The 2021 Census of American Religion update is part of an annual update to PRRI’s groundbreaking 2020 Census of American Religion, the first study to provide reliable county-level religious affiliation data.

PRRI’s 2021 American Values Atlas, a project of 40,000 surveys throughout 2021, shows that most trends in religious affiliation moved little between 2020 and 2021. Notably, the proportion of white Christians in the country, which had declined from 72% in 1990 to 42% in 2018, has converged at 44% in 2020 and 45% in 2021.[1] The proportion of those who are religiously unaffiliated has steadied as well, after rising from 16% in 2006 to nearly 26% in 2018. After a brief downward blip to 23% in 2020, 25% of Americans are in the religiously unaffiliated category, the 2021 AVA shows.