NYC | More Catholic, Jewish, Muslim

At the beginning of the Aeneid, Virgil describes how Aeneas came from Troy to what became Rome and brought his households gods along ("inferretque deos Latio" - he brought with him his religion to Latium). As America's Number One immigrant gateway city, New York City has many Aeneases. What the city lacks in mainline and even evangelical Protestant adherents it more than makes up for in numbers of Catholic, Jewish and Muslim adherents.

NYC vs. Nation: More Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and Less Protestant. New York City is much more Catholic (62 percent versus 44 percent) and much more Jewish (22 percent versus 4.3 percent) than the rest of the United States. It's also more Muslim (more than 2 percent, compared with only about a half of 1 percent of all Americans).

Protestants are much less well represented. Only 4.2 percent of NYC religious adherents belong to evangelical Protestant churches, compared with 28.2 percent nationally. Only 6.5 percent belong to mainline Protestant churches, compared with 18.5 percent nationally.

By Borough. Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn have a higher proportion of Jews and Muslims, while Staten Island and the Bronx are much more Catholic. Manhattan has the highest proportion of mainline Protestants, while Brooklyn leads in numbers of Evangelical Protestants.

Percent of All Adherents by Borough
Catholic Bk 58.8% M 52.5% Q 60.0% SI 79.6% Bx 77.5%
Evangelical Protestant Bk 5.5% M 3.0% Q 3.9% SI 2.8% Bx 4.2%
Mainline Protestant Bk 6.6% M 9.3% Q 5.7% SI 4.3% Bx 4.7%
Jewish Bk 24.4% M 29.2% Q 22.2% SI 10.1% Bx 11.2%
Muslim Bk 3.7% M 3.4% Q 4.9% SI 2.4% Bx 1.6%
Eastern Orthodox Bk 0.7% M 1.8% Q 2.7% SI 0.6% Bx 0.5%

Source: Andrew Beveridge of Queens College, CUNY in Gotham Gazette today, using data released February 1 by Social Explorer and the Association of Religious Data Archives.