The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life conducted an extensive poll measuring the religious landscape of the U.S. A summary of the report can be found here. They also created interactive tools to illustrate their findings. I must say they are quite impressive. Not only do they provide detailed information on a visual level (and by state), but it allows you to customize comparisons of statistics of religious traditions side-by-side.

Here is some of the most pertinent and interesting data:

–America is 78% Christian. 51% are Protestant, and 24% are Catholic. A full 26% of the country is Evangelical Protestant.

–Non-Christian religions constitute less than 5% of the nation. Jews take the lead at 1.7% of the population, followed by Buddhists (.7%), Muslims (.6%), and Hindus (.4%).

–16% of the country is not affiliated with any religion. Of this number, only 1.6% are atheists, and 2.4% agnostics. The rest are “nothing in particular.” These people can be secular or religious, but are not affiliated with any religion. A full 1 in 4 young people aged 18-29 claim no religious affiliation.

–The Catholic Church loses the most people to other religions, but their numbers remain static because of Catholic immigrants (mainly from Mexico). One in three adults in the Catholic Church are Latino.

–37% of married couples are married to someone of a different religion (or denomination).

–Only 37% of those who were raised Jehovah’s Witnesses are still JWs. JWs have the lowest retention rate of any religious group.