In 2023, 27.5 percent of Americans were unaffiliated with any religion. A further 13.4 percent of Americans were White evangelical Protestants, and an additional 13.3 percent were White mainline Protestants. Religious trends in the United States Although the United States is still home to the largest number of Christians worldwide, the nation has started to reflect a more diverse religious landscape in recent years. Americans now report a wide range of religious beliefs and backgrounds, in addition to an increasing number of people who are choosing to identify with no religion at all. Studies suggest that many Americans have left their previous religion to instead identify as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular, with many reasoning that they stopped believing in the religion's teachings, that they didn't approve of negative teachings or treatment of LGBTQ+ people, or that their family was never that religious growing up. Christian controversies Over the last few years, controversies linked to Christian denominations have plagued the nation, including reports of child sexual abuse by the Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Southern Baptist Convention. Christian churches have also been accused of supporting discriminatory actions against LGBTQ+ people and people belonging to other religious groups. In addition, there have been increasing concerns about Christian nationalism, the political ideology that asserts that America was founded to be a Christian nation. Although the majority of Americans still think that declaring the United States a Christian nation would go against the U.S. Constitution, studies found that most Republicans would be in favor of this change.

The statistic shows the religious affiliation of the population in the United States in 2017, by age. In 2017, about 38 percent of respondents aged 18 to 29 years old were unaffiliated with any religious belief.

In 2023, about 33 percent of Americans were Protestants, down from 69 percent in 1948. In that same year, about 22 percent of Americans were Catholic, while 22 percent said that they had no religion at all.

This study, designed and carried out by the "http://www.asarb.org/" Target="_blank">Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB), compiled data on 372 religious bodies by county in the United States. Of these, the ASARB was able to gather data on congregations and adherents for 217 religious bodies and on congregations only for 155. Participating bodies included 354 Christian denominations, associations, or communions (including Latter-day Saints, Messianic Jews, and Unitarian/Universalist groups); counts of Jain, Shinto, Sikh, Tao, Zoroastrian, American Ethical Union, and National Spiritualist Association congregations, and counts of congregations and adherents from Baha'i, three Buddhist groupings, two Hindu groupings, and four Jewish groupings, and Muslims. The 372 groups reported a total of 356,642 congregations with 161,224,088 adherents, comprising 48.6 percent of the total U.S. population of 331,449,281. Membership totals were estimated for some religious groups.

In January 2024, the ARDA added 21 religious tradition (RELTRAD) variables to this dataset. These variables start at variable #9 (TOTCNG_2020). Categories were assigned based on pages 88-94 in the original "https://www.usreligioncensus.org/index.php/node/1638" Target="_blank">2020 U.S. Religion Census Report.

Visit the "https://www.thearda.com/us-religion/sources-for-religious-congregations-membership-data" Target="_blank">frequently asked questions page for more information about the ARDA's religious congregation and membership data sources.

The USA: Catholic Christians as percent of the total population: The latest value from 2013 is 24 percent, unchanged from 24 percent in 2012. In comparison, the world average is 43.2 percent, based on data from 84 countries. Historically, the average for the USA from 1960 to 2013 is 24 percent. The minimum value, 23.9 percent, was reached in 1960 while the maximum of 24 percent was recorded in 1983.

This statistic shows the share of adults in the United States affiliated to a religious denomination in January 2017, by race/ethnicity. As of January 2017, 15 percent of Asian or Pacific Islanders in the United States identified themselves as Hindu.

The United States Census of Religious Bodies is, as the name suggests, a census of religious organizations, not a census of individuals (the U.S. Census collected data on religious organizations through the 1936 census). This census provides measures of the number of members in various denominations, by geographic unit. This is the fourth of four complete surveys on the subject of religious membership undertaken by the "https://www.census.gov/" Target="_blank">U.S. Bureau of the Census (preceded by the 1906, 1916, and 1926, censuses). The data are organized by state (states are the cases).

This study, designed and carried out by the "http://www.asarb.org/" Target="_blank">Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB), compiled data on the number of congregations and adherents for 236 religious groups in each county of the United States. Participants included 217 Christian denominations, associations, or communions (including Latter-day Saints, Messianic Jews, and Unitarian/Universalist groups); counts of Jain, Shinto, Sikh, Tao and National Spiritualist Association congregations, and counts of congregations and adherents from Baha'ís, three Buddhist groupings, four Hindu groupings, four Jewish groupings, Muslims and Zoroastrians. The 236 groups reported a total of 344,894 congregations with 150,686,156 adherents, comprising 48.8 percent of the total U.S. population of 308,745,538 in 2010.

Visit the "/us-religion/sources-for-religious-congregations-membership-data" Target="_blank">frequently asked questions page for more information about the ARDA's religious congregation and membership data sources.

