Gallup recently released its annual poll on Americans’ view of the importance of religion in their lives. When Gallup first conducted this poll in 1952, it found that “75% said [religion] was very important and 20% fairly important.”

This past year, the numbers show that a significant majority of Americans still find religion important and, of those who attend church weekly, 81% believe that “religion can answer today’s problems.” Meanwhile, of those who attend church “less often” than weekly or monthly, only 27% believe that the keys to solving today’s problems can be found in religion. Instead, 58% of them see religion as old-fashioned and out of date.

Honestly, it should come as no surprise that those who hold little esteem for religion’s answers to today’s problems would also see little value in regular church attendance. Interestingly, Americans’ decreasing view of religion’s importance has fluctuated over the years, with 61% of Americans viewing religion as “very important” in 2001 following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and increasing to 65% the following year.

People always put their trust in something they believe to be greater than themselves, be it government, science, business, academia, morality, or a myriad of other substitutes for the Divine. So when terrorists exposed the vulnerability and limits of the U.S. government’s ability to protect its citizens, many Americans were awakened to the reality that religion and more specifically Christianity offers the only real hope to finding true eternal security in this dangerous, broken, and corrupt world, by submitting to and resting in the arms of God through trusting in Jesus Christ. May many more Americans come know this certain hope in 2019.