Study Finds High Religious Affiliation Rates in the U.S.

For immediate release: May 28, 2006

The national rate of congregational adherence is 63 percent-- a significantly higher figure than previous research has found, according to a recent study by Roger Finke and Christopher P. Scheitle of The Association of Religion Data Archives. (ARDA)

The study, published in the Review of Religious Research, adjusts the rate of adherents and members found in the 2000 Religious Congregations and Membership Study (RCMS), which estimated the national adherence rate to be 50 percent. Finke and Scheitle estimated the higher rate of 63 percent by accounting for racial, ethnic and other religious groups long undercounted in previous religious membership and adherence studies.

The RCMS provides the most complete data on religious congregations and their members by counties, including estimates for Muslims, Hindus, and other groups outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The RCMS provided numbers both for individuals with “full membership status” and adherents, defined as “all members, including full members, their children and the estimated number of other participants who are not considered members.”

But because some religious groups were unable or refused to participate in the RCMS, the count was incomplete, according to Finke and Scheitle. The unaccounted groups included African-American churches, large and growing bodies, such as Calvary Chapel Fellowship Churches, the Baptist Bible Fellowship, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, several ethnic Eastern Orthodox denominations, and adherents of non-Christian religions, since only the congregations of these traditions were counted.

Finke and Scheitle added to the RCMS count by making estimates of uncounted members and adherents drawn from other surveys and studies. Because the undercount was unevenly distributed across the states, the corrections provide a clearer regional profile of religion.

Once the corrective is applied, the adherence rates jump sharply for many Southern states, showing the region remains the most religiously active. Alabama and South Carolina jump over 19 points after the adjustment. The adjusted rates also showed that California is no longer a highly unchurched state, with its rate of religious membership jumping from 368 adherents per 1,000 to 542, now exceeding several states in the Midwest and Northeast.

The adjusted rates reduce the racial bias inherent in the uncorrected measures for adherence. While the uncorrected rates did not correlate with the percentage of blacks in a state, the corrected rates held a “positive and highly significant correlation of .38,” confirming that African Americans have a higher rate of religious involvement than the general population and are more concentrated in the South.

Finke and Scheitle also found that an increasing number of African-Americans are attending historically “white” denominations. Estimates in 1971 found only 10 percent of black members outside the historically African-American denominations; 35.1 percent of blacks hold such membership today.

For a complete copy of the Finke and Scheitle paper on church adherence click here.