Religious Demographics in Motion: Updates and Analysis
The 2024 PRRI Census of American Religion is an annual update to the 2023 PRRI Census of American Religion, which provides reliable, comprehensive county-level estimates on religious affiliation and diversity across the United States. View the 2023 PRRI Census of American Religion county-level estimates.
For the 2024 PRRI Census of American Religion, a random sample of 40,000 Americans who are part of Ipsos KnowledgePanel reveals that most trends in American religious affiliation at the national level saw little change between 2023 and 2024. Percentages of non-Christian religious Americans as well as unaffiliated Americans are similar to those in 2023. Around two-thirds of Americans (65%) continue to identify as Christian, including 40% who identify as white Christian and 25% who identify as Christians of color, in 2024. These percentages closely match those in 2023, when 66% of Americans identified as Christian, including 41% as white Christians and 25% as Christians of color.
The American Religious Landscape in 2024
In 2024, the percentage of white Christian Americans continues a trend of gradual decline from a peak of 47% in 2013. In contrast, religiously unaffiliated Americans have steadily increased since 2013, reaching a new peak of 28% in 2024. The percentage of Christians of color has remained consistent during the same time period. The remaining 6% of Americans belong to a non-Christian religion, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Unitarian Universalism, or another world religion.
White Christians in 2024 include 13% of Americans who identify as white evangelical Protestant or white mainline/non-evangelical Protestant, 12% who identify as white Catholic, and small percentages of Latter-day Saints (2%) or Orthodox Christians (less than 1%). Over the past decade, the percentage of white evangelical Protestants has decreased by 4 percentage points from 17% in 2013, continuing a trend of decline since 2006, when nearly one-quarter of Americans identified as white evangelical Protestant (23%). White mainline/non-evangelical Protestants and white Catholics have also gradually decreased since 2006, from 18% and 16%, respectively.
Age and Americans’ Religious Affiliation
Sharp generational divides in religious affiliation have been a major force in reshaping the nation’s religious landscape. Younger Americans are less likely than older Americans to identify as Christian overall and have become increasingly less likely to do so over the past decade. A slim majority of young Americans ages 18-29 identify as Christian (54%), a slight decline of 4 percentage points from 58% in 2013. Most of this shift is driven by Christians of color dropping from 30% to 26%, while young white Christians stayed the same (28%).
Nearly six in ten Americans ages 30-49 (59%) identify as Christian. White Christians in this age group have dropped significantly from 41% in 2013 to 32% in 2024, while Christians of color have stayed about the same (28% to 27%). Americans ages 50-64 have also experienced a decline in Christian identity. The percentage of white Christians in this age group dropped from 55% to 46%, while Christians of color increased from 22% to 27% over the past decade. Finally, while most Americans ages 65 and older identify as Christian, they are three times as likely to identify as white Christians (57%) than Christians of color (19%). This gap was even wider in 2013, when two-thirds of senior Americans identified as white Christians (67%) and just 15% identified as Christians of color. The percentages of Americans who are members of non-Christian religions are relatively stable across age groups and are similar to the percentages seen among all Americans.
Younger Americans are far more likely to identify as religiously unaffiliated than they were in the past. Today, about four in ten Americans ages 18-29 identify as religiously unaffiliated (38%), an increase of 6 percentage points from 32% in 2013. Over one-third of Americans ages 30-49 identify as religiously unaffiliated (34%), an increase of over 10 percentage points since 2013 (23%). The share of older Americans who are religiously unaffiliated is smaller: 22% of those ages 50-64 and 18% of Americans ages 65 or over. Their shares have also increased since 2013, when 16% of Americans ages 50-64 and 11% of Americans ages 65 identified as religiously unaffiliated.
Party Affiliation and Religious Identity
While both major political parties and independents are majority Christian, Republicans (84%) are more likely than Democrats (58%) to do so. The racial makeup of Christians within each party is vastly different. Within the Republican party, the largest group is white Christians (68%), including 29% who are white evangelical Protestants, 19% who are white mainline Protestants, and 17% who are white Catholics, compared with 16% who identify as Christians of color. The remainder of Republicans (16%) identify as religiously unaffiliated (12%) or as Jewish (2%), Hindu (1%), or belong to other non-Christian religions (1%).
In contrast, Democrats are more likely to identify as Christians of color (35%) than white Christian (23%). The largest Christian groups among Democrats are Black Protestants (15%), Hispanic Catholics (11%), white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants (10%), and white Catholics (9%). The remainder of Democrats (43%) identify primarily as religiously unaffiliated (34%) and roughly one in ten as either Jewish (3%), Muslim (1%), Buddhist (1%), Hindu (1%), Unitarian Universalist (1%), or members of other non-Christian religions (2%). Independents closely align with all Americans in their religious breakdowns, but independents are more likely than Americans overall to identify as religiously unaffiliated (33% vs. 28%).
