Adherents.com presents:
Largest Religious Groups in the United States of America
Many people have written to us at Adherents.com asking what are the major religions or churches in just the United States. All of our data is, of course, available on this web site in the main Adherents.com listings (listed by name and by location). For most places it is fairly simple to look up an individual country, state or province in the Location Index. There the user will usually find between 15 to 100 adherent statistics, which provide a good idea of what the major religions are for that place.
But the United States has a greater number of religious groups than any other country in the world, and Adherents.com has literally thousands of adherent statistics for the U.S. This page provides some summary lists of the largest religious groups in the United States:
Ten Largest Religions in the United States
Unlike some countries, the United States does not include a question about religion in its census, and has not done so for over fifty years. Religious adherent statistics in the U.S. are obtained from surveys and organizational reporting.The largest, most comprehensive surveys on religious identification were done in sociologists Barry A. Kosmin, Seymour P. Lachman and associates at the Graduate School of the City University of New York. Their first major study was done in 1990: the National Survey of Religious Identification (NSRI). This scientific nationwide survey of 113,000 Americans asked about religious preference, along with other questions. They followed this up, with even more sophisticated methodology and more questions, with the American Religious Identity Survey (ARIS) conducted in 2001, with a sample size of 50,000 Americans.
The ARIS data is published online at: http://www.gc.cuny.edu/studies/aris_index.htm
The following three tables comes from the NSRI and ARIS data:
Top Twenty Religions in the United States, 2001
(self-identification, ARIS)
| Religion | 1990 Est. Adult Pop. | 2001 Est. Adult Pop. | % of U.S. Pop., 2000 | % Change 1990 - 2000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Christianity | 151,225,000 | 159,030,000 | 76.5% | +5% |
| Nonreligious/Secular | 13,116,000 | 27,539,000 | 13.2% | +110% |
| Judaism | 3,137,000 | 2,831,000 | 1.3% | -10% |
| Islam | 527,000 | 1,104,000 | 0.5% | +109% |
| Buddhism | 401,000 | 1,082,000 | 0.5% | +170% |
| Agnostic | 1,186,000 | 991,000 | 0.5% | -16% |
| Atheist | 902,000 | 0.4% | ||
| Hinduism | 227,000 | 766,000 | 0.4% | +237% |
| Unitarian Universalist | 502,000 | 629,000 | 0.3% | +25% |
| Wiccan/Pagan/Druid | 307,000 | 0.1% | ||
| Spiritualist | 116,000 | |||
| Native American Religion | 47,000 | 103,000 | +119% | |
| Baha'i | 28,000 | 84,000 | +200% | |
| New Age | 20,000 | 68,000 | +240% | |
| Sikhism | 13,000 | 57,000 | +338% | |
| Scientology | 45,000 | 55,000 | +22% | |
| Humanist | 29,000 | 49,000 | +69% | |
| Deity (Deist) | 6,000 | 49,000 | +717% | |
| Taoist | 23,000 | 40,000 | +74% | |
| Eckankar | 18,000 | 26,000 | +44% |
See the following in three parts:
- French Deism: deistic Humanism, Pantheism
- The English Deists: Introduction
- Is it Unitarianism or Deism?
- God and reason:
- What is Natural Theology?
- Isaac Newton and Arianism
- Isaac Newton's God
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Also see New Age Religion and What is paganism?
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