Many Faiths of Many Regions: Exploring County-Level Religion Statistics in the United States

Clifford Grammich, RAND

The recent release of Religious Congregations and Membership in the United States, 2000 (RCMUS 2000) affords a unique opportunity to explore local religious statistics in the United States. The only source of county-level statistics or religion, the study offers comparable statistics to those of a decades-long series and is particularly well suited for exploring more small areas and specific religious bodies as well as longer periods of time than those available in most survey research. This paper will examine two topics on which RCMUS 2000 offers unique insights. First, the author, also one of the co-authors of RCMUS 2000, will review how religious populations have changed nationwide in absolute and relative terms and explore changing regional concentrations of religious groups and their implications. Second, he will examine how the changing distribution of religious bodies in local communities can affect both the demographics of the religious bodies and their new communities.