American Religious Identification Survey

Posted on March 12, 2009
Filed Under Religion | 6 Comments

The new American Religious Identification Survey for 2008 is out. (Yeah, we’ll be getting back to philosophy soon) Here’s the interesting figures.

69.5% believe in a personal God. 2.3% said there is no God. 4.3% said there’s no way to know. 12.1% believed in an impersonal higher power. Those not identifying with any religion (due to no preference, atheism or agnosticism) went from 8.2% in 1990 to 14.1% in 2001 and 15% in 2008. Asians are most likely to fall into that category.

Mormon demographics haven’t changed much. It was 1.4% in 1990, 1.3% in 2001 and 1.4% in 2008. The populations went from 2.5 million, 2.7 million, and 3.2 million. It’s just that the population of the country is increasing at about the same rate. Baptists are reducing quickly though. From 19.3% to 16.3% to 15.8%.

71% had a religious initiation ceremony. 66% expect a religious funeral.

Mormons are 45% male and 55% female. 22% are 18-29. 40% are 30-49. 28% are 50-69. 10% are 70+. That latter figure was surprisingly low considering we live long. I suspect that’s primarily because we have so many kids. (Interestingly 21% of baptists are 70+ and 18% of Jews are)

14% of Mormons have never been married. Interestingly 2% of self-identified Mormons are living with someone but not married. 68% are married – by far the highest among all groups. (Next closest was Baptists at 60% with 56% being the average for the country) 9% are divorced. 6% are widowed. Once again I wonder if these statistics are biased somewhat by our age demographics.

The percent of Mormons going to college has increased as well. It went from 22% in 1990 to 31% in 2008. Once again I suspect changing age demographics may bias that somewhat.

The number of Americans self identifying as Christian has dropped significantly. From 86% in 1990 to 76% in 2008. How much of that is growing disbelief and how much due to immigration is unclear at first glance. The report suggest that the main change is a move to rejecting all organized religion. (i.e. that it’s primarily disbelief more than immigration) I haven’t parsed the stats to look at the details on that though.

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Comments

6 Responses to “American Religious Identification Survey”

That means there are currently 320,000 more LDS women than men. That’s really interesting. I wonder if the live with someone else but not married number included roommates? If so, I’m actually surprised it’s so low.

I’m sure it’s people who are inactive but who still consider themselves Mormons and believe. There’s a lot like that. So they may be drinking, fooling around, doing drugs, but plan on coming back someday. Then there are people other Mormons might consider Mormon but inactive but who might not self-identify as such. I’ve had friends in that category as well and often they do come back to activity.

A few other thoughts. “Mainline Christianity” (i.e. the big traditional denominations) are dying fast. From 18.7% to 17.2% to 12.9%! That’s a huge drop in just 7 years!

The “Generic Christian” which is Protestants who aren’t tied to a denomination had a resurgence. They dropped heavily from 14.8% to 10.8% but have rebounded to 14.2%. I’m not sure what’s going on there. It looks like in 2001 a bunch counted themselves in the Charismatic category – but not enough to explain that figure.

The Assemblies of God is often picked as the sect that is growing much faster than Mormons. While that might be true worldwide it certainly isn’t true in the US. Their population actually dropped from 1.1 million (.5%) to 0.8 million (.4%) That’s still up from 1990 but it seems like they had a big surge around the millennium and then dropped off significantly.

Generic Pentecostals are probably what I’d call the fasting growing group with an uptake of over a million the last 7 years. In contrast our growth was only 450,000. That’s still a 17% increase though. The Generic Pentacostals went from 4.4 million to 5.4 million. An increase of 22%. Charismatics as a whole were down though due to losses from other groups.

“That latter figure was surprisingly low considering we live long.”

Those 70+ year olds would have been born before 1940. Though there have been lots of conversions in the intervening years, one thing to remember is that the pool of members in the past was much much much smaller. (I’m only in my mid 40’s, but I think it was in my lifetime that the church reached its second million, let alone the multi-millions it claims now). So I wonder if the smaller pool of life-long members from that era might have something to do with the numbers.

Goodpoint. Even though I suspect the majority of long term converts convert in their 30’s and 40’s (ignoring their kids). But then that means they’d have converted in the 80’s but their kids, even ignoring they are more likely not to maintain membership, are still going to bias the demographics.

Related to the study, Ross Douthat has an interesting analysis that the slight increase in non-religious would increase, not decrease, the culture wars. It’s hard to say. I think people are largely just tired of the culture wars.

I sense a move to focus more on reducing the actual number of abortions rather than a myopic fixation on Roe v. Wade among the anti-abortion crowd. But that might ironically build bridges with some pro-choice folks. Likewise among the religious there’s far, far more tolerance for gay relationships among the young. And the crowd most intolerant (say Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and conservative Protestants) don’t appear to be increasing in numbers but probably the views within the group are becoming more diverse.

Plus, frankly, a lot of the culture wars are just silly based upon misinformation or at a minimum exaggerated. (Think the so-called “war on Christmas”)

I suspect there will still be culture wars, but that the flash points will simply change as society accepts many things. (The way no one particularly cares in a societal way about premarital sex — even if they decry it they tend to tolerate or even accept it) There was some buzz last year about environmental and economic issues becoming more religious. I tend to think that was exaggerated though. And even if true, it probably won’t manifest itself strongly until we are well out of this recession.

I’m most intrigued about how the recession changes views. (I also wish we had a snapshot from 2002 so as to judge the short-term affect on religious identification of 9-11)

6 Michael Dorfman on March 13th, 2009 8:46 am

Clark: 69.5% believe in a personal God

I’m speechless.

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