Researches found that 95 percent of the U.S. population is either Christian or religiously unaffiliated, while all other religions combined account for 5 percent of Americans. Because of this, the U.S. ranks 68th out of 232 countries and territories on Pew’s Religious Diversity Index.
“The U.S. has an enormous variety of Christian denominations, and if diversity within the world’s largest faith were taken into account, the United States likely would rank higher. But the study treats Christianity no differently than Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or Judaism — all of which also have a lot of internal diversity, yet are considered as single religions in the study,” wrote Alan Cooperman and Michael Lipka, of the Pew Research Center.
Six of the top 12 countries and territories on the Religious Diversity Index are in Asia (Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, China and Hong Kong), which have strong Buddhist, Christian and unaffiliated populations. On the other end of the spectrum — the places with the least religious diversity — were Vatican City (more than 99 percent Christian) and overwhelmingly Muslim countries such as Morocco, Somalia and Afghanistan.
According to The Association of Religion Data Archives, Spokane reflects U.S. trends. Most residents claim to be unaffiliated, followed by Catholics (66,202) and Evangelicals (64,277). To compare, Spokane is home to less than 300 Bahá’í adherents, approximately 50 Hindus and about 300 Muslims.
Doesn’t that just reflect what real un-suppressed history says about our country, while never legally Christian, that we were founded on biblical principles and for most of our history practiced that? Our federal buildings have it engraved on them, for crying out loud. I’m thankful for this finding, perhaps there is still hope for our country.