What follows is a glimpse of American beliefs and values as distilled from a new national survey.

  • 91.8% claim theism
  • 5.2% claim atheism
  • 31.4% (43.3% in South) claim authoritarian deity
  • 23% (28.7% in Midwest) claim benevolent deity
  • 16% (21.3% in East) claim critical deity
  • 24.4% (30.3% in West) claim distant deity
  • 12.2% against all abortion
  • 31.2% claim deity favors USA

            Gender Race Age Education
  West Midwest South East Total Male Female White Black 18-30 31-44 45-64 65+ High school or less Some college or more
Black Protestant 1.3 5.6 7.2 5.0 5.0 2.8 6.9 0 62.5 3.8 5.4 3.9 7.3 5.0 3.0
Evangelical Protestant 31.7 33.7 50.3 13.1 33.6 30.0 36.7 35.4 9.5 39.0 34.9 31.3 33.1 45.4 23.5
Mainline Protestant 17.7 26.0 19.3 26.0 22.1 22.1 22.1 24.1 7.7 20.1 17.6 22.5 28.1 18.0 29.0
Catholic 19.2 22.1 11.5 35.1 21.2 23.8 18.9 22.8 5.0 10.1 23.0 23.7 19.9 22.0 21.4
Jewish 2.2 1.4 1.9 4.7 2.5 2.5 2.4 2.6 3.7 2.7 1.9 2.7 2.9 2.3 3.6
Other 10.3 3.0 2.7 4.6 4.9 6.0 3.9 4.3 6.0 5.7 5.8 4.8 3.5 2.1 6.7
Unaffiliated 17.6 8.3 7.1 11.6 10.8 12.8 9.0 10.8 5.7 18.6 11.4 11.1 5.4 5.2 12.8

Source: Baylor Religion Survey, margin of error +/- 4 percentage points

This chart contains a few notable points. First, the Evangelical Protestant group is, by far, the largest and has, by far, the largest percentage of members (45.4%) with a high school education or less. It also has one of the largest percentages of members (23.5%) with at least some college education. However, the difference between these two percentages (21.9%) is striking and is, in fact, the largest of any group.

Second, the Unaffiliated group, which is more likely to include atheists than the Other group, assuming that Other refers to other religious preference, is nearly twice as large as the Other group, 3.5 times as large as the Jewish group, and 4.3 times as large as the Black Protestant group.