Recovering the Lost: Remeasuring U.S. Religious Affiliation KEVIN D. DOUGHERTY BYRON R. JOHNSON EDWARD C. POLSON Over the past several decades, survey research has found a growing percentage of Americans claiming no religious affiliation. In this article, we introduce a modified religious traditions (RELTRAD) typology to measure religious affiliation. The approach benefits from a more detailed data collection and coding scheme of religious tradition based upon religious family, denomination, and congregation. Using new national survey data from the Baylor Religion Survey, we find: (1) improvement to survey design and measurement makes it possible to accurately locate more Americans within established religious traditions; (2) Americans remain connected to congregations, but less so to denominations or more generic religious identity labels; and (3) religious adherents are considerably more evangelical than prior studies have found. Finally, we consider how affiliation as a form of religious belonging relates to religious beliefs and behaviors. INTRODUCTION Decades of survey research consistently confirm that a very high percentage of Americans believe in God, regularly pray, and consider themselves to be religious. 1 Yet there is at least the perception that many Americans are increasingly uncomfortable or even suspicious of organized religion. Indeed, contemporary survey research would seem to support this widely held notion. For example, in 1988, the General Social Survey (GSS) recorded 8 percent of U.S. adults as having no religious affiliation. Yet by 2004, less than two decades later, the percentage of GSS respondents reporting no religious affiliation topped 14.3 percent. What are we to make of this increase in Americans reporting no religion? It has been argued that this increase in the percentage of those reporting no religion in America may be due to rising secularism or disfavor toward organized religion more generally. Yet, Americans continue to report being highly religious in survey after survey. Perhaps the notable swell in the proportion of respondents falling into the “religious nones” category is more a reflection of a retreat from denominationalism than a retreat from religious affiliation altogether. If so, it may be the case that the increase in religiously unaffiliated is an artifact of current measures of religious affiliation. For example, research has shown that some individuals who express no religious preference actually hold conventional religious beliefs, but choose not to identify with an organized group (Hout and Fischer 2002). This finding substantiates that “unaffiliated” and “nonreligious” are not interchangeable research categories and should not, therefore, be categorized together or treated as one and the same. Methodological innovation may be essential in bringing clarity to this discourse. Darren Sherkat (1999) has also highlighted the impact that misclassification of survey re- spondents’ religious affiliation can have on research findings. While Sherkat’s pronouncement Kevin D. Dougherty is Assistant Professor of Sociology and a research fellow in the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University, One Bear Place #97326, Waco, TX 79798-7326. Byron R. Johnson is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. Edward C. Polson is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Baylor University. Correspondence should be addressed to Kevin D. Dougherty, Department of Sociology, Baylor University, One Bear Place #97326, Waco, TX 79798-7326. E-mail: Kevin Dougherty@baylor.edu. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion (2007) 46(4):483–499