is bidding to become European champion for the first time on its return to the final after a 20-year wait.
Both teams are coming off winning their own domestic leagues, in France and England, respectively.
Here's the latest:
PSG is pushing forward and Arsenal is trying to slow things down. Arsenal defender Cristhian Mosquera is dragging his feet a bit too much at a throw-in and receives a yellow card for time wasting.
They do have potentially game-changing options on the bench, notably in France forward Bradley Barcola and Portugal striker Goncalo Ramos.
Ousmane Dembélé has been quiet – is he fully fit? – and has been snuffed out by Arsenal’s big center backs.
There’s also Senny Mayulu, a 20-year-old attacker who scored as a substitute for PSG in last year’s 5-0 win over Inter Milan in the final.
Arsenal has done a very good job of keeping PSG’s wide players quiet. Désiré Doué, the star of last year’s final, has been ineffective. So has Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.
PSG is having lots of possession, but keeps coming up against a red wall with so little space around the box.
PSG’s players also look unusually nervous on the ball. Perhaps a little too afraid to get caught on the break again after falling behind early in the first half.
An early goal, then defend the lead.
This final is going just how Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta might have dreamed.
There was an element of fortune about Kai Havertz’s goal. But Arsenal fans won’t care about that.
PSG has had one shot on goal – a speculative long-range effort in the final minute of the half.
The defending champions need to improve drastically.
We’re past the half-hour point in the final, and PSG still hasn’t had a shot on target.
The French champions have, though, had more than 70% possession. But it’s not getting them anywhere.
The coaches of the two finalists – PSG’s Luis Enrique and Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta – are both Spanish. And they go way back.
They were together at Barcelona in the late 1990s and early 2000s when Arteta was starting his professional career and Luis Enrique was coming toward the end of his.
Arteta has said he “learnt a lot of things” from Luis Enrique as a player and now as a coach, saying he has “this unbelievable power” and an approach to life that he really likes.
Arteta had a spell on loan at PSG in 2000-01, when he played alongside Ronaldinho and Nicolas Anelka.
PSG goalkeeper Matvey Safonov needs attention from team medics after receiving a blow to the head.
Backup keeper Lucas Chevalier is warming up but Safonov remains on the field for now. Chevalier lost his starting spot in favor of Safonov earlier this season and, due to his limited playing time, was not selected for the French national team for the World Cup.
The teams are taking a break for drinks at the midway point of the first half.
Things are going just as Arsenal would like, still leading 1-0.
The Germany forward becomes only the third player – after Cristiano Ronaldo (Manchester United and Real Madrid) and Mario Mandzukic (Juventus and Bayern Munich) — to score in a Champions League final for two different teams, according to stats supplier Opta.
Arsenal is sitting deep and PSG has all the possession.
Expect that to be the case while Arsenal leads.
There’s even a bit of time-wasting from Arsenal on goal kicks -- to the annoyance of PSG fans.
Kai Havertz makes it 1-0 for the Gunners in the sixth minute.
Marquinhos’ attempted clearance rebounds off Arsenal winger Leandro Trossard and into the path of Havertz, who strides through on goal from near halfway. His shot from a narrow angle goes into the roof of the net.
The players emerge from their huddles and the Champions League is underway with Arsenal taking the kickoff.
An English fan was taken to hospital Saturday afternoon after suffering what police called a “life-threatening” injury in an electric scooter accident, but wasn’t willing to let the injury keep him from the final.
Budapest police said the man “left the hospital without permission because he was adamant about going to the match.”
They added that they are looking for the man and trying to contact his family “because he requires immediate medical attention.”
Only Real Madrid has successfully defended the Champions League title since the competition was rebranded in 1992.
Can PSG be the second team to do so?
The Madrid team of Cristiano Ronaldo, Karim Benzema and Gareth Bale won the Champions League three times in a row (2016-18), under coach Zinedine Zidane.
Since then, no defending champion has reached the final until this PSG team, which beat Inter Milan 5-0 in Munich last year.
PSG and Arsenal have reached the title match adopting vastly different playing approaches.
PSG is the top-scoring team in the competition with 44 goals -- that’s an average of more than three per game.
Arsenal has the Champions League’s best defense, letting in just six goals in 14 games and keeping nine clean sheets, three more than any other team has registered.
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The man entrusted with being the referee for the biggest match in club soccer won’t even be going to next month's World Cup.
German ref Daniel Siebert was left off FIFA’s list of match officials for the World Cup – after going to the 2022 edition in Qatar – so handling the Champions League final is a consolation prize in a sense.
This will be the third straight round Siebert will have worked an Arsenal match.
Video review – or VAR, as it’s known in soccer circles — will be in operation for the final.
PSG: Matvey Safonov; Achraf Hakimi, Marquinhos, Willian Pacho, Nuno Mendes; Vitinha, João Neves, Fabian Ruiz; Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Ousmane Dembélé, Désiré Doué.
Arsenal: David Raya; Cristhian Mosquera, William Saliba, Gabriel Magalhães, Piero Hincapié; Declan Rice, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Martin Odegaard; Leandro Trossard, Kai Havertz, Bukayo Saka.
Zohran Mamdani is a big Arsenal fan and the New York Mayor was seen wearing club-branded clothing when he joined residents across the city for Eid al-Adha prayers this week.
In an article he has written for The Athletic ahead of the final, Mamdani said he started supporting Arsenal from the age of 9 after his uncle “introduced me to a team with a cannon on its shirt.”
He says supporting the team “increasingly became an exercise in nostalgia” until the recent uplift under Mikel Arteta.
“Over these past two years, no matter how chaotic life became, Arsenal remained the constant,” he writes.
