The share of Americans who were not a member of a church or synagogue has been increasing since 1992. In 2023, about 55 percent of Americans were not members of a church or synagogue. In that same year, 45 percent of Americans were members of a church or synagogue.

According to a 2022 survey, 31 percent of Americans never attend church or synagogue, compared to 20 percent of Americans who attend every week.

Religiosity in the United States

Despite only about a fifth of Americans attending church or synagogue on a weekly basis, almost 40 percent consider themselves to be very religious. Additionally, states in the Deep South such as Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana had the most residents identifying as very religious. In contrast, New England states like Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire had the most people identifying as nonreligious.

A Christian nation?

Despite the official separation of church and state embedded in the Constitution, many would still consider the United States to be a Christian nation. Catholicism has the largest number of adherents in the United States, due to there being many different Protestant denominations. The Southern Baptist Convention had the largest number of Evangelical adherents, while the United Methodist Church was the largest Mainline Protestant denomination.

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 county-level data based on the cooperation of 114 religious denominations in the continental United States.

Belief in God has historically been a persistent aspect of American society, with ** percent of surveyed Americans saying that they believed in God in 1944. However, the share of Americans who believed in God has decreased steadily over time after reaching a peak of ** percent in the ***** and ***. As of 2022, the share of Americans who believed in God had fallen to ** percent. Religious participation and practice There has been a significant reduction in participation within religious organizations in the United States, with Americans found less likely to attend church or become members of a church. While ** percent of Americans belonged to a church, synagogue, mosque, or temple in 1999, this number dropped to 47 percent by 2021. This decline in church membership may have contributed to Americans’ waning belief in God, as continuous religious practice has been attributed to greater faith and religious conviction. ** percent of Americans who attended religious services weekly believed that God hears prayers and intervenes, in comparison to 28 percent of Americans who seldom or never attended religious services. Younger Americans less likely to believe While most U.S. adults still believe in God, younger Americans are less likely to share this belief. Older generations of Americans were more likely to participate in religious services while growing up, with ** percent of the Silent Generation reporting that they attended Sunday school or another religious education program, while Generation Z were more likely to have lacked any sort of religious upbringing in the United States. In 2021, 15 percent of Gen Z said that they had never been religious.

This data collection contains information by region, state, and county on churches and church membership for 53 Christian denominations in the United States in 1971. These estimates or enumerations by denomination were collected by the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. (NCCC) from each reporting denomination. The data are recorded for the nation as a whole, regions, states, SMSAs, and counties. This dataset was obtained from the Office of Research, Evaluation and Planning of the NCCC. In addition to data identifying the units of record, data for each reporting denomination are present, including: (1) number of churches, (2) number of communicant, confirmed, or full members, and (3) total number of "adherents." When incomplete information was supplied about a denomination's total number of adherents, an estimate was made by NCCC and identified in the data as such.

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.

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.

This data set contains statistics by state for 133 Judeo-Christian church bodies, providing information on the number of churches and members. It is not known exactly what percent of total Judeo-Christian adherents this actually represents. When compared to the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches: 1990, this study accounts for 23 percent more communicant 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.

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.

This statistic shows the frequency of religious service attendance of Americans in 2014, by state. In 2014, ** percent of residents of Utah attended religious service weekly.

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

Please Note: This dataset is part of the historical CISER Data Archive Collection and is also available at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at https://doi.org/10.25940/ROPER-31094204. We highly recommend using the Roper Center version as they may make this dataset available in multiple data formats in the future.

This data set contains statistics by county 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.

This is the replication package for "Churches as Social Insurance: Oil Risk and Religion in the U.S. South". Abstract: Religious communities are important providers of social insurance. We show that risk associated with oil dependence facilitated the proliferation of religious communities throughout the U.S. South during the 20th century. Known oil abundance predicts higher rates of church membership, which are not driven by selective migration or local economic development. Consistent with a social insurance channel, greater oil price volatility increases effects, while greater access to credit, state-level social insurance, and private insurance crowds out effects. Religious communities limit spillovers of oil price shocks across sectors, reducing increases in unemployment following a negative shock by about 30%.

The support for same-sex marriage in the United States increased overall between 2006 and 2023. According to a survey conducted across the years, this increase was shared among all levels of church attendance. Citizens who visited the church weekly were consistently the group least in favor of gay marriage. As of 2023, 83 percent of citizens who seldom or never visited the church thought that same-sex marriage should be recognized by the law as valid.

No description was included in this Dataset collected from the OSF

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 data collection contains county-level information on churches and church membership by denomination in Michigan for 1950 and 1960. Information is given on the names of the county, presbytery, and church. Other variables provide information on the number of churches and church members for each denomination. Additional variables give the number and percentage of the state population who were 14 years and older in each county in 1950 and in 1960, the percentage of this age group who attended churches in 1950 and in 1960, and the percentage of the change in membership in each denomination between 1950 and 1960.

Feelings toward buying on credit; information heard about changing economy; expected price/inflation changes during next 12 months; government's job performance in fighting inflation/unemployment in next year or two; belief in God/universal spirit; belief that God observes and rewards/punishes our actions; amount of consolation found in beliefs; statements which describe feelings about the Bible/Jesus Christ/life after death/the Devil/origin of man; religious experience; description of experience; validity of 10 Commandments for today's society; ability to name any 5 Commandments; identification of Jesus' statement to Nicodemus; frequency of Bible reading; church/synagogue attendance; Pentecostal/ charismatic Christian affiliation; speaking in tongues; first/second religious authority one would side with if testing religious beliefs; source to turn to if facing problem concerning: personal development, finances, shelter, food, clothing, alcohol, drugs, religion; first/second most important personal need; frequency of discussing religious beliefs

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.

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.

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.

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.

According to a survey conducted in 2020, 58 percent of Indian Americans who identified as Christian said that they attended religious services once or several times a week in comparison to 48 percent of Indian Americans who were Muslim and 21 percent of Indian Americans who were Hindu.

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, and count estimates for missing data among 40 groups. Users can download the paper "https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13644-018-0339-4" Target="_blank">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.

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.

Erratum: An error in the variable indicating the total state population by year (TOTPOP) has been corrected. This variable now matches the RCMS state level files for the years 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010.