How religious is Ohio? And how does the state compare to the rest of the county?
This is a question not answered by the U.S. Census Bureau, but one that’s been explored three times by the Pew Research Center, most recently in its national 2024 Religious Landscape Study, which was released Wednesday.
“These studies fill a void in our official data collection,” said John Green, Director Emeritus of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. "The United States census, unlike the census of many other countries, does not ask any questions about religion and there are good reasons for that having to do with the First Amendment and the separation of church and state, but that means that scholars, journalists and public officials don't have a lot of detailed information about religious communities and religiosity."
Green was involved with the 2007 and 2014 Pew Religious Landscape Studies, as well as the most recent study. It was originally set to take place in 2021, but was postponed due to the pandemic.
The survey ultimately took place between July 2023 and March 2024, with 36,908 respondents from around the country. Green said the response rate means there is a great level of detail in the data, and it can give fairly detailed information even about smaller religious communities.
The data
The study found that America is, perhaps not surprisingly, still predominantly Christian, with 62% of U.S. adults self-identifying as such. About 40% of Christians are protestant, 19% Catholic and 3% other.
The nation’s second largest religious group are the unreligious, the unaffiliated, agnostic, atheist and “nones,” who report they are “nothing in particular.” They ring in at about 29% of the national population.
About 7% of adults report belonging to other religions: 2% say they are Jewish, while about 1% each say they are Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or other.
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Green said the most surprising finding from the study, however, was not the demographic breakdown, but a buck in a longtime trend. For years, religious affiliation has been declining. Now, that seems to have paused.
“The level of religious affiliation in the United States has stabilized and that's really quite surprising given all the factors that have been contributing to the decline in affiliation,” Green said.
He suspects part of that comes from an increase in non-Christian faiths that reflect patterns of immigration, but there also appears to be a pause in the decline in people who belong to Christian denominations.
Green speculates that the stabilization may have to do with the convergence of many factors. Maybe people sought religion as a source of comfort during the fraught years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Maybe the relationship between religion and politics has changed enough that people no longer find religious communities so contentious. Or perhaps people in religious communities simply agree with each other more, and the lack of conflict has led people to stay.
Green said, however, the pause in religious decline may soon end, as older generations, who report being more devout overall, begin to pass.
"They're atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers. Many of those people are not hostile to religion. It's just not their thing.”- John Green, Professor Emeritus at the University of Akron
Religion in Ohio and Columbus
Ohio largely mimics the national numbers: 64% of Ohioans also report being Christian. Of those, 26% are evangelical protestants, 16% are mainline protestants and 4% are historically Black protestants, while about 16% are Catholic.
The state is also similar to the nation when it comes to feelings of spiritual well-being, religious attendance, ideas about morality and religion, and standards for “right” and “wrong.”
Columbus adults, on the other hand, report being noticeably less religious than the rest of the state and the nation. Around 53% of Columbus residents self-identify as Christian. About 7% are of another religion, and 39% say they are unaffiliated, which is a 10% jump from the state and nation.
A smaller percent of Columbus respondents said that religion was “very important” to them in comparison with national respondents. And just 18% of Columbus adults say they attend a religious service at least once a week, compared to about a quarter of the U.S. population.
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Green said metropolitan areas tend to look different than the rest of the nation, in part because they are typically more religiously diverse.
“But also, they have the various kinds of non-religious people in large numbers and of course some of those people are people who have strong secular values. They're atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers,” Green said. “Many of those people are not hostile to religion. It's just not their thing.”
About 51% of Columbus adults also identify as Democrats or Democrat-leaning, compared to 46% of the nation as a whole.
“People who identify themselves as political liberals are less likely these days to belong to a religious community of any kind,” Green said.
Columbus adults do say they feel a sense of spiritual well-being about as often as the rest of the nation, and believe in the presence of something from beyond this world at about the same rate as the rest of the U.S.
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A spiritual nation
Green said the study also showed that, while Americans may have some trouble with religious institutions, they are spiritual people overall.
“They believe in the supernatural, many of them. They engage in spiritual practices,” Green said.
About 86% of Americans believe in a soul or spirit, and 83% believe in God or a universal spirit. Plus, 70% of Americans believe in heaven, hell or both.
“They believe in the supernatural many of them. They engage in spiritual practices."-John Green, Professor Emeritus at the University of Akron
Other findings
The detailed, 390-page report also asked specific questions about religion’s place in government and society, as well as specific demographics.
The study found that about two-thirds of adults who attend religious services report that all or most of the people in their congregation are the same race or ethnicity as them.
About 58% of U.S. immigrants are Christians, while about a quarter of foreign-born adults are unaffiliated and 14% belong to other religions.
Significantly fewer young adults identify as Christians compared to older adults. Just 46% of 18-to-24-year-olds report being Christian, whereas 80% of adults ages 74 years or older say they are Christian.
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When it comes to ideology, 3-in-10 Americans say it’s necessary to believe in God to be moral, and just over half of U.S. adults view religious teachings and beliefs as being important for moral decisions.
Highly religious Americans are less likely to say that the government should give more help to those in need. More than one-third of highly-religious Americans say the government should provide less assistance. Meanwhile 72% of atheists say the government could provide more help those in need.
“Some of the more traditional religious communities, particularly evangelical Protestants, have become more Republican in their leanings, more conservative. And many of them are skeptical of what the government may or may not do and that extends to social services,” Green said. “Now many of those same churches in a very traditional way believe in charity, and believe in reaching out and helping disadvantaged people, but they think that's a religious obligation, not a public obligation.”
Overall, U.S. Christians are about equally divided on the question of having a bigger or smaller government, at 49% to 48%.
