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American Adults Religious Identification (Age 18+) |
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| Christian Religious Groups | 2001 | 2008 |
| Catholic | 24.5% | 25.1% |
| Baptist | 16.3% | 15.8% |
| Mainline Christian (Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopalian/Anglican, United Church of Christ, etc.) |
17.2% | 12.9% |
| Generic Christian (Christian Unspecified, Non-Denominational. Christian, Protestant Unspecified, Evangelical/Born Again) |
6.8% | 5.0% |
| Pentecostals/Charismatics (Pentecostal Unspecified, Assemblies of God, Church of God) |
3.8% | 3.5% |
| Total Christian | 76.7% | 76.0% |
| Other Religious Groups | ||
| Jewish | 1.3% | 1.2% |
| Muslim/Islam | 0.5% | 0.6% |
| Buddhist | 0.5% | 0.5% |
| New Religious Movements & Other Religions |
0.9% | 1.2% |
| No Religion Groups | ||
| Agnostic | 0.5% | 0.9% |
| Atheist | 0.4% | 0.7% |
| Not a worldview group, but
rather individuals who stated: "No religion" |
13.2% | 13.4% |
| Total No Religion Specified | 14.1% | 15.0% |
Teaching About Religion |
in support of civic pluralism |
U.S. Demographics Demographics is the study of the distribution of peoples within a geographic setting. For this section, the setting of interest is the USA, at large. The links below lead to U.S. maps showing the distribution of religion, state by state. The links are in order of population size in the U.S. overall, with Catholicism showing the largest number of adherents and Buddhism the smallest (for which data are shown here). The Big Picture This table offers a glimpse of U. S. statistics for religious and nonreligious worldviews as reported by ARIS 2001 and 2008. |
State-by-State Comparisons All data within this section comes from the 2001 study, the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), by Barry A. Kosmin, Egon Mayer, and Ariela Keysar at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. ARIS 2001 makes data available for the continental U.S. and DC. If you need additional data (such as state by state information on religions) please refer to the study located at http://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-Center/ PDF/ARIS/ARIS-PDF-version.pdf. How can one sensibly compare distributions of various adherent groups? Some groups number in the millions and others in mere thousands of members. One way to do this is through the use of demographic maps. With the help of statistics, a map can be colored to show how representation of a group (whether small or large) differs across the states. The ARIS study did not include Alaska or Hawaii due to the cost of performing the study. One useful statistical measure for demographic maps is the quartile. This statistical grouping bundles equal numbers of counted adherents into four sets. Those states containing the "lowest representation" quarter of the total adherents are in the first quartile set and shown in one color, the next batch (continuation of higher representations forming the second quartile) are shown in another color, and so on. For quartiles to be of use, the population under study needs to be quite large. A second method for demographic maps of small populations is to color the states according the percent of the religious population in the state. For example the total population of a given religion might be pictured by coloring states having 1% one color, 2% another color, and 3% and 4% other colors. If you are unfamiliar with these two ideas, a sample case may be helpful. Example Table and Map (Quartiles and Percent). |
- Catholic - Baptist - Nonreligious - Methodist/Wesleyan - Jewish - Muslim - Buddhist (State names) |