Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
- Utah Gov. Spencer Cox advocates for a 'religious revival' to address U.S. issues.
- Cox highlights Utah's high social capital, attributing it to strong religious ties.
- Utah defies national trends with increasing religious affiliation and church attendance rates.
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said Americans must look beyond politics for the solution to the country's problems.
"We do need, I believe, a religious revival," Cox told the Deseret News.
He spoke Thursday at the annual luncheon of the Utah Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank. The subject of his remarks was social capital, an academic term used to describe the connections that create high-trust communities.
Multiple surveys have identified Utah as having the highest level of social capital in the nation because of its No. 1 ranking on measures of family unity, charitable giving and neighborhood friendships.
But there is one factor that underlies Utah's social capital, and its status as the best state overall, the best place to start a business and the best environment for upward mobility, according to Cox.
"The truth is, we're the most religious state in the country, and that absolutely matters," Cox said.
Religiosity is not the only way for a state to have strong social capital, Cox said.
Individuals can also build community by forming sports clubs, social groups and volunteer organizations.
But, the governor said, recent research and U.S. history tend to point in one direction.
"Religion is a shortcut to making it easier," Cox said.
Why does religiosity matter?
As the keynote speaker at Utah Foundation's annual luncheon, Cox said that religious organizations can unite people across different backgrounds in a time of increasing loneliness and polarization.
Churches force people to meet others they otherwise would not associate with and they create an environment of social norms that can hold people accountable, Cox told the room of business leaders, policymakers and philanthropists gathered in Salt Lake City.
"Every Sunday, I get to sit down with like 30 dudes in a room where we talk about how messed up and screwed up our families are and how many problems we have," Cox joked. "Where else do you get an opportunity to do that?"
As these kinds of gatherings disappear, they are often replaced by political identities that are more tribal and divisive, Cox said.
"How do we prevent that from happening? We have to build institutions," Cox said. "We have to use our social capital. We have to be rooted in our place."
In his conclusion, Cox encouraged attendees to continue contributing to help "the least of us, those who are struggling."
It is in family, neighborhoods, schools and congregations where individuals — and society — find fulfillment, Cox said, not in "self-centered pursuits, in pursuits of money and stuff."
"And we need more of those connections," Cox said.
The Utah Foundation event served to celebrate the organization's 80th anniversary and to preview its upcoming 2025 Utah Social Capital Project.
The unfinished report found that Utah tops the nation in the strength of its middle class and low levels of fraud, corruption and violent crime, Utah Foundation President Shawn Teigen said.
The most religious state
Utah is by far the most religious state in the country on multiple metrics.
More than three-quarters, 76%, of Utahns identify as adherents of a religion — more than any other state, according to a 2024 analysis by the University of Utah's Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
This is 12 percentage points higher than the next highest state of Alabama, the analysis found.
Utah also has the highest rate of weekly church attendance in the country.
A comparison made by data scientist Ryan Burge determined that 41% of Utahns attend church weekly, compared to the average of 25% across the U.S. and 14% in Europe.
A separate Deseret News/Hinckley Institute poll put Utah's attendance rate slightly higher, at 43%, with 58% of respondents saying they attend religious services at least once a month.
Bucking the trend
Recent decades have tracked a precipitous decline in religious affiliation and attendance in the U.S.
Between 1991 and 2020, the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans went from about 5% to nearly 30%, making this group the largest and the fastest-growing religious demographic in the country.
In 2021, U.S. church membership fell below 50% for the first time in recorded history, down from 70% in 1999.
Over that same time, church attendance fell from 42% to 30%, according to a Gallup survey.
But Utah — while having a slightly larger share of religious "nones" compared to the national average — seems to be experiencing the opposite trend.
Utah is one of the few areas in the country where the number of religious congregations has actually gone up in recent years: increasing from 5,557 in 2010 to 6,018 in 2020.
The state's dominant faith organization, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has the highest rate of church attendance among religious groups in the U.S.
Two-thirds, 67%, of Latter-day Saints attend church weekly or nearly weekly, compared to 44% of Protestants, 38% of Muslims, 33% of Catholics and 22% of Jews, according to a 2024 Gallup survey.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also has one of the highest percentages of younger people among its congregants.
The share of adults between ages 18 and 29 makes up 25% of the church's members, compared to 14% of evangelical Protestants and Catholics, as the Deseret News previously reported.
A Deseret News/Hinckley Institute survey conducted in 2024 found that a slight majority, 51%, of Utahns identify as Latter-day Saints.
A recent analysis of three different surveys found that the rise of the "nones" — those not affiliated with any organization — appears to have plateaued at around 35% of the population.
"I'm grateful to see that those numbers are starting to turn, that people are looking for something more," Cox said.
