At the beginning of this year, Barna began analyzing decades’ worth of research for the State of the Church project, part of a year-long effort to see the past, present and future of the U.S. Church with greater clarity. Just a couple months later, however, 2020 took a dramatic turn and defied any expectations we might have brought into a new decade. As the world dealt with a global pandemic, and the U.S. suffered increased division over racial tension and a polarized election year, Barna continued conducting surveys—including 44,661 interviews—to study the intersection of faith and culture in our nation.

Throughout the year, Barna—like so many others—has been forced to pivot numerous times, reevaluating how our team can best serve the Church in the midst of uncertainty. This realignment, however, resulted in the creation of valuable and timely resources, including the Church Pulse Weekly podcast and accompanying tool kit and a collection of new reports.

To close out 2020, we’ll recap Barna’s 10 most-read online releases from this year. The stories below are a reflection of what our nation and the Church has walked through over the past 365 days, covering somber findings, stark divides, moments of healing and glimmers of hope for the coming year.

1. One in Three Practicing Christians Has Stopped Attending Church During COVID-19As initial safe-at-home ordinances were lifting across the country (April–May 2020), Barna surveyed thousands of Americans to see what their new Sunday morning routines looked like during the COVID-19 response. At that time, data showed that, among practicing Christians—those who identify as Christian, agree strongly that faith is very important in their lives and attend church at least monthly (prior to COVID-19)—over half (53%) had streamed their regular church online within the past four weeks. Another 34 percent admitted to streaming a different church service online other than their own, essentially “church hopping” digitally.

Finally, about one-third of practicing Christians (32%) said they had done neither of these things. Though some of these churchgoers may have been part of the minority of congregations that were still gathering for physical worship during those weeks, we can, for the most part, confidently interpret this group as those who dropped out of church for the time being.