• Asian Americans are substantially
more likely to indicate no religious
identity than other racial or ethnic
groups.
One sign of the lack of attachment of
Americans to religion is that 27% do not
expect a religious funeral at their death.
Based on their stated beliefs rather than
their religious identification in 2008,
70% of Americans believe in a personal
God, roughly 12% of Americans are
atheist (no God) or agnostic (unknowable
or unsure), and another 12% are deistic
(a higher power but no personal God).
America’s religious geography has been
transformed since 1990. Religious
switching along with Hispanic
immigration has significantly changed
the religious profile of some states and
regions. Between 1990 and 2008, the
Catholic population proportion of the
New England states fell from 50% to
36% and in New York it fell from 44%
to 37%, while it rose in California from
29% to 37% and in Texas from 23%
to 32%.
Overall the 1990-2008 ARIS time
series shows that changes in religious
self-identification in the first decade of
the 21st century have been moderate in
comparison to the 1990s, which was a
period of significant shifts in the religious
composition of the United States.
