- Membership Reports
- Maps
- Data Sources
- Search Maps & Reports
The data used in our reports are from three sources
2000 data were collected by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB) and include statistics for 149 religious groups, including number of churches and adherents. Dale E. Jones, Sherri Doty, Clifford Grammich, James E. Horsch, Richard Houseal, Mac Lynn, John P. Marcum, Kenneth M. Sanchagrin and Richard H. Taylor supervised the collection. These data originally appeared in Religious Congregations & Membership in the United States, 2000, published by the Glenmary Research Center.
1990 data were collected by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB) and include statistics for 132 religious groups, including number of churches and adherents. Martin B. Bradley, Norman M. Green, Jr., Dale E. Jones, Mac Lynn, and Lou McNeil supervised the collection. These data originally appeared in Churches and Church Membership in the United States, 1990, published by the Glenmary Research Center.
1980 data were collected by the Glenmary Research Center and include statistics for 111 Judeo-Christian church bodies, including number of churches and adherents. Bernard Quinn, Herman Anderson, Martin Bradley, Paul Goetting and Peggy Shriver supervised the collection These data originally appeared in Churches and Church Membership in the United States, 1980, published by the Glenmary Research Center.
Data from the 2000 Religious Congregations and Membership Survey and the 1990, 1980, 1971, and 1952 Church and Church Membership collections can be downloaded free of charge from the ARDA’s data archive.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I cite the 2000 Religious Congregations and Membership Survey?
Religious Congregations and Membership in the United States, 2000. Collected by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB) and distributed by the Association of Religion Data Archives (www.theARDA.com).
What is the difference between adherents and members?
Members include only those who are designated as “full members” by the congregation. Congregational "adherents" include all full members, their children, and others who regularly attend services or participate in the congregation. When religious groups reported only adult membership, the following formula was used to derive the number of adherents: The total county population was divided by the total county population less children 13 years and under (derived from census), and the resulting figure was multiplied by the confirmed members. Using adherents allows for more meaningful comparisons between groups that count children as members (e.g., Catholics) and those that don't (e.g. Baptists).
What is the difference between "Unadjusted" and "Adjusted" totals for "All denominations"?
The "Unadjusted Totals" come from the 2000 adherent totals collected by representatives of the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB). While quite comprehensive, this data excludes most of the historically African-American denominations and some other major groups. As a result, these numbers will be an underestimate of the total adherence rate, particularly in areas with a large African-American population. The "Adjusted Totals" include all adherents in the denominations counted by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB) and estimates adherent totals for the historically African-American denominations and other religious groups not listed in the ASARB totals. An article by Roger Finke and Christopher P. Scheitle (2005) reviews how these estimates were computed.
Who is included in the 2000 Religious Congregations and Membership data?
The sponsors invited all religious bodies that could be identified as having congregations in the United States to participate. Final totals include information from 149 Christian and other religious bodies. Participants included 139 Christian denominations, associations, or communions (including Latter-day Saints and Unitarian/Universalist groups); two specially defined groups of independent Christian churches; Jewish and Islamic estimates; and counts of temples for six Eastern religions. The 149 groups reported 268,254 congregations with 141,371,963 adherents, which is 50.2% of the population of 281,421,839. There are 14 non-participating religious bodies that reported more than 100,000 members to the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, 2000, including all historically African American denominations. These groups reported a combined membership of 31,040,360 in the Yearbook, which is not reflected in the congregations and membership data. The lack of African American denominations should be noted when referencing the number of total adherents or denominations in an area. Click here for a complete list of denominations that participated in the 2000 RCMS.
How were the Jewish estimates computed?
Jim Schwartz and Jeff Scheckner provided a list of Jewish populations by region, which is from the American Jewish Yearbook 2001 (David Singer and Lawrence Grossman, 2001. New York: American Jewish Committee, pp. 253-280). Schwartz and Scheckner also supplied a count of synagogues by state and county. The list of synagogues was compiled by contacting Jewish denominations and other organizations, consulting all relevant websites, and obtaining lists from Jewish federations in large Jewish communities.
How were the Muslim estimates computed?
A telephone survey conducted by Ihsan Bagby identified the membership and number of adherents in over one third of America’s known mosques. At its simplest level, the non-reporting mosques were given the average number of adherents in the reporting mosques. Unlike most Christian churches, however, more than one mosque may claim the same person as an adherent. The following adjustment was made to account for a possible overlap of membership. When a mosque reported an adherence rate over eight times its average Friday attendance and there were other accessible mosques in the area, the number of adherents was lowered to eight times the number of attendees. Fifteen percent of the mosques reported an adherence/attendance ratio exceeding 8.0.
How did you decide if the religious groups should be classified as Evangelical Protestant, Mainline Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and other?
We relied on several sources. We began with an article co-authored by Brian Steensland, Jerry Park, Mark Regnerus, Lynn Robinson, Bradford Wilcox, and Robert Woodberry entitled “The Measure of American Religion: Toward Improving the State of the Art,” and published in Social Forces (2000, 79: 291-318). They justified the major categories we used and classified many of the groups in the RCMS collection. When denominations were not included in their classification, we classified the groups based on information given in J. Gordon Melton’s Encyclopedia of American Religions (6th edition) and Frank S. Mead and Samuel S. Hill’s Handbook of Denominations in the United States (10th edition). Click on the following links to see a list of groups included in each category: Catholics, Evangelical Protestants, Mainline Protestants, Orthodox, other groups.
