They stopped going to church as adults. A need for community is bringing them back.

Emma Camp grew up going to church with her family, but she stopped attending as a teenager. “I felt that unless I had a strong sense of literal faith there wasn’t a point,” she tells Yahoo Life. But a few years ago, as an adult, she went back. “I had just moved to a new city,” she says, “and was looking for community.”

Across the country, Christianity is far less prominent than it has been in the past. In 2007, 78% of Americans considered themselves Christian of some denomination, but by 2024 that number had dropped to 62% (worth noting: While the decline has been steep, it appears to be leveling off in recent years). Still, amid an ongoing loneliness epidemic in the nation, many who don’t consider themselves to be religious are now turning to church not necessarily to find God but to build relationships.

“Most people think of religion in terms of the beliefs people say they hold, and certainly belief plays an important role in religion for lots of people," religious studies professor Elizabeth Drescher, author of Choosing Our Religion: The Spiritual Lives of America’s Nones, tells Yahoo Life. “But religion also has powerful social and cultural functions that are likely why it’s been important in some form in pretty much all human cultures we know of all the way back to the Neanderthals." According to Drescher, "When people who otherwise say they’re ‘not religious’ or ‘not believers’ attend religious services and participate in religious communities, they’re getting other benefits from the experience beyond belief."

Here's what people who don’t consider themselves to be religious but have decided to attend church anyway say about those benefits — and the role the institution plays in their lives.

Growing up with religion — then moving on

Amy Carter grew up in a small town in Oklahoma. “Church attendance was required for social acceptance,” she says. “Good girls went to church. But I have always been a logical person, and my questions were met with judgment. I was told more than once growing up that I would ‘go to hell’ for questioning the validity of church dogma.” When she went to college, Carter stopped attending church services. “I decided church was not for me,” she tells Yahoo Life.

In New Jersey, Wes (last name withheld) grew up Jewish but stopped attending religious services shortly after his bar mitzvah. “The older I got, [I] felt out of touch and not as passionate with religion,” he tells Yahoo Life. “I never had, and still don’t have, a strong religious identity or a strong connection to religion.”

Why they returned to church as adults

As Drescher notes, churches have always acted as hubs for community, and those who spoke to Yahoo Life say they sought out church in adulthood largely to fulfill that purpose. Carter, who now lives in Dallas, has only started going to church again in the past few months. “I wanted community and a shared ideology about the importance of community,” she says. “And I wanted an organized way to give back. I wanted instructions on how best to volunteer and participate in service.”

Attending church, however, doesn’t mean that she considers herself to be religious. “The word 'religion' still has a lot of negative connotations for me,” Carter says.

Camp returned to church when she moved to a new city. “I was looking for community,” she says. “I still think of myself as agnostic, but I find a tremendous amount of value from the moral direction and contemplation provided by going to Mass.”

Wes started attending church because of the influence of his wife. “My wife feels much more strongly about her religious identity than I do,” he says. “When we moved to our current location, she was on a mission to find her church home. After a few texts, visits and Google searches, we found our community.”

The role church plays in their lives now

“My current relationship with religion is suspicious,” says Carter. But she adds that the best things about attending church have been meeting new people and finding community. “I have encouraged my friends who have rejected religion to find a church that focuses less on religion and more on shared values and community,” she adds.

Camp agrees that community has been a big factor in her enjoyment of church. “My largest group of friends are from church,” she says. “I think a lot of young adults struggle to make new friends postgrad, and religious services are some of the last places for people to gather and find community.”

“I’ve absolutely loved talking to the pastor and the people at [our] church — it’s a good energy,” says Wes, adding that the most important thing about where you attend religious services is “finding the right community.”

To Drescher, this all makes perfect sense. “It’s not surprising that people who see themselves as nonreligious, who are not ‘believers,’ draw on the social, cultural, psychological and other benefits of religious practice,” she notes. “Religion, at least as social scientists tend to see it, is much more about how people do it and what that doing gets them in their everyday lives than about what they believe.”

For Wes, Camp and Carter, the purpose of church is community and connection. “Religious services can provide so much meaning,” says Camp. “Even if you don’t have an intense experience of literal faith.”