Young Latinos are abandoning organized religion faster than any other demographic in the United States, and it's young women leading the charge. A new Axios analysis reveals that religious affiliation among Latinos ages 18 to 29 is collapsing, with growing numbers identifying as atheist, agnostic or "nothing in particular." The shift is straining legacy parishes, schools and congregations across Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, where church leaders once expected a booming Latino population to sustain Catholic institutions for the next century.
The numbers tell a story of institutional decline that church hierarchies didn't see coming. The percentage of Hispanic Americans identifying as religiously unaffiliated rose from 18% in 2013 to 23% in 2025, according to an Axios review of the latest data from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute. PRRI reported this year that the overall percentage of Americans without religious affiliation had risen to 28%. Among Catholic Latinos specifically, the decline was even sharper. An Axios review of Pew Research Center data found that the share of Latino adults identifying as Catholic fell from 67% in 2010 to 43% in 2022.
Who's Leaving and Why
Analysts say the exodus among Catholics is part of one of the fastest religious shifts in modern history, marked by the rapid increase in religiously unaffiliated people and waves of church closures. The secularization trend is being driven largely by young people and assimilation. The younger the demographic, the faster the break from institutional religion. But the "none" revolution is also heavily driven by gender, with young women of color leading the departure from religion, particularly conservative denominations, the Axios data review found.
PRRI CEO Melissa Deckman didn't mince words about what's driving young Latinas away. "A lot of young women, including young Latinas, are not buying into the trad wife sort of theme that's often pushed by people on the right to sort of counteract the fact that younger women are more progressive and less religious," she said. "A lot of conservative denominations are doubling down on very patriarchal themes ... and young women, especially, tend to be more vocally supportive of LGBT rights."
The percentage of Latinos in U.S. Protestant churches has remained relatively stable at roughly 21% since 2010, suggesting this isn't simply about denomination-switching. It's about leaving organized religion altogether.
A Hemispheric Trend
The secularization pipeline isn't just an American assimilation effect, the report found. A 2026 Pew Research study in Latin America found that the region is seeing massive net losses in Catholic adherents, meaning many immigrants arriving in the U.S. from there already are detached from the Catholic Church. This undercuts the assumption that immigration from predominantly Catholic countries would automatically replenish American congregations.
Hispanics make up about 15% of the U.S. population, and Catholic leaders had long counted on demographic growth to offset declining attendance among white parishioners. That strategy is collapsing as second and third-generation Latinos reject the religious institutions their parents and grandparents supported. The gap between institutional expectations and lived reality is widening, leaving Sun Belt dioceses scrambling to maintain infrastructure built for congregations that no longer exist.
Why This Matters:
This demographic shift reveals a fundamental disconnect between conservative religious institutions and the values of younger, progressive women who are increasingly unwilling to accept patriarchal structures that conflict with their support for gender equality and LGBT rights. The Catholic Church's institutional response—doubling down on traditional gender roles rather than adapting to changing social norms—appears to be accelerating the exodus rather than stemming it. For communities across the Sun Belt, the consequences are concrete: closing schools, consolidating parishes, and the loss of social infrastructure that once served as community anchors. The trend also challenges assumptions about immigration and religious vitality, showing that demographic growth alone can't sustain institutions that fail to reflect the progressive values of their youngest members. As young Latinas lead this departure, they're reshaping not just their own communities but the broader American religious landscape.