A Picture of Religion in America

Heather sent me a link about this survey

Basically, it's one of the biggest and most in-depth surveys of religious affiliation in the US, possibly ever. Definitely in recent times. It makes it possible to have good estimates about how many people are affiliated with pretty small groups, as well as to differentiate between the many types of Baptists, who, it turns out, represent about a fifth of the US population.

A few things that stood out to me as particularly interesting:

--People are changing religions at a much faster rate than they used to.

--"Unaffiliated" has grown as a category, and now represents about 16% of the population

--There are more evangelical Protestants (26%) than Catholics (24%) and more Catholics than mainline protestants (18%), and then only slightly more mainliners than unaffiliated (16%).

--Only 51% of the country is Protestant, with that number slowly dropping.

I am planning to comment more on this, but thought I'd toss some facts out first. Don't want to make my post too long. :)