Religious identity in the United States includes formal affiliation, denominational identity, family background, cultural connection, and personal spiritual description. The 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study (RLS) found that 62% of U.S. adults identified as Christian, 29% were religiously unaffiliated, and 7.1% identified with a religion other than Christianity. These figures describe adults’ current self-identification; they do not measure every aspect of belief or participation.
Contents
- U.S. religious composition and long-term change
- Christian and Protestant identity
- Religiously unaffiliated identity
- Identity with non-Christian religions
- Religious identity switching and retention
- Cultural, ethnic and family-based identity
- Religious and spiritual self-description
U.S. religious composition and long-term change
The share of U.S. adults identifying as Christian has declined across the RLS waves. Christianity accounted for 78% of adults in the 2007 RLS, 71% in the 2014 RLS, and 62% in the 2023-24 RLS. The corresponding RLS measurement periods matter: these are separate survey waves, not a single annual series.
Protestant identity also became less common over the same comparison. In the 2007 RLS, 51% of U.S. adults identified as Protestant. That share was 40% in the 2023-24 RLS. Catholic identity was 24% in 2007, 21% in 2014, and 19% in 2023-24.
| Identity | 2007 RLS | 2014 RLS | 2023-24 RLS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Christian | 78% | 71% | 62% |
| Protestant | 51% | — | 40% |
| Catholic | 24% | 21% | 19% |
| Religiously unaffiliated | 16% | 23% | 29% |
Source: Pew Research Center, “Religious identity in the United States”. The table preserves the periods reported in that source; a dash means that the supplied figures did not include a 2014 Protestant percentage.
The unaffiliated share moved in the opposite direction: 16% of U.S. adults were religiously unaffiliated in 2007, compared with 23% in 2014 and 29% in 2023-24. Across Pew surveys conducted since 2020, the unaffiliated share ranged from 28% to 31% of U.S. adults. That range shows a relatively consistent recent level across the cited 2020-2024 surveys, while the longer RLS comparison shows the change from 2007.
Among Americans born in the 1980s, the unaffiliated share rose from 26% in 2007 to 37% in 2023-24. This is a comparison of the same birth decade across the two stated RLS periods, not a forecast of future identity.
Christian and Protestant identity
Christian identity includes several distinct denominational and congregational groupings. In the 2023-24 RLS, 12% of U.S. adults identified with Baptist denominational families, while 7% identified as nondenominational Protestants. Four percent identified with the Southern Baptist Convention and 3% with the United Methodist Church.
Some smaller Christian identities were measured separately. Two percent of U.S. adults identified as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in each of the 2007, 2014, and 2023-24 RLS waves. In the 2023-24 RLS, 1% identified as Orthodox Christian, fewer than 1% identified as Jehovah’s Witnesses, and 1% identified with more than one Christian group or another smaller Christian group.
These categories should not be added casually to estimate a total Christian population. The study uses its own response categories, and some figures describe denominational families while others describe specific groups. A person may also have a cultural or family connection to a tradition that differs from their current religious identity.
Religiously unaffiliated identity
“Religiously unaffiliated” is a broad identity category rather than one single belief position. In the 2023-24 RLS, 29% of U.S. adults were unaffiliated. Within the supplied breakdown, 5% identified as atheist, 6% as agnostic, and 19% described their religion as “nothing in particular.”
The categories are useful for showing variation inside the unaffiliated population. Atheist and agnostic identities are not interchangeable, and “nothing in particular” describes a different kind of response. The 19% figure is therefore not a measure of atheism, and the 29% total should not be interpreted as saying that all unaffiliated adults reject spirituality or religious ideas.
The spiritual self-descriptions reported in the 2023-24 RLS illustrate that distinction. Fifty-eight percent of adults who described their religion as “nothing in particular” said they were at least somewhat spiritual. The corresponding share was 47% among agnostics and 24% among atheists. These figures concern self-description, not a test of doctrine or a measure of participation.
