Talk:Religion in the United States

great article; better graphics svp

can we have a simple summary table without all the sects ? also, IMO, thepie charts don't work - to many colors and to many variable but a simple table, say Christian jewhish moslem etc for the top 10 would be really nice thanks

also, please please less color coding !! if you have to use all these colors, a really bad idea, at least make sure they are consistent thru the entire article !! thanks

Inaccuracies of independent polling section

This section is really low quality and I'm not sure it can really be improved without turning half of the article into a meta discussion about the complexity of religious belief, self identification, and data collection.

The first part is a set of general issues with all non-political polling but the information is presented as a set of pretty vague bullet points. Ignoring the first one which is factually incorrect (polls are generally quite good at predicting election outcomes), the other bullet points are virtually meaningless to anyone who isn't fairly well-read on polling and/or religious demographics. Is it considered good editing practice on Wikipedia to insert a generic warning about issues with polling data in any article that uses polling data?

I don't get what useful point is made by the second part. The paper used as a reference is largely an attempt to argue that the "none" category of answers in religious surveys includes a substantial number of people whose beliefs about religion, spirituality and/or supernatural phenomena could be argued as being closer to having some religious belief than having no religious belief. I don't want to get into a big discussion about the quality of the paper itself (although I am willing to - I think it isn't high enough to be used as the sole source for a claim in a Wikipedia article) but it is a fairly recent paper which has not been cited by other papers at all, so I don't see why it should be taken as a reliable source that reflects academic consensus or debate. Reading it (along with a good portion of the accessible references) makes it quite clear that the authors are extremely vigilant in noting every possible flaw with methodology in studies that they don't like, while citing uncritically studies that agree with them.

The third part is ok in content but I think having an entire sub-heading section with one sentence and one source that effectively says "assume the independent polling data contained in this article is inaccurate" is a bad editorial decision. It's especially bad because this section comes before any of the survey data is presented, which I think conveys the message that this caveat about polling methodology is of greater value to a typical reader interested in Religion in the United States than decades of survey data. And while the general content of this part is ok, I think that, on top of being moved to another section, the bulk of this should be a brief overview of idiosyncratic relationships with religion. The existence of these belief systems and the fairly diverse range of belief systems in the USA is a much more relevant topic to cover in this article than methodological issues with polling/surveys or the opaqueness of the "none" answer. Tasqing (talk) 13:49, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Came here to make the same point. Many of the bullet points seem tenuously related at best, and some are outright false. As noted, it seems pretty straightforwardly false that polling "consistently" fails to predict election results. There exists a margin of error, and there have been some high-profile examples of polling "misses," but polls do have quite strong predictive power. Additionally, political polls attempt to model turnout and capture "likely" voters, which introduces complexity and potential for error that is not a problem for simple opinion and demographic polling. It just doesn't seem necessary to have so large a section just to warn that polls may not be perfectly accurate, so I fully cosign Tasqing's comment above. Specific, relevant, notable critiques might be worth keeping, but a broad suggestion that polling in general is unreliable is silly and irrelevant, and should not be kept in this article. DustyConditions (talk) 06:58, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Intro section is clearly biased

Just compare the intro section to the respective articles on other countries. It is clearly whoever wrote this doesn't like the idea of the USA undergoing secularization, the text fights the idea at every line, and even when it concedes the idea of nones growing, it still claims the they are much more religious and therefone not "none" at all. This intro was clearly written by a conservative christian who doesn't like the idea of the USA becoming more secular. 2804:388:A035:5C20:5B1B:5B72:8841:DE00 (talk) 15:29, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

It's true that there's been massive secularization in the US over the last decade, more so than other Western countries (probably because they've already secularized many decades ago). You should provide some sources, which are easy to find.[2]

Another thing I noticed is that virtually nothing is said about the massive decline in Protestants. The article goes on and on about early history and gives readers the impression that little has changed, when in fact Gallup, cited in the article, shows a massive decline in Protestant adherents: from about 69% in the 1940s down to ~30% of the population today. The Catholic numbers have held at ~22%, although that was likely maintained via Hispanic immigration. Overall, the data shows a consistent decline in American Protestants (and religious adherents generally) and a trajectory that's likely to continue with more secularization.

