It turns out only about 24 percent of Americans actually report attending religious services in the past week…What this suggests is that in actual religious practice, Americans might not be that different from people in Western Europe when it comes to what they do, but they might be very different for people in Western Europe when it comes to reporting what they do.

A recent Pew survey found that an unprecedented one in five Americans now say they are not affiliated with any religious denomination. Or, looked at another way, nearly four out of five identify with an organized faith. Research also shows those Americans overstate how often they go to church by about half.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Religion has come up less often in this year’s presidential campaign than in some others. But beneath the headlines, American religious practices are evolving.

A new study from the Pew Research Center showed that 79 percent of Americans identify with an organized faith group. By that measure, this is a deeply religious country – more so than many countries, for example, in Europe.

NPR’s science correspondent Shankar Vedantam has been looking more closely at that number.

Shankar, what are you looking for?

SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: I wanted to know if it held up, Steve. You know, by any measure, as you point out, the United States is a significant outlier when it comes to how religious people say they are. You know, virtually alone in the developed world, large numbers of Americans report that they are indentified with a religious faith. Nearly half of all Americans report that they attend church every week – that’s every single week, compared to Western Europe, for example, where maybe about 20 percent of people say they attend church.

Now, it’s a little bit more in Catholic countries, a little bit less in Protestant countries. But that’s the big picture, which is that the United States really is very different from most other countries. But there’s a problem with all these numbers, which is they’re all based on what people say.

INSKEEP: Meaning that you’re not sure that people do the same things that they say?

VEDANTAM: Well, leaders of several religious denominations for many years in the United States have said if 45 percent of Americans are attending church every Sunday, the pews should be packed. And in many churches, in many denominations…

INSKEEP: They’re not.

VEDANTAM: …that’s simply not the case. Now, I spoke with a sociologist who studies church attendance. His name is Philip Brenner. He’s at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. And he told me that he suspected that when you ask people whether they attend church, they actually end up answering a somewhat different question. Here he is.

PHILIP BRENNER: The question that asks how often do you attend becomes a question like: Are the sort of person who attends? The respondent hears the question how often do you attend and interprets the question to be: Are you the sort of person who attends?

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