Religious Identification Groupings

The thirteen religious groupings in this taxonomy may appear rather arbitrary aggregations of denominations and traditions. For instance, the category of Mainline Christians contains large groups such as Methodists, Lutherans, and Presbyterians that we analyzed separately in the ARIS report. There is no room here to explain the detailed theological and historical reasoning behind this decision except to say that we have tended to follow accepted practice among students of American religion. We also needed to have a manageable number of religious groupings for presentational purposes and a sufficient number of cases in each grouping for statistical purposes.

It is also necessary to say something about the Jewish population categorized here. These are self-defined Jews by religion only. Other questions in ARIS inquired into the ethnic or cultural background of the respondents, and these alternative or additional criteria elicited almost double the number and percentage of Jews in the U.S. population compared with those who identified themselves as Jewish in response to the question, "What is your religion, if any?" However, for the purposes of this study, these "secular" and "other religion" Jews were placed in the relevant religious categories-for example, "Nones," New Religious Movements, Eastern religions, and Christian denominations (Messianic Jews).