Another flaw in a lot of American articles is that, while they acknowledge the country as 'diverse,' they tend to speak about cultural factors in homogenizing tones. The lead in this article is a typical example of a piece that starts by acknowledging the country's diverse religious culture but then spends almost the entire section on Protestants, with one measly line about Catholic immigration in the 19th Century. There isn't actually a single "national culture" in the US and religious culture is no different: while American Evangelicalism is dominant in the Bible Belt and Midwest, Catholicism is strong in the Northeast and outnumbers Protestantism in at least 4 critical states, including the NY City area, the largest metropolitan region in the world. The US is perhaps the only developed country that fetishizes its hinterlands and tries to minimize its major metro centers, where in other Western countries it's quite the opposite. Jonathan f1 (talk) 00:33, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

"~30% of the population today" Protestantism is still so influential in the United States? I wonder why. In Europe, Protestantism no longer has much impact. Per the article on Protestantism by country, "Protestants constituted nearly one fifth (or 17.8%) of the continent's Christian population in 2010." Dimadick (talk) 06:14, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

It's true that Protestantism has always been a minority 'religion' (or whatever it is) in Christian Europe and that's still the case. And I don't doubt that the US has the largest population of Protestants of any country, although this is not exactly surprising. It's more interesting that American Protestants were over 2/3rds of the population ~80 years ago and now approaching 1 in 3. The Catholic numbers have barely budged over that same timeframe. At least 4 US states have more Catholics than Protestants -NY, NJ, Rhode Island and Massachusetts -and there seems to be some debate about Connecticut elsewhere on this page.

Of course, when we talk about 'Protestants' we are often grouping denominations that have little in common with each other, but I realize that many reliable sources do this for whatever reason. Roman Catholicism is the largest single denomination/church in the US and has been for some time. There's actually an enormous subset of the US population that has some direct contact with the Catholic Church beyond the number of religious adherents: millions of Americans have been educated at Catholic primary or secondary schools and/or universities, receive healthcare through the Church (as far as I'm aware, the CC is the largest non-profit healthcare provider in the US), treatment at Catholic hospitals or are involved in Catholic charities in some way. I'd say that counts as a lot of 'influence'. Jonathan f1 (talk) 19:20, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, as I raised this same issue on the talk page back in October 2023. These conversations indicate no consensus for removing the paragraphs about secularization and yet there have been repeated attempts to do so. I note that the account that did this most recently was previously banned for edit warring but seems to still be engaging in the same type of behavior. TempDog123 (talk) 06:12, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 April 2024

Please change Mormonism to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

There is no Mormon Church, he was a great man, but we are the church of Jesus Christ 24.149.24.16 (talk) 17:01, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template. This is probably related to the push by the LDS church to distance itself from the "Mormon" label, as mentioned in Name of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints#Informal and abbreviated names. Liu1126 (talk) 18:56, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Should race be a factor when discussing income/education?

There's some ambiguous language and, depending on how it's interpreted, potentially misleading. In one of the sections on income it reads:

"though the overall percentage of Catholics in high income brackets is far lower than the percentage of any Mainline Protestant group in high income brackets, and the percentage of Catholics in high income brackets is comparable to the percentage of Americans in general in high income brackets."

What does "of any Mainline Protestant group" mean? Individual churches, or mainline Protestants as a whole?

Also, when Pew breaks down religious stats, it sometimes differentiates race or ethnicity which sadly affects the way these groups are ranked. For example, there's a higher percentage of white Catholics earning >$100k than white mainline Protestants, although Asian mainline Protestants rank higher than white Catholics. Hispanic Catholics, on the other hand, are at the bottom, which may have something to do with why Catholics appear to be at the population average when grouped together.[3]. In terms of advanced educations, white mainline Protestants and white Catholics are about even (see previous link for income/education data). Jonathan f1 (talk) 23:57, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I removed this paragraph because graphs don't work, and added it here for archival reasons.

Historical trends

• Sources: Based on Pew Center Research, especially editions 2007-2014 and 2019, CID-Gallup Center since 1948, Public Religion Research Institute, Christianity Today 1900-1950:Religious Trends in the United States, The Database of Religious History, and Historical information sources.