The Democratic party tends to resemble younger Americans (ages 18-29) in its religious makeup broadly. While 23% of Democrats identify as white Christians, 35% as Christians of color, 9% as another religion, and 34% as religiously unaffiliated, a slightly higher percentage of Americans ages 18-29 identify as white Christians (28%), followed by 26% as Christians of color, 7% as another religion, and 38% as religiously unaffiliated. Americans ages 30-49 also share similar religious breakdowns, with 32% who identify as white Christians, 27% as Christians of color, 7% as another religion, and 34% as religiously unaffiliated. Nearly half of Americans ages 50-64 identify as white Christians (46%), 27% as Christians of color, 5% as another religion, and 22% as religiously unaffiliated.
By contrast, the Republican party’s religious breakdown is more akin to older Americans (ages 65 and older). While two-thirds of Republicans identify as white Christians (68%), 16% as Christians of color, 4% as another religion, and 12% as religiously unaffiliated, the majority of senior Americans also identify as white Christian (57%), followed by 19% as Christian of color, 6% as another religion, and 18% as religiously unaffiliated.
Though the religious breakdown of the major parties has not shifted significantly in the past year, there have been considerable changes since 2013. Overall, Christian identity has declined significantly among both Republicans and Democrats. Democrats who are Christian dropped from 70% in 2013 to 58% in 2024, with white Christian Democrats primarily driving the decrease (from 34% to 23%), while the proportion of Democrats who identify as Christians of color remained largely unchanged (36% in 2013; 35% in 2024). In addition, Democrats have grown significantly more likely to identify as religiously unaffiliated, from 22% in 2013 to 34% in 2024.
In contrast, the percentage of Republicans who are Christian slightly declined by 2 percentage points since 2013, from 86% to 84%, with a 7-percentage-point decline in white Christian Republicans (75% to 68%). However, the percentage of Republicans who identify as Christians of color has risen from 11% to 16%, helping mitigate the overall decline. Republicans who identify as religiously unaffiliated have remained largely unchanged (10% to 12%).
The percentage of independents who are Christian mirrors closely all Americans, declining from 44% to 38% among white Christians, while Christian independents of color remained largely unchanged (21% vs. 22%). Independents have grown more likely to identify as religiously unaffiliated, from 27% in 2013 to 33% in 2024.
LGBTQ Identity and Religious Affiliation
Four in ten LGBTQ Americans (37%) identify as Christian, compared with nearly seven in ten straight Americans (69%). Straight Americans are significantly more likely than LGBTQ Americans to identify as white Christian (43% vs. 18%) or as Christians of color (26% vs. 19%). LGBTQ Americans are more than twice as likely to be religiously unaffiliated than straight Americans (54% vs. 25%). Over time, LGBTQ Americans have grown more likely to identify as religiously unaffiliated, from 46% in 2016 to 54% in 2024, whereas straight religiously unaffiliated Americans shifted little in the same timeframe (23% in 2016 to 25% in 2024). Membership in other religious groups among both LGBTQ and straight Americans has remained consistent since 2016.
Survey Methodology
The 2024 Census of Religion of America consists of demographic information drawn from a random sample of 40,000 adults (age 18 and up) living in all 50 states and the District of Columbia who are part of the Ipsos KnowledgePanel.
The KnowledgePanel’s recruitment process uses an address-based sampling methodology to select households from the United States Postal Service’s Delivery Sequence File — a database that contains all delivery addresses in the country. As such, it covers all households regardless of their phone status, providing a representative sample. Unlike opt-in panels, households are not permitted to “self-select” into the panel, and participants are generally limited on the number of surveys they can take within a given time period.
This sample of 40,000 adults was selected based on panelists who provided their religious affiliation to KnowledgePanel between January 1, 2024, and December 31, 2024. The sample was weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population based on these dimensions with additional nesting of dimensions as well: age, race and ethnicity, gender, Census region, metropolitan status, state, education, household income, language dominance, and political party affiliation using an iterative proportional fitting (IPF) process that simultaneously balances the distributions of all variables. The needed benchmarks were from the 2023 March Supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS), except language dominance, which is not available from CPS and was obtained from the 2022 American Community Survey (ACS). Additionally, political party affiliation benchmark was obtained from the Pew’s 2024 National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS). Weights were trimmed to prevent individual interviews from having too much influence on the final results.
The margin of error for the national survey is +/- 0.69 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence, including the design effect for the survey of 2.00. In addition to sampling error, surveys may also be subject to error or bias due to question wording, context, and order effects. Additional details about KnowledgePanel can be found on the Ipsos website: https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/solution/knowledgepanel