Besides, a growing percentage of Asian Americans are not affiliated with any religion, and the share who identify as Christian has declined, according to a new Pew Research Center survey exploring religion among Asian American adults
Indian Americans are far more likely than the other large Asian origin groups to be Hindu (48%), though a fair number of Indian Americans are Christian (15%), Muslim (8%) or Sikh (8%). Besides, a growing percentage of Asian Americans are not affiliated with any religion, and the share who identify as Christian has declined, according to a new Pew Research Center survey exploring religion among Asian American adults, reported Indicanews.
Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to understand the religious identities, experiences and practices of people of Asian origin or ancestry living in the United States.The study is part of the Center’s multiyear research effort focused on the nation’s Asian population. Its centerpiece is a nationally representative survey of 7,006 Asian adults.
The survey sampled US adults who self-identify as Asian, either alone or in combination with other races or Hispanic ethnicity. It was offered in six languages: Hindi, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), English, Korean, Tagalog and Vietnamese.
Responses were collected from July 5, 2022, to January 27, 2023, by Westat on behalf of Pew Research Center. The survey included a large enough sample to report on the views of the six biggest origin groups among Asian Americans: Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese. Together, these six groups constitute 81% of all U.S. Asian adults, according to a Center analysis of the Census Bureau’s 2021 American Community Survey (ACS). These six groups are discussed throughout the report.
Christianity is still the largest faith group among Asian Americans (34%). But Christianity has also seen the sharpest decline, down 8 percentage points since 2012. Asian American Christians are about evenly split between Catholics and Protestants (17% and 16% of all U.S. Asian adults, respectively)
Findings for Asian origin groups other than the six largest are also included in the report — in the survey findings for U.S. Asian adults overall, and in findings about the “NET East Asian,” “NET South Asian” and “NET Southeast Asian” populations. Origin groups other than the six largest each comprise about 2% or less of the Asian population in the U.S., making it challenging to recruit nationally representative samples for any of them.
Survey respondents were drawn from a national sample of residential mailing addresses, which included addresses from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Specialized surnames list frames maintained by the Marketing Systems Group were used to supplement the sample. Those eligible to complete the survey were offered the opportunity to do so online or by mail with a paper questionnaire. But the survey also shows that 40% of Asian Americans say they feel close to some religious tradition for reasons aside from religion. For example, just 11% of Asian American adults say their religion is Buddhism, but 21% feel close to Buddhism for other reasons, such as family background or culture.
Today, 32% of Asian Americans are religiously unaffiliated, up from 26% in 2012.
Christianity is still the largest faith group among Asian Americans (34%). But Christianity has also seen the sharpest decline, down 8 percentage points since 2012. Asian American Christians are about evenly split between Catholics and Protestants (17% and 16% of all U.S. Asian adults, respectively).
Various other religious groups (including Jains, Sikhs, Jews, Daoists, and others) together make up about 4% of all Asian American adults.
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