References

Change in religious identification, 1950–2020

Percentage of Americans by religious identification (1950 – 2020)

  Protestantism

  Christian (nonspecified)

  Catholicism

  Mormonism

  Jewish

  Other

  Unaffiliated

  No Answer

JohnAdams1800 (talk) 22:54, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

I like the idea of moving graphs to the talk page for archival in case graphs in the form they're in ever come back. Otherwise, if an alternative is created, they could be converted manually or maybe automatically. _Dial^mayo 18:08, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

References

Metaphysically unaffiliated are separate from atheists and agnostics

Wikipedia and the US statistics bureau are confused because they biasedly deem religion (= belief in standardized supernaturalism = teleological causality violations) the hypernym of all metaphysical worldviews.

Rename the article: Metaphysical worldviews in the United States

Not all metaphysical worldviews include the supernatural to be religious or religions.

Hypernyms mustn't be hyponym-based and biased. 2.84.217.128 (talk) 00:53, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 July 2024

Add Oxford comma 64.189.18.51 (talk) 11:09, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Charliehdb (talk) 13:51, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Rewording of line on Judaism & Wealth in section titled "Protestant Denominations"

In the section titled Protestant Denominations, there is the following line:

"Episcopalians and Presbyterians tend to be considerably wealthier and better educated than most other religious groups, and numbers of the most wealthy and affluent American families as the Vanderbilts and Astors, Rockefeller, Du Pont,Roosevelt, Forbes, Fords, Whitneys, Morgans and Harrimans are Mainline Protestant families, though those affiliated with Judaism are the wealthiest religious group in the United States..."

The sources for the part of the sentence highlighted in bold are "WASP—From Sociological Concept to Epithet" and "America's Changing Religious Landscape". The problems with this line and its sources are:

1. The first source, "WASP—From Sociological Concept to Epithet" was published in 1975 and so is almost 50 years old. To put it mildly, the statistics contained in it are out of date. It is thus not a relevant source to site when considering modern demographic statistics, and should not be cited in this article.

2. The second source, "America's Changing Religious Landscape" is a Pew study that is very relevant to this article, but it doesn't quite say that Jews are the wealthiest religious group in the US. What it does say is that Jews and Hindus are significantly more likely to report having incomes over $100,000 per year, as of 2014. However, saying that Jews are more likely to make over $100,000 is not quite the same as saying that Jews are the wealthiest religious group in the US.

Given the points above, I suggest the following:

1. That we remove "WASP—From Sociological Concept to Epithet" from this article given how out of date it is.

2. That we change the wording of this sentence to more accurately match the information contained in "America's Changing Religious Landscape". My suggested wording is:

"Episcopalians and Presbyterians tend to be considerably wealthier and better educated than most other religious groups, and numbers of the most wealthy and affluent American families as the Vanderbilts and Astors, Rockefeller, Du Pont,Roosevelt, Forbes, Fords, Whitneys, Morgans and Harrimans are Mainline Protestant families, though those affiliated with Judaism and Hinduism are significantly more likely to report household incomes of $100,000 or more than other religious denominations, with 44% of Jewish households and 36% of Hindu households reporting incomes over $100,000, compared to an average of 17% for Protestant households and 19% for American households more generally..." sfgfan10 (talk) 21:48, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Have attempted to cleanup this paragraph here, although only partly in the way described above. --Louis P. Boog (talk) 21:47, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

2023 PRRI Survey For Pie Chart

More recent and more specific than the Gallup data since it shows that 40% of America is Protestant.

https://www.prri.org/research/census-2023-american-religion/ 164.119.5.58 (talk) 15:08, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Any explanations of why there are so many Protestants in the United States? Dimadick (talk) 12:58, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

2024 Pew survey for pie chart

41% Protestant 20% Catholic

https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/fact-sheet/national-public-opinion-reference-survey-npors/ 166.181.84.117 (talk) 18:29, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

This should be added as its almost 2025.164.119.5.58 (talk) 15:12, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

It is only one of several surveys even by Pew and isn't finely grained (for instance no separate results for Muslims or Jews or for that matter Christians who don't fall into the Protestant/Catholic divisions [for instance Orthodox or LDS]). Pew itself states they use it primarily for adjusting the results of other surveys (i.e., to counterbalance that some groups use the internet more extensively than others). Erp (talk) 00:12, 7 December 2024 (UTC)