Most Practiced Religion in the US

According to Pew Research, 62% of American adults identify as Christian. About 40% claim to be some variation of Protestant and 22% claim Roman Catholic. 29% are religiously unaffiliated. And then you get the mixture of everything else that makes up the remainder of the population.

Identifying as a certain faith doesn’t require much. I often wonder how many of those people that claim a Christian identity actually have any idea of what that means or what the beliefs are. Sometimes I wonder why some people bother to claim a religious identity at all. Do they think they need to claim something? Is it to feel like they are part of a group? Is it something else? I really have no idea of course.

Which leads to a better question. When I asked the question “what is the most practiced religion in the US?” Google gave me information about how Americans identity religiously. Google answered a question I didn’t ask.

Just because someone identifies as a Christian doesn’t mean they actually practice the faith at all. Yes, there are plenty of people who identify and practice Christianity. But there are plenty of people who identify as Christian who do not actually practice the faith. I don’t think that’s a radical statement. It’s more of a range of pretty typical human behavior regardless of whether we are talking about religion or sports or just about anything else. There are people who identify as a runner who never actually run.