What The GSS Tells Us About American Religion

(ANALYSIS) One of the most important cyclical events in my life as a data analyst of American religion is the semi-regular release of the General Social Survey.

I feel like I’ve written ad nauseam about the GSS, but for those who are new to this little world, let me give you a very brief primer as to the importance of this single survey.

It’s been fielded on a regular basis since 1972 and the true value of the instrument lies in the fact that it asks the same questions in the same way using a very similar method in its administration. Which means that it provides really the only way for us to track religion in a methodologically rigorous way over such a long time horizon.

I was more than pleased that the Association of Religion Data Archives had already managed to upload the 2024 General Social Survey to their website just a few weeks after the GSS was released.

One of the unexpected benefits of this is that you can really see the whole codebook in a single, easy to navigate page.

Otherwise you have to use the GSS’s website (which only allows for searching for variables individually) or download the PDF of the codebook. Which is really quite cumbersome at 600+ pages.

I’ve already run a full post about the current shifts in the RELTRAD variable, but I wanted to do a really tight “zoom in” on the changes in the religious composition of the GSS before the pandemic and then in the 2024 data. So, here’s how things have shifted since 2016.

You can read the rest of this post on Substack.

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Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on X at @ryanburge.