Mamdani acknowledges PSG is “brilliant” and “frustratingly well-managed” by Luis Enrique, but has a message for Arsenal and its fans: “Enjoy this moment, because they don’t come around often.”
Fans are making their way to the stadium under a cloudy, threatening sky in Budapest, and they’ll have a role to play in the final.
Not least with the rival chants that you might get to hear in your TV broadcast.
PSG’s most notable song will see their passionate Ultras bellow “Tous ensemble on chantera” (All together we will sing).
Arsenal fans have their own chant that has grown in popularity over the last few seasons in manager Arteta’s 6 ½-year reign, with a chorus taken from “The Angel (North London Forever)” -- written by singer and Arsenal fan Louis Dunford in 2022.
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This is the first European Cup final to be staged in Hungary and it comes at an interesting time for the Central European country, a few weeks after right-wing populist leader Viktor Orbán‘s heavy defeat in the elections.
Péter Magyar is the prime minister and is set to attend the match at the 67,000-seat Puskas Arena, a stadium that opened in 2019 and was built on the same site as the previous Ferenc Puskas Stadion — named after the Hungarian and Real Madrid great who won three European Cups as a player.
Orbán is a massive soccer fan and attempted to bring back the glory days of the 1950s, when Hungary had one of the world’s top teams.
To that end, the arena, located a few kilometers east of central Budapest, has become a well-known host for European games. The stadium staged the UEFA Super Cup in 2020, as well as a slew of Champions League group games and four European Championship matches in 2021. In 2023, it hosted the Europa League final won by Sevilla.
Pre-match entertainment is being provided by American rock band The Killers, who are best known for songs like “Mr. Brightside,” “Smile Like You Mean It” and “Somebody Told Me.”
It differs from the Super Bowl, where artists perform in a halftime show.
The Killers, who hail from Las Vegas, predicted an “epic match” when they were announced to be performing – though at the time, they didn’t know who the finalists would be.
In previous years, Linkin Park, Lenny Kravitz and Dua Lipa have been headliners in Champions League finals.
Some 48,000 fans are expected to fill PSG’s stadium in Paris, the Parc des Princes, to watch the match on giant screens.
PSG said Paris mayor Emmanuel Gregoire is among the officials expected to attend.
Former players, including Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Claude Makélélé and Ronaldinho, have been invited to Budapest for the final.
It’s the first time in 55 years that clubs from two different capital cities are competing in the final of Europe’s biggest club competition.
The last was Ajax (of Amsterdam) vs. Panathinaikos (of Athens) in 1971.
There were only two before that: Benfica (Lisbon) vs. Real Madrid in 1962 and Real Madrid vs. Partizan Belgrade in 1966.
This is also the first major European final featuring teams from France and England.
It’s the last match of the European club season – and World Cup coaches will be watching on with a mixture of intrigue and nervousness.
The World Cup begins in 12 days, and the squads of both PSG and Arsenal are bulging with players heading to the tournament being held in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Any injuries sustained in the final could be devastating so close to the big kickoff.
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta says winning the Premier League has whetted the players’ appetite for more trophies.
Nothing comes bigger than the Champions League.
“The ambition is bigger,” Arteta said in his pre-match news conference. “We have one, and we want the second one ... there has to be a platform to reach bigger destinations.”
Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard was the first player in the squad to get his hands on the Premier League trophy, and he liked it.
“When you get the taste of winning and lifting a trophy,” Odegaard says, “you know how nice it feels. And we want to do it again.”
Many of soccer’s superstar players will be taking the field at Puskas Arena – not least PSG forward Ousmane Dembélé, the most recent world player of the year.
Désiré Doué, the 20-year-old forward who lit up last year’s final with two goals in the record 5-0 win over Inter Milan, is still a shining light for PSG along with Georgia winger Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and three of Cristiano Ronaldo’s top teammates with Portugal – Vitinha, Nuno Mendes and Joao Neves.
Arsenal has England stars Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice in midfield and the striker who has just sent Sweden to the World Cup – Viktor Gyökeres.
Groups of fans got physical late Friday in Budapest’s frequented party area, leading police to launch an investigation over disorderly conduct.
Videos on social media showed several dozen people throwing punches and kicks, driving another group down Király street in the capital’s District 7.
One fan held a burning red flare before throwing it toward the other group, which was retreating down the street. Budapest police said in a statement that the violence erupted shortly after midnight, and that it was using surveillance footage to try to identify participants.
__ AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Arsenal's Leandro Trossard falls to the ground in a clash with PSG's Desire Doue during the Champions League final soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal in Budapest, Hungary, Saturday, May 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Petr Josek)
Arsenal's Kai Havertz celebrates after scoring during the Champions League final soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal in Budapest, Hungary, Saturday, May 30, 2026. AP Photo/Armin Durgut)
Arsenal fans cheers before the Champions League final soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal in Budapest, Hungary, Saturday, May 30, 2026. AP Photo/Armin Durgut)
Arsenal's Kai Havertz celebrates after scoring during the Champions League final soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal in Budapest, Hungary, Saturday, May 30, 2026. AP Photo/Armin Durgut)
PSG fans hold up their scarves before the Champions League final soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal in Budapest, Hungary, Saturday, May 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Andreea Alexandru)
The trophy is displayed on the pitch before the Champions League final soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal in Budapest, Hungary, Monday, Jan. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Petr Josek)
Generel view of the Puskas Arena a day ahead of the Champions League final soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal in Budapest, Hungary, Friday, May 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)
PSG supporters react as they make their way to the stadium ahead of the Champions League final soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal in Budapest, Hungary, Saturday, May 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Rudolf Karancsi-Albert)
PSG supporters are accompanied by security ahead of the Champions League final soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal in Budapest, Hungary, Saturday, May 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Rudolf Karancsi-Albert)
