Churchgoing couples have more sex, greater sexual satisfaction, new report finds

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Wednesday, October 07, 2026

Husbands and wives who attend church regularly, pray often and embrace their faith’s classic teachings, including the belief that marriage is a life commitment, have more and better sex than their secular peers, a new report from The Institute for Family Studies has found.

In its report, The Devout Difference: Religion, Marital Quality, and Sex Among Americans, IFS researchers found that while secular couples are showing symptoms of a documented global trend characterized by a significant decline in the frequency of sexual activity among adults over the last few decades known as the "sex recession," churchgoing Christian couples have largely been resilient against it.

“America is now in the grip of a ‘sex recession,’ in which only a minority of adult men and women have sex at least once a week, down from a clear majority in 2000. Strikingly, this recession has largely spared churchgoing husbands and wives,” IFS researchers noted.

Citing data from the General Social Survey, researchers noted that in the 1990s, 64% of married Americans ages 20 to 54 had sex at least weekly. Only 54% do today. When those numbers are broken down by religiosity, the data show regular churchgoers have largely avoided that dip.

In the 2000s, some 64% of regular churchgoers who were married had sex at least weekly compared to 61% of non-religious husbands and wives. Today, 62% of regular churchgoing couples in the same age group still have sex at least weekly, while less than half (48%) of secular couples report the same.

Data from an IFS Religion and Family Survey of 3,125 married respondents aged 18 to 54, conducted from Feb. 9 to March 4, also had similar findings. The report defines churchgoers as those who attend services at least two to three times per month, while "nominal" Catholics and Protestants attend less than twice a month. Both churchgoing Catholics and Protestants were found to hold a clear frequency advantage in sexual activity compared to their secular peers.

Some 69% of Catholic churchgoers reported having sex at least weekly, compared to 60% of nominal Catholics. Among Protestants, 60% of churchgoing couples reported having sex at least weekly compared to 52% of nominal ones.

Only 47% of couples who identified with no particular faith reported having sex at least weekly. 

Researchers also found that religious couples reported more satisfaction with their sex lives than secular ones.

More than half of churchgoing Catholics, 55%, reported that their sex lives were either “excellent” or “very good” compared to 45% of nominal Catholics. Some 45% of churchgoing Protestant couples reported the same compared to 35% of nominal ones and 40% of nones.

“The religion-and-sex story applies to both sexes. Sexual satisfaction is higher for both churchgoing husbands and wives, compared to their peers who attend infrequently or not at all. Overall, churchgoing Catholics are the most likely of any group to report frequent sex and sexual satisfaction, while Nones scored significantly lower than nearly every other group on both measures,” researchers said. “The cultural trope of the sexually prudish, frustrated religious American does not fit the data.”

While researchers did not find a significant relationship between Christians who engaged in daily prayer and the frequency of sex, they found that Catholics and Protestants who prayed daily reported “significantly higher sexual satisfaction than every other group.”

“Taken together, Catholics and Protestants who pray daily have 1.29 times higher odds of sexual satisfaction than those who do not. All of this suggests that endowing marriage — and even sex — with a sense of sacredness is a strong predictor of sexual satisfaction,” the report explained. “Religious behaviors like frequent church attendance and prayer appear to foster a robust sense of communion and commitment that extends to the benefit of the bedroom.”

The Catholic ministry FOCUS sponsored the report, according to IFS.