Identity with non-Christian religions
In the 2023-24 RLS, 7.1% of U.S. adults identified with a religion other than Christianity, compared with 4.7% in the 2007 RLS. The 2023-24 figures included several specific identities: 1.7% identified as Jewish, 1.2% as Muslim, 1.1% as Buddhist, and 0.9% as Hindu.
The study also reported that fewer than 0.3% identified with other world religions, while 1.9% identified with something else religiously. Because the categories have different levels of precision, “less than 0.3%” should not be treated as an exact percentage. Likewise, the figures identify how respondents described themselves during the 2023-24 RLS; they are not population forecasts.
Identity retention varies across traditions. Among adults raised Hindu, 82% still identified as Hindu in adulthood in the 2023-24 RLS. The corresponding figures were 77% among adults raised Muslim and 76% among adults raised Jewish. These are adult retention measures comparing childhood religious upbringing with current adult identity in that RLS.
Religious identity switching and retention
Religious switching measures the relationship between the identity in which adults were raised and the identity they reported as adults. In the 2023-24 RLS, 35% of U.S. adults had a religious identity different from the one in which they were raised, counting Protestantism as one category.
The balance of movement was not the same for every tradition. For every U.S. adult who became Christian after being raised in another religion or with no religion, six left Christianity for another identity or had no current religious answer. For Protestantism, 1.8 adults left for every one who became Protestant after being raised elsewhere or without a religion. For Catholicism, 8.4 adults left for every one who became Catholic after being raised elsewhere or without a religion.
The unaffiliated category also showed an asymmetrical pattern. For every adult raised religiously unaffiliated who joined a religion, 5.9 adults left a childhood religion and became unaffiliated in the 2023-24 RLS. These ratios describe the direction and relative balance of reported identity changes; they do not mean that the same individuals switched repeatedly or that a particular person’s path can be inferred from the population ratio.
The retention figures provide another way to read the same broad issue. Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish adults had reported adult retention levels of 82%, 77%, and 76%, respectively, among those raised in each tradition. Retention and switching are related but not identical measures: one focuses on staying with a childhood identity, while the other summarizes movement between childhood and adult identities.
Cultural, ethnic and family-based identity
Religious identity can remain meaningful as a cultural, ethnic, or family connection even when a person gives another answer for current religion. The Pew Research Center’s 2023-24 analysis found that 12% of U.S. adults identified as Catholic aside from religion while identifying religiously as something else.
Among adults who identified as Catholic aside from religion, 57% said they were raised Catholic. Including family partnership, 62% were either raised Catholic or had a Catholic spouse or partner. At the same time, 51% were religiously unaffiliated by current religion. These findings show why a single current-affiliation question may not capture every way people relate to a tradition.
Other groups also appeared in the cultural or family-based measures. Three percent of U.S. adults identified as Jewish aside from religion, and 3% identified as Buddhist aside from religion. The corresponding shares were 1% for Muslim identity aside from religion and 1% for Hindu identity aside from religion.
Source: Pew Research Center, “Identifying with US religious groups for cultural, ethnic or familial reasons”. These figures describe the 2023-24 RLS and should not be read as counts of current formal affiliation.
Religious and spiritual self-description
Religious affiliation and spirituality overlap for many adults, but they are not the same measure. In the 2023-24 RLS, 85% of Christians described themselves as at least somewhat spiritual. The figure was 77% among adults identifying with non-Christian religions, 60% among Jewish adults, and 50% among religiously unaffiliated adults.
Within the unaffiliated population, 24% of atheists, 47% of agnostics, and 58% of adults who described their religion as “nothing in particular” said they were at least somewhat spiritual. These differences reinforce that “unaffiliated” includes people with varied self-understandings.
Across U.S. adults overall, 53% said they were both at least somewhat spiritual and at least somewhat religious in the 2023-24 RLS. The wording matters: “at least somewhat” includes a broad range of personal intensity, and the result is a self-description rather than an external classification.
Source: Pew Research Center, “How Americans see themselves spiritually, religiously”. Taken together with the identity results, the measure suggests that religious labels, cultural ties, and spiritual self-descriptions answer different questions about how U.S. adults understand themselves.