About the 2014 US Religious Landscape Study
This is the first report on findings from the 2014 US Religious Landscape Study, the centerpiece of which is a nationally representative telephone survey of 35,071 adults. This is the second time the Pew Research Center has conducted a Religious Landscape Study. The first was conducted in 2007, also with a telephone survey of more than 35,000 Americans.
The new study is designed to serve three main purposes:
- To provide a detailed account of the size of the religious groups that populate the US landscape;
- To describe the demographic characteristics, religious beliefs and practices, and social and political values of those religious groups; and
- To document how the religious profile of the U.S. has changed since the first study was conducted in 2007. With more than 35,000 interviews each, both the 2007 and 2014 studies have margins of error of less than one percentage point, making it possible to identify even relatively small changes in religious groups’ share of the US population.
The results of the 2014 Religious Landscape Study will be published in a series of reports over the coming year. This first report focuses on the changing religious composition of the U.S. and describes the demographic characteristics of US religious groups, including their median age, racial and ethnic makeup, nativity data, education and income levels, gender ratios, family composition (including religious intermarriage rates) and geographic distribution. It also summarizes patterns in religious switching.
In addition, this report includes an appendix that compares the findings of the 2007 and 2014 Religious Landscape Studies with several other surveys and assesses how recent developments in American religion fit into longer-term trends. Data from a variety of national surveys, including the long-running General Social Survey and Gallup polls, confirm that Protestants have been declining as a share of the US population and that the unaffiliated have been growing. But there is less of a consensus about trends in American Catholicism. Some surveys, including the one featured in this report, indicate that the Catholic share of the population is declining, while others suggest it is relatively stable or may have declined and then ticked back up in recent years. (See Appendix C.)
Other findings from the 2014 Religious Landscape Study will be released later this year. In addition to the written reports, the Religious Landscape Study's findings will be available through a new interactive tool. The online presentation allows users to delve more deeply into the survey’s findings, build interactive maps or charts and explore the data most interesting to them.
Acknowledgments
Many individuals from the Pew Research Center contributed to this report. Alan Cooperman, director of religion research, oversaw the effort and served as the primary editor. Gregory Smith, associate director for religion research, served as the primary researcher and wrote the Overview and Methodology. Smith also wrote the chapter on the changing religious composition of the U.S., the appendix on the classification of Protestant denominations and the appendix on putting the findings from the Religious Landscape Study into context. The chapter on religious switching and intermarriage was written by Research Associate Becka Alper. Research Associate Jessica Martinez and Research Assistant Claire Gecewicz wrote the chapter on the demographic profiles of religious groups, and Research Analyst Elizabeth Sciupac wrote the chapter on the shifting religious identity of demographic groups. Gecewicz prepared the detailed tables. The report was number checked by Alper, Gecewicz, Martinez, Sciupac and Research Associate Besheer Mohamed. The report was edited by Sandra Stencel, Michael Lipka, Caryle Murphy and Aleksandra Sandstrom. Bill Webster created the graphics. Stacy Rosenberg, Russell Heimlich, Diana Yoo, Besheer Mohamed, Ben Wormald and Juan Carlos Esparza Ochoa developed the interactive tool.
Others at the Pew Research Center who provided research guidance include Michael Dimock, Claudia Deane, Scott Keeter, Andy Kohut and Conrad Hackett. Communications support was provided by Katherine Ritchey, Stefan Cornibert, Russ Oates and Robyn Tomlin.
John C. Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, served as a senior adviser on the Religious Landscape Studies, providing valuable advice on the survey questionnaires, categorization of respondents and drafts of the reports. Additionally, we received helpful comments on portions of the 2014 study from David E. Campbell, director, Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy, University of Notre Dame; William D’Antonio, senior fellow, Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies, The Catholic University of America; Mike Hout, professor of sociology, New York University; and Barry Kosmin, director, Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, Trinity College. We also received valuable advice from Luis Lugo, former director of the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life project, and Paul Taylor, former executive vice president of the Pew Research Center.
Funding for the 2014 Religious Landscape Study comes from The Pew Charitable Trusts, which received generous support for the project from the Lilly Endowment Inc.
While the analysis was guided by our consultations with the advisers, the Pew Research Center is solely responsible for the interpretation and reporting of the data.