Number of Businesses statistics on the Religious Organizations industry in United States

From 2010 to 2023, Democrats were found much more likely than Republicans to identify with no religion in the United States. In 2023, 33 percent of Democrats said that they identified with no religion compared to 12 percent of Republicans.

According to a survey conducted from 2022 to 2023, 34 percent of Asian Americans identified as Christian in the United States while 32 percent identified with no religion. In comparison, 11 percent of Asian Americans also identified as either Buddhist or Hindu.

This data collection provides county- and state-level information on the number of members of a variety of religious organizations and groups in the United States between 1906 and 1936. The variables in this collection provide the names of these groups and organizations, which include the Advent Christian Church, Southern and National Convention Baptist churches, Buddhist (Japanese) temples, Evangelical Association, Jewish congregations, Greek Orthodox Church, Mennonite Church, Friends Church, Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene, Polish National Church, Roman Catholic Church, Salvation Army, Seventh Day Adventist, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Russian Eastern Orthodox Church, Mennonite General Conference, Hungarian Reformed Church, Unitarian Church, Negro Baptist Church, and Evangelical Church.

Graph and download economic data for Total Private Construction Spending: Religious in the United States (MPCV06XXS) from Feb 2002 to Apr 2025 about religion, expenditures, construction, private, and USA.

According to a survey conducted in 2022, the most highly favored belief system in the United States was Christianity, with 32 percent of Americans having a very favorable opinion of this religion. In comparison, Satanism was viewed the least favorably, with 50 percent of Americans having a very unfavorable opinion of this religion.

Graph and download economic data for Total Private Construction Spending: Religious in the United States (PRRELCONS) from Jan 1993 to Mar 2025 about religion, expenditures, construction, private, and USA.

In 1972, an estimated 90 percent of the population in the United States identified as Christian. By 2020, this number dropped down to 64 percent, a phenomenon which may be attributed to recent trends where many Americans have left Christianity to instead identify as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular. If these trends continue, the number of Americans who are Christian has been projected to fall to 35 percent by 2070.

This study assessed the effects of male inmate religiosity on post-release community adjustment and investigated the circumstances under which these effects were most likely to take place. The researcher carried out this study by adding Federal Bureau of Investigation criminal history information to an existing database (Clear et al.) that studied the relationship between an inmate's religiousness and his adjustment to the correctional setting. Four types of information were used in this study. The first three types were obtained by the original research team and included an inmate values and religiousness instrument, a pre-release questionnaire, and a three-month post-release follow-up phone survey. The fourth type of information, official criminal history reports, was later added to the original dataset by the principal investigator for this study. The prisoner values survey collected information on what the respondent would do if a friend sold drugs from the cell or if inmates of his race attacked others. Respondents were also asked if they thought God was revealed in the scriptures, if they shared their faith with others, and if they took active part in religious services. Information collected from the pre-release questionnaire included whether the respondent attended group therapy, religious groups with whom he would live, types of treatment programs he would participate in after prison, employment plans, how often he would go to church, whether he would be angry more in prison or in the free world, and whether he would be more afraid of being attacked in prison or in the free world. Each inmate also described his criminal history and indicated whether he thought he was able to do things as well as most others, whether he was satisfied with himself on the whole or felt that he was a failure, whether religion was talked about in the home, how often he attended religious services, whether he had friends who were religious while growing up, whether he had friends who were religious while in prison, and how often he participated in religious inmate counseling, religious services, in-prison religious seminars, and community service projects. The three-month post-release follow-up phone survey collected information on whether the respondent was involved with a church group, if the respondent was working for pay, if the respondent and his household received public assistance, if he attended religious services since his release, with whom the respondent was living, and types of treatment programs attended. Official post-release criminal records include information on the offenses the respondent was arrested and incarcerated for, prior arrests and incarcerations, rearrests, outcomes of offenses of rearrests, follow-up period to first rearrest, prison adjustment indicator, self-esteem indicator, time served, and measurements of the respondent's level of religious belief and personal identity. Demographic variables include respondent's faith, race, marital status, education, age at first arrest and incarceration, and age at incarceration for rearrest.

According to a survey conducted in 2022, 65 percent of all Churchgoers in the United States said that their church discusses poverty and inequality, while 44 percent said that their church discusses racism.

According to a 2023 survey, about 25 percent of young Americans agreed that religious values should play more of an important role in the U.S. government. In contrast, nearly half of U.S. residents between the ages 18 and 29 did not believe that religion should play more of an important role in government.

This statistic shows the percentage of church income by individual donations in the United States in 2008, by faith tradition. As of 2008, individual donations make up for about 97 percent of income of Conservative Protestant churches in the United States.