Poll: America Adults Claiming No Specific Religion At Record High

03:21 PM CST on Monday, February 25, 2008

By JEFFREY WEISS / The Dallas Morning News
jweiss@dallasnews.com

A major new measure of religious belief in the United States confirms trends shown in earlier polls: The percentage of adult Americans claiming no particular religion is at an all-time high. The percentage of Protestants is dropping. And the percentage of Catholics is stable — but only because the overwhelming majority of immigrants is Catholic.

Also Online: http://religions.pewforum.org/

Link:http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/02/highlights-from-the-new-pew-st.html

Religion blog: Highlights from the new Pew study on religion and America

The poll released Monday was taken last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. More than 35,000 adults were asked about their beliefs — an unusually large sample compared with most national polls.

According to the survey, Texas has a higher proportion of evangelical Protestants and a smaller percentage of the “unaffiliated” than the nation as a whole.

But the survey also indicates that many Americans aren’t all that focused on the particular variety of church they attend.

“A significant percentage of Americans have only a vague denominational identification (that is, they tell us they are “just a Baptist” or “just a Methodist”),” the report said. “In fact, many Americans are simply unclear about the religious group to which they belong, ensuring a degree of ambiguity in any survey-based measure of affiliation.”

According to the survey, 44 percent of Americans over 18 say they have changed religious affiliation. More than half of that total have either shifted to a significantly different faith or to no particular faith. The remainder say they have changed form one kind of Protestantism to another.



HIGHS AND LOWS BY STATE
Highest percentage of members of Evangelical Protestant churches: Oklahoma, 53 percent

Lowest percentage of members of Evangelical Protestant churches: Utah, 7 percent

Highest percentage of members of Catholic churches: tie, Connecticut/Rhode Island, Massachusetts, 43 percent

Lowest percentage of members of Catholic churches: Arkansas, 5 percent

Highest percentage of unaffiliated: Oregon, 27 percent

Lowest percentage of unaffiliated: Mississippi, 6 percent

Source: U.S. Religious Landscape Survey 2008, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life