I got an inquiry recently about religious statistics in Utah, so I though I would share the information with everyone.

I use two sources to understand the religious composition of Utah.  The first is the web site for The Association of Religious Data Archives – www.thearda.com.  It can be a little challenging to figure out how to navigate to the information you’re looking for, but a little patience will yield results.  For example, I went to the tab “US Congregational Membership” and selected “Reports”.  Typing in my zip code brought up a report of how many people are considered “adherents” of seven major religious traditions in Weber County, where I live.  Here’s the summary:

The same page offers a detailed breakdown by specific religious groups:

On http://thearda.com/rcms2010/selectCounty.asp you can select a state, then browse by counties to get the same basic report for any county in Utah (or Idaho, etc.).

The second resource I use for religious data in Utah is the work of David T. Olson, found at www.theamericanchurch.org.  Olson has organized data for each state and for the main metropolitan areas into Powerpoint presentations.  These presentations cost $14.95 (or $19.95 for a combo pack), but the price is worth it given the amount of research that went into them.  Olson’s approach is different than most because most surveys measure how many people say they were in church on a given Sunday, while Olson tries to measure actual versus self-reported attendance.  The data feels a little bit dated in 2013, but the overall picture seems to be valid.  Here are a couple of samples of the kind of data his presentations offer: