Shelby County, Tennessee

Denominational Groups, 2000

217,481	86,038	1,501	50,746	15,700	526,006
Evangelical Protestant	Mainline Protestant	Orthodox	Catholic	Other	Unclaimed

Congregational "adherents" include all full members, their children, and others who regularly attend services. The historically African American denominations are not included in the 2000 congregation and membership totals. Many are also missing in 1990 and most historically African American denominations are missing in the 1980 reports.
[More information on the data sources]

Reports

Religious Bodies	Theology	Congregations	Adherents	Adherence Rate^†
Catholic Church	Catholic	27	50,000	60.5
Advent Christian Church	Evangelical Protestant	1	51	0.1
African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church	Evangelical Protestant	6	1,176	1.4
Assemblies of God	Evangelical Protestant	15	7,565	9.2
Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church	Evangelical Protestant	4	499	0.6
Baptist Missionary Association of America	Evangelical Protestant	4	1,025	1.2
Black Baptists Estimate	Evangelical Protestant	n.a.	103,916	125.8
Christian and Missionary Alliance, The	Evangelical Protestant	1	83	0.1
Christian Brethren	Evangelical Protestant	1	58	0.1
Christian Churches and Churches of Christ	Evangelical Protestant	5	1,216	1.5
Church of God (Anderson, Indiana)	Evangelical Protestant	3	195	0.2
Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee)	Evangelical Protestant	10	1,645	2.0
Church of God of Prophecy	Evangelical Protestant	4	248	0.3
Church of the Nazarene	Evangelical Protestant	10	1,805	2.2
Churches of Christ	Evangelical Protestant	69	22,839	27.6
Cumberland Presbyterian Church	Evangelical Protestant	12	3,062	3.7
Evangelical Free Church of America, The	Evangelical Protestant	1	60	0.1
Evangelical Presbyterian Church	Evangelical Protestant	2	3,992	4.8
Independent, Charismatic Churches	Evangelical Protestant	9	5,150	6.2
Independent, Non-Charismatic Churches	Evangelical Protestant	10	12,747	15.4
International Pentecostal Holiness Church	Evangelical Protestant	6	727	0.9
Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod	Evangelical Protestant	10	4,781	5.8
National Association of Free Will Baptists	Evangelical Protestant	5	487	0.6
Presbyterian Church in America	Evangelical Protestant	3	451	0.6
Primitive Baptists Associations	Evangelical Protestant	2	142	0.2
Salvation Army, The	Evangelical Protestant	3	329	0.4
Seventh Day Baptist General Conference, USA and Canada	Evangelical Protestant	1	15	0.0
Seventh-day Adventist Church	Evangelical Protestant	8	3,877	4.7
Southern Baptist Convention	Evangelical Protestant	122	169,276	204.9
Wesleyan Church, The	Evangelical Protestant	1	10	0.0
Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod	Evangelical Protestant	1	148	0.2
American Baptist Churches in the USA	Mainline Protestant	6	3,290	4.0
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)	Mainline Protestant	15	10,117	12.2
Episcopal Church	Mainline Protestant	20	10,439	12.6
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America	Mainline Protestant	8	2,207	2.7
Friends (Quakers)	Mainline Protestant	1	52	0.1
Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America	Mainline Protestant	1	21	0.0
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)	Mainline Protestant	30	11,667	14.1
United Church of Christ	Mainline Protestant	2	239	0.3
United Methodist Church, The	Mainline Protestant	69	46,357	56.1
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America	Orthodox	1	n.a.	n.a.
Orthodox Church in America: Territorial Dioceses	Orthodox	1	n.a.	n.a.
Church of Christ, Scientist	Other Theology	3	n.a.	n.a.
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, The	Other Theology	6	2,540	3.1
Jewish Estimate	Other Theology	5	8,417	10.2
Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations	Other Theology	2	694	0.8
	*Totals (Unadjusted)^:**	526	493,615

The population of this county (or equivalent) in 1990 was 826,330. The adherent totals of the religious groups listed above (493,615) include 59.7% of the total population in 1990.

Source

The 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.

[More information on the data collection]

^†The adherence rate provides the number of adherents of a particular group per 1,000 population. For example, in 2000 the Episcopal Church had an adherence rate of approximately 8 (8.1) in Autauga County, Alabama. This means that 8 out of every 1,000 people in Autauga county are Episcopalian.