MEMBERSHIP OF U.S. RELIGIOUS & SPIRITUAL GROUPS

The Pew Forum's measurement of the size of religious communities in the U.S.

Sponsored link.

The public opinion poll:

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life is a project of the Pew Research Center. It "...gathers and disseminates objective information through polls and reports on topics related to religion and public policy....it provides a neutral venue....for discussions of important issues where religion and politics intersect."

The Bliss Institute at the University of Akron conducted a National Survey of Religion and Politics in the spring of 2004 for the Pew Forum. A sampling of the Americans was conducted from March to May, and was completed well in advance of the 2004-NOV elections. They collected data from 4,000 adults over the age of 18 who were grouped into 18 distinct religious communities.

Makeup of religious communities in the U.S.:

In the past, most polls simply attempted to identify American adults by denomination and religion. They counted the number of Southern Baptists, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, etc. in their sample and estimated the number of followers that each had across the U.S.  The ARIS Study is one example. This poll attempted to study religious communities, such as the conservative wing of Evangelical Christianity, the liberal wing of Mainline Protestantism, Latino Catholics, and fifteen other groups. These communities cross denominational boundaries and include:

In order to capture the diversity of belief among Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants and Catholics, each was subdivided into three groups:

Finally, they tabulated membership data from the major categories -- Evangelical Protestantism, Mainline Protestantism and Catholicism -- by ethnicity and/or race.

They found the following 18 religious communities, and established the size of each. The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 2%. This means that if the survey were repeated twenty times with different random samplings of American adults, any given result would be within 2% of the value shown here, for nineteen times out of twenty repeat polls:

They found:

54.7% of American adults identify themselves as Protestants. Of these:

22.0% are Roman Catholics:

12.6% are followers of one or more religions not otherwise specified:

10.7% do reject the beliefs of established religions:

Some observations:

References:

1. "American religious landscapes and political attitudes," The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, at: http://pewforum.org/
2. John C Green, "American religious landscapes and political attitudes: A baseline for 2004," Pew Forum, at: http://pewforum.org/ You may need software to read these files. It can be obtained free from:

Copyright © 2004 by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.
Written: 2004-SEP-20
Last updated: 2004-SEP-21
Author: B.A. Robinson