New York SBDC Research Network

You can find details on the religious composition of the United States, including religious makeup, religious beliefs and practices in the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey . More than a study of religion, the Pew survey also includes the social and political attitudes affiliated with religious traditions in the United States. The survey is based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans. One element I found particularly interesting is A Brief History of Religion and the U.S. Census . From the document: The U.S. Census Bureau has not asked questions about religion since the 1950s, but the federal government did gather some information about religion for about a century before that. Starting in 1850, census takers began asking a few questions about religious organizations as part of the decennial census that collected demographic and social statistics from the general population as well as economic data from business establishments...Although the census takers did not interview indiv...

The Association of Religious Data allows you to interactively explore the highest quality data on American and international religion using online features for generating national profiles, maps, church membership overviews, denominational heritage trees, tables, charts, and other summary reports. Over 350 data files are available for online preview and most can be downloaded for additional research. I had a question about the number people practicing Islam in parts of New York for a question about the dietary practice known as halal . I used The ARDA search mechanism and found files describing the number of Muslims by county. Other sources of religious data: Hartford Institute for Religion Research and Glenmary Research - the latter especially good for a breakdown of Roman Catholic numbers. Not so incidentally, it would be a mistake to assume that most U.S. Arabs are Muslims. In fact, if you go here , you'll see that most Arab-Americans are Christians.