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.

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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.

This study, designed and completed by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB), represents statistics for 149 religious bodies on the number of congregations within each county of the United States. Where available, also included are actual membership (as defined by the religious body) and total adherents figures. Participants included 149 Christian denominations, associations, or communions (including Latter-day Saints and Unitarian/Universalist groups); two specially defined groups of independent Christian churches; Jewish and Islamic totals; and counts of temples for six Eastern religions.

It is important to understand the methodology producing these data and its limitations. While these data contain membership data for many religious groups in the United States, including most of the larger groups, they do not include every group. It is recommended that users read the notes below. Users may also want to refer to a paper by Roger Finke and Christopher P. Scheitle that explains the "adjusted" adherence rates included in the file.

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The RCS-Dem dataset reports estimates of religious demographics, both country by country and region by region. RCS was created to fulfill the unmet need for a dataset on the religious dimensions of countries of the world, with the state-year as the unit of observation. It covers 220 independent states, 26 selected substate entities, and 41 geographically separated dependencies, for every year from 2015 back to 1900 and often 1800 (more than 42,000 state-years). It estimates populations and percentages of adherents of 100 religious denominations including second level subdivisions within Christianity and Islam, along with several complex categories such as "Western Christianity." RCS is designed for easy merger with datasets of the Correlates of War and Polity projects, datasets by the United Nations, the Religion And State datasets by Jonathan Fox, and the ARDA national profiles.

The World Religion Project (WRP) aims to provide detailed information about religious adherence worldwide since 1945. It contains data about the number of adherents by religion in each of the states in the international system. These numbers are given for every half-decade period (1945, 1950, etc., through 2010). Percentages of the states' populations that practice a given religion are also provided. (Note: These percentages are expressed as decimals, ranging from 0 to 1, where 0 indicates that 0 percent of the population practices a given religion and 1 indicates that 100 percent of the population practices that religion.) Some of the religions (as detailed below) are divided into religious families. To the extent data are available, the breakdown of adherents within a given religion into religious families is also provided.

The project was developed in three stages. The first stage consisted of the formation of a religion tree. A religion tree is a systematic classification of major religions and of religious families within those major religions. To develop the religion tree we prepared a comprehensive literature review, the aim of which was (i) to define a religion, (ii) to find tangible indicators of a given religion of religious families within a major religion, and (iii) to identify existing efforts at classifying world religions. (Please see the original survey instrument to view the structure of the religion tree.) The second stage consisted of the identification of major data sources of religious adherence and the collection of data from these sources according to the religion tree classification. This created a dataset that included multiple records for some states for a given point in time. It also contained multiple missing data for specific states, specific time periods and specific religions. The third stage consisted of cleaning the data, reconciling discrepancies of information from different sources and imputing data for the missing cases.

The Global Religion Dataset: This dataset uses a religion-by-five-year unit. It aggregates the number of adherents of a given religion and religious group globally by five-year periods.

This study was an effort to gather the statistics of churches and church membership throughout the United States for 1952. The data presented here are state-level data based on the cooperation of 114 religious denominations in the continental United States.

This dataset is a longitudinal version of the Churches and Church Membership in the United States studies from 1980 and 1990, and the Religious Congregations and Membership Studies from 2000 and 2010. It contains the adherent and congregation counts of 302 religious groups that participated in at least one of the 1980-2010 data collections. It is very important to understand how this file differs from its standalone counterparts, and its many limitations. Using these data for over-time comparisons without reading any documentation will likely result in inaccurate statistics. Data users are strongly urged to read the paper by Rachel Bacon, Roger Finke and Dale Jones that details all the changes made when creating the longitudinal file. Major changes made to the file include new variable naming schemes, new combined religious groups that correct for schisms and mergers, new adherent counts for the United Methodist Church, count estimates for missing data among 40 groups and aggregated county units. Users can download the paper here. Users can download the appendices here: "/ARDA/archives/AppendixA_RCMS.pdf" Target="_blank">Appendix A, "/ARDA/archives/AppendixB_RCMS.pdf" Target="_blank">Appendix B, "/ARDA/archives/AppendixC_RCMS.pdf" Target="_blank">Appendix C.

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Erratum: The 2018 release of the county-level file did not correct for the aggregation of three counties in Virginia: Norfolk City, Chesapeake City, Portsmouth City. This was corrected in July 2023 and Appendix C now reflects the correction.

This data set contains statistics by county for 133 Judeo-Christian church bodies, providing information on their number of churches and members.

Please note that this data set may not be sold in any form, including as an addition to proprietary software, without the permission of the copyright holder. Churches and Church Membership in the United States, 1990 is published by the Glenmary Research Center, P.O. Box 507, Mars Hill, NC 28754.

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The Religious Characteristics of States Dataset (RCS) was created to fulfill the unmet need for a dataset on the religious dimensions of countries of the world, with the state-year as the unit of observation. The third phase, Chief Executives' Religions, provides data on religious affiliations of countries' 'chief executives,' i.e., their presidents, prime ministers, or other heads of state/government exercising largely real, not ceremonial, political power. The dataset, like others in the RCS data project, is designed expressly for easy merger with datasets of the Correlates of War and Polity projects, datasets by the United Nations, the Religion And State datasets by Jonathan Fox, and the ARDA national profiles.

This dataset contains measures on religious belief and practice, Christian fundamentalist beliefs, religious context, and deviant behavior from students at four American universities. Two of these universities are public state schools; two are private and have religious affiliations. A total of 1,753 respondents were surveyed regarding their religious beliefs and practices, tattoos, piercings, and engagement in (or abstinence from) sexual intercourse, binge drinking, and marijuana use.

