Gen Z Most Likely to Call Themselves 'Religious,' But They're Mixing in Tarot Too, New Harris Poll Finds

Generation Z adults are more likely than older Americans to describe themselves as "religious," even as many in the same age group also regularly engage in spiritual practices that sit outside traditional Christian teaching, according to a new survey released this week.

The Harris Poll released the survey Thursday, based on responses from 2,136 U.S. adults collected between July 1 and July 4. Respondents were grouped into four generational categories: Generation Z, ages 18 to 29; millennials, ages 30 to 45; Generation X, ages 46 to 61; and baby boomers, age 62 and older.

Gen Z adults emerged as the generation most likely to describe themselves as religious and the least likely to identify as neither religious nor spiritual. Thirty-three percent of Gen Z respondents described themselves as "religious," compared with 22% of Generation X adults, 19% of millennials and 18% of boomers. Conversely, 19% of Gen Z adults said they considered themselves neither religious nor spiritual, the lowest share among the four generations, followed by 20% of millennials, 21% of Generation X adults and 23% of boomers.

Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer at The Harris Poll, said the survey results complicate the standard narrative of generational religious decline. "Gen Z self-identifies as the most religious generation in America, with the practices to back it up," Rodney said in a statement shared with The Christian Post. "But that doesn't show you the whole story, because they aren't choosing religion instead of everything else. They're stacking it. Church on Sunday, manifestation on Wednesday, tarot on Friday. The old assumption was that each generation picks faith less than the last. Gen Z picked more of everything."

That pattern held across several specific measures of religious and spiritual engagement in the survey. A majority of Gen Z adults, 54%, said they had regularly read Scripture or other religious texts over the past year, a figure roughly matched by millennials at 53%, while fewer than half of Generation X adults, 48%, and boomers, 43%, reported doing the same. Nearly half of Gen Z adults, 49%, said they had regularly attended religious services over the past year, compared with 44% of millennials, 43% of Generation X adults and 42% of boomers.

Not every measure favored younger generations, however. Boomers were the most likely to report regularly praying on their own over the past year, at 75%, followed by 72% of Generation X adults, 67% of Gen Z adults and 65% of millennials, suggesting private prayer remains more common among older Americans even as public religious identification and engagement skew younger.

Looking more broadly at spiritual activity, 88% of Gen Z adults said they had regularly engaged in at least one of several practices in the past year, including prayer, Scripture reading, religious services, meditation or ritual, manifestation, astrology or tarot, or energy work. Smaller shares of millennials and Generation X adults, both at 84%, and boomers, at 82%, reported the same.

The survey also captured a notable generational split around manifestation and spirituality as tools for exerting personal control. Fifty-seven percent of Gen Z adults agreed with the statement that they had turned to manifestation practices or spirituality to feel greater control over their future, with millennials slightly more likely to agree at 59%. Fewer than half of Generation X adults, 46%, and just 30% of boomers agreed with the same statement. Researchers involved with the survey noted the apparent contradiction in these findings directly, saying, "The generation expected to be the most secular is now the most likely to identify as religious."

The poll also touched on broader questions of community involvement beyond religious practice specifically. Sixty percent of Gen Z adults agreed that they now belong to more real-world, in-person communities than they used to, citing examples such as run clubs, faith communities, or hobby and volunteer groups, alongside 59% of millennials, 42% of Generation X adults and 32% of boomers. Looking ahead, 70% of both Gen Z adults and millennials said they wanted to belong to more such in-person communities, compared with smaller shares of Generation X adults, 62%, and boomers, 48%.

The Harris Poll's findings arrive amid a broader, sometimes conflicting body of research on Gen Z's relationship with religion. Barna Group's 2026 State of the Church initiative found that Gen Z was the generation most likely to believe a spiritual revival would occur within the next 12 months, while separate Barna research released in 2025 identified Gen Z as including the most frequent churchgoers among current generations. At the same time, other Barna research from 2025 found that nearly 40% of Gen Z women identify as atheist, agnostic or having no religious faith at all, underscoring how differently religious identity and practice appear to be distributed within the generation depending on the specific population and measure examined.

Taken together, the Harris Poll results suggest that Gen Z's relationship with religion and spirituality defies simple characterization as either a return to traditional faith or a continuation of secularizing trends seen in prior generations, instead reflecting what researchers described as a broader, more eclectic blending of traditional religious practice alongside newer spiritual and self-improvement-oriented activities.