Roadmap to the Report
The remainder of this report explores in greater depth many of the key findings summarized in this Overview. Chapter 1 offers a detailed look at the religious composition of the United States and how it has changed in recent years. Chapter 2 examines patterns in religious switching and intermarriage. Chapter 3 provides a demographic profile of the major religious traditions in the United States. Chapter 4 then flips the lens, looking at the religious profile of Americans in various demographic groups. Appendix A describes the methodology used to conduct the study. Appendix B provides details on how Protestants were categorized into one of three major Protestant traditions (the evangelical tradition, the mainline tradition and the historically black Protestant tradition) based on the specific denomination with which they identify. Appendix C compares findings from the Religious Landscape Studies with other major religion surveys and puts the current results into the context of longer-term trends.
- For estimates of the size of Christian populations in more than 200 countries and territories, see the Pew Research Center’s April 2015 report “The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050.” ↩
- For more details on long-term trends in the religious composition of the U.S. and for analysis of how the Religious Landscape Study’s findings compare with other surveys, see Appendix C. ↩
- This analysis is based on current, intact marriages. It does not count marriages between spouses with different religions if those marriages ended in divorce (and thus are no longer intact). It also does not include those who may have been in a religiously mixed marriage at the time they got married if one or both spouses later switched religions and now share the same faith. If it were possible to examine religiously mixed marriages that ended in divorce, or religious switching that resulted in both spouses sharing the same faith, then the percentage of intermarriages in previous decades may have been higher than it appears from looking only at marriages that are intact today. ↩
- The adult Millennials surveyed in the Religious Landscape Study are people born between 1981 and 1996. ↩
- For more information on religion and the U.S. Census, see Appendix 3 in the 2007 Religious Landscape Study, “A Brief History of Religion and the U.S. Census.” ↩
- For a compilation of membership figures reported by various denominations, see the 2010 Religious Congregations & Membership Study, which was conducted by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. ↩
- The estimate that there were 227 million adults in the U.S. in 2007 comes from the U.S. Census Bureau’s National Intercensal Estimates (2000-2010). The estimate that there were nearly 245 million adults in the U.S. in 2014 comes from Pew Research Center extrapolations of the U.S. Census Bureau’s estimates of the monthly postcensal resident population. ↩
- This report describes the results of the Religious Landscape Study mainly in percentage terms, and it does not include estimates of the number of people who identify with every religious group. Estimates of the size of a few of the largest groups are presented both as point estimates and with accompanying ranges that take into account each survey’s margin of error. For example, the 2014 survey finds that Christians account for 70.6% of the U.S. adult population, with a margin of error of +/- 0.6 percentage points. That is, when measured using the approach employed by this study, Christians probably account for between 70.0% of adults (70.6% minus 0.6) and 71.2% of adults (70.6% plus 0.6). Multiplying the low and high ends of this range of percentages by the number of adults in the U.S. yields an estimate that there are between 171.4 million (0.700*244.8 million) and 174.3 million (0.712*244.8 million) Christian adults in the United States as of 2014. ↩
- The estimate that the number of mainline Protestants may have declined by as few as 3 million comes from subtracting the low end of the 2007 estimate (40.1 million) from the high end of the 2014 range (37.1 million). The estimate that the number of mainline Protestants may have declined by as many as 7.3 million comes from subtracting the high end of the 2007 range (42.1 million) from the low end of the 2014 range (34.9 million). ↩
- The estimate that the number of evangelical Protestants may have grown by as many as 5 million comes from subtracting the low end of the 2007 estimate (58.6 million) from the high end of the 2014 range (63.6 million). The estimate that the number of evangelical Protestants may have remained essentially unchanged comes from subtracting the high end of the 2007 range (60.9 million) from the low end of the 2014 range (60.8 million). ↩
- The estimate that the number of Catholics may have declined by as little as 1 million comes from subtracting the low end of the 2007 estimate (53.2 million) from the high end of the 2014 range (52.2 million). ↩
- In 2007 and 2011, the Pew Research Center conducted national surveys of Muslim Americans. Those surveys were conducted in Arabic, Farsi and Urdu, as well as in English, so as to better represent the views of Muslim immigrants. Previously released population estimates based on those surveys indicated that 0.6% of adults identified as Muslims in 2007 and 0.8% of adults identified as Muslims in 2011. Surveys like the Religious Landscape Study, conducted in English and Spanish, tend to produce lower estimates of the size of certain immigrant populations than surveys conducted in more languages. In any case, both sets of estimates – those based on Muslim-specific surveys and those based on the 2007 and 2014 Religious Landscape Studies – suggest that the Muslim population in the US is growing.↩
*Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. We conduct public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research. We do not take policy positions.
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