I started with google and typed in the search bar, religious affiliation, the first two websites were statistics on religion in America, both were the same site. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life Project has conducted reports on the religious affiliation on the U.S. population for many years. The reason the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life Project was created was to conduct research to see how religion relates to public and political life. This seems to be the official website for research on religious affiliation, many other articles such as the washington post use information from this site. The most recent report is conducted from May 8 to August 13, 2007. The conductors were Princeton Survey Research Associates International. Yet the ones who interviewed were Princeton Data Source, LLC, Schulman, Ronca, Bucuvalas, Inc. Specifically, the interviews were done by telephoning households in United States and then they either communicate with English or Spanish depending on the respondent. They ask many questions, from little details like do you belive in god to exactly what religion do you believe in. They also ask the respondents questions like how firm are they in their belief, do they frequently go to church, if it will be a lifelong commitment, how many religion do they believe in etc. They have conducted their studies by interviewing with more than 35,000 American adults age 18 or older. The most recent religious landscape of America was conducted with 35,556 recipients, representative of all American Adults, with 0.6% margin of error. From the graph their website provided, I could tell that more than 78.4% of adults are religiously affiliated; according to the website, in past years it has been higher. From the study they concluded that America is on the verge of becoming a minority protestant country. The people who identify themselves as protestant was as high as 51%. They have found that the religious affiliation in the U.S. is both very diverse and fluid. A logical conclusion considering that America stresses freedom of religion. <http://religions.pewforum.org/reports#>

I have found a religious affiliation chart website, but it seems this wasn’t a recent reliable website. Instead, from the descriptions I see, this website just put together a chart composed from 21 sources that redirect viewers to the source. The sources that this provided seemed to date back as far as 2000 years or so. The subjects of the study contain people of significance, and people who have contributed to the human race. The website contains 100 most influential people in history, in film history, screen legends, movie stars, rock and roll artists, U.S. Presidents, Senators, Supreme Court Justices, Governors, Vice Presidents, Canadian Prime Ministers, writers, artists, philosophers, scientists. So maybe, the chart isn’t representative of the population of current America but it is still significant for people who need information on the religious affiliation of people notable in history. It is evident that there were some Western and American bias, but overall this was an interesting website. The chart didn’t include a category of other, they tried to list all religions possible, and the chart was structured weirdly, making it confusing and hard to interpret. It listed percentages of religious affiliation from a source, and the grand total probably exceed 200% if it were all added up. All in all this website contributes interesting information but irrelevant to our time period. <http://www.adherents.com/religion_chart.html>

I conclude that there are many relevant background data on my topic specifically one was the most relevant of all, The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life Project .