The Statistics of Churches in the United States was part of the 11th Census, conducted in 1890 (the U.S. Census collected data on religion through the 1936 Census, though the 1890 Census was the first to count the number of members). The Census collected data on church seating capacity, property value, number of members, number of edifices ("buildings owned and used for worship"), and number of organizations (churches, mission stations when separate from congregation, chapels when they are separate from churches, and societies or meetings among groups that designate such organizations). The data are organized by states (states are the cases). Measures for religions in Indian Territories are also included.

The National Congregations Study (NCS) dataset fills a void in the sociological study of congregations by providing data that can be used to draw a nationally aggregate picture of congregations. Thanks to innovations in sampling techniques, the 1998 NCS data was the first nationally representative sample of American congregations. Subsequent NCS waves were conducted in 2006-07, 2012, and 2018-19.

Like Wave II, Wave IV again included a panel component. In addition to the new cross-section of congregations generated in conjunction with the 2018 GSS, the NCS-IV included all Wave III congregations that were nominated by GSS respondents who participated in the GSS for the first time in 2012. That is, the panel did not include Wave III congregations that had been nominated by GSS respondents who were in the 2012 GSS because they were part of the GSS's own panel of re-interviewees. The 2018-19 NCS, then, includes a subset of congregations that also were interviewed in 2012. A full codebook, prepared by the primary investigator and containing a section with details about the panel datasets, is available for download "https://sites.duke.edu/ncsweb/files/2020/09/NCS-I-IV-Cumulative-Codebook_FINAL_8Sept2020.pdf" Target="_blank">here. The codebook contains the original questionnaire, as well as detailed information on survey methodology, weights, coding, and more.

The "/data-archive?fid=NCSIV" Target="_blank">NCS Cumulative Dataset is also available from the ARDA.

More than 500,000 worshipers in more than 5,000 congregations across America participated in the U.S. Congregational Life Survey (Wave 1 and Wave 2)- making it the largest survey of worshipers in America ever conducted. Three types of surveys were completed in each participating congregation: (a) an attender survey completed by all worshipers age 15 and older who attended worship services during the weekend the survey was given; (b) a congregational profile describing the congregation's facilities, staff, programs, and worship services completed by one person in the congregation; and (c) a leader survey completed by the pastor, priest, minister, rabbi, or other principal leader. Together the information collected provides a unique three-dimensional look at religious life in America. (From Appendix 1, U.S. Congregational Life Survey Methodology, A Field Guide to U.S. Congregations, Second Edition).

This data file contains data for a sample of New Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) congregations worship Attenders participating in Wave 2 of the U.S. Congregational Life Survey. (U.S. Congregational Life Survey Wave 2 New Church PC(USA) Congregational Profile data and Leader data will be provided in separate data files.)

This file assembles data from multiple sources on 256 countries and territories, and also aggregates this data globally and by 22 world regions. The file presents most of the data available on the ARDA National Profiles as of 2018 in a single downloadable dataset. Many of the measures are from the ARDA's coding of the 2008 US State Department's International Religious Freedom (IRF) Reports. This coding produced data on 198 different countries and territories (see the Summary file for the International Religious Freedom Data, 2008 for a list of countries coded, available for download from the ARDA), but excluded the United States. In addition, this project assembled (with permission) other cross-national measures of interest to researchers on religion, economics, and politics. They include adherent information from the World Christian Database, scales from Freedom House, the Religion and State Project, the Center for Systemic Peace, the Heritage Foundation, the Correlates of War Project, the Varieties of Democracy Project, the CIRI Human Rights Data Project, and various socio-economic measures from the United Nations, World Bank, and the CIA's World Factbook. The source of each variable in this dataset is acknowledged in the variable's description, except in the case of those variables generated by ARDA researchers' coding of the Department of State's IRF Reports.

This dataset was created for the research reported in Religion, Deviance and Social Control by Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge (1996). This dataset compiles information regarding the religious composition of 378 cities in the United States from 1906 to 1936 and contains observations on church membership, growth and suicide rates.

The Faith Communities Today 2010 national survey brings together 26 individual surveys of congregations. Twenty-four were conducted by or for partner denominations and faith groups, representing 32 of the country's largest denominations and traditions. The common core questionnaire of the survey replicates more than 150 questions from the 2000, 2005 and 2008 surveys, plus a special section on the 2008 recession. This dataset contains the FACT 2010 data from the Assemblies of God.

The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey completed telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 35,556 adults living in continental United States households. The survey was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International (PSRAI). This extensive survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life details the religious makeup, religious beliefs and practices as well as social and political attitudes of the American public.

Information on this page was adapted from the Pew Forum's methodology report for this survey.

The Faith Communities Today (FACT) surveys were coordinated by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research at the Hartford Seminary. Forty-one faith groups and denominations participated in the project. Each group designed a questionnaire in order to collect data that could be used to compare local churches, synagogues and mosques within the different participating groups. This dataset represents the results from the survey of the "https://nazarene.org/" Target="_blank">Church of the Nazarene congregations.

This file contains measures from the ARDA's coding of the 2008 U.S. State Department's International Religious Freedom Reports. This coding produced data on 198 different countries and territories (see below for list of countries coded), but it excluded the United States. It also includes three indexes calculated from these data: Government Regulation of Religion Index (GRI), Modified Social Regulation of Religion Index (MSRI), and Government Favoritism of Religion Index (GFI) (see Grim & Finke, 2006 for information on the GRI and GFI).

This data set contains statistics by state for 111 Judeo-Christian church bodies, providing information on their number of churches and members. The denominations included represent an estimated 91 percent of U.S. membership totals officially submitted to the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. Please note that this data set may not be sold in any form, including as an addition to proprietary software, without the permission of the copyright holder. Churches and Church Membership in the United States, 1980 is published by the Glenmary Research Center, P.O. Box 507, Mars Hill, NC 28754.

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