Graphs about Religion

5 days ago | graphsaboutreligion.com | Ryan Burge

I’ve written about this before, but it’s worth repeating here - whenever I tweet a graph that contains a couple of the largest religious groups (evangelicals, Catholics, non-religious), the first question that comes in the comments is inevitably - where are the Latter-day Saints? I can be hyperbolic at times, but I am not exaggerating this at all. It’s this weird little sociological thing that only I can see because I’m one of the few who’s analyzed data on smaller religious groups.

1 week ago | graphsaboutreligion.com | Ryan Burge

Ah, it’s springtime again. My favorite time of year. The days get longer, the grass actually becomes green again, and the school year is coming to a close. That may be my favorite part, by the way. I do enjoy teaching very much, but it’s nice to have a break for about 3 months. I usually spend my summers writing a new book. That will be the case this year, too.

1 week ago | graphsaboutreligion.com | Ryan Burge

So far, I’ve taken a really good look at how three Christian groups voted in the 2024 election - evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and Catholics. But there’s another group that I haven’t examined yet - Black Protestants. Whenever I post a graph that contains a category for Black Protestants I always get a comment or two asking why they are their own group. Let me briefly answer that before diving into the data.

2 weeks ago | graphsaboutreligion.com | Ryan Burge

There’s an inherent tension between the world of religion and the field of social science. Lots of people of faith have a worldview that is based, in large part, on a belief in supernatural phenomenon. For them, the existence of angels, demons, and the Holy Spirit is just an assumption of their worldview. When they are confronted with some data that is saying that one church in their community is growing, they often want to attribute that to some type of supernatural cause.

2 weeks ago | graphsaboutreligion.com | Ryan Burge

If there’s anything I know will get a lot of engagement on social media it’s the simple relationship between education and religious attendance. I think that the assumption that most people have is that educated people tend to be less religious. Which is a viewpoint that I have thought about a lot over the last couple of years. I’m really fascinated by where that whole understanding came from. I think it may be the ghost of Karl Marx haunting us.