How Many Americans Use the Internet to Spread Their Faith?

The Pew Research Center released new data this week that sheds light on how Americans use technology to publicly address their religious views.

According to the polling firm's survey results, 20 percent of U.S. adults share their faith online during a regular week, with 46 percent of citizens reporting that they typically see another person talk about their religion as well.

The proportion of Americans who take to the Internet to share their faith is similar to the 23 percent who watch religious television, the 19 percent who listen to Christian rock music and the 20 percent who listen to religious talk radio during a given week, according to Pew.

The research firm also found that 35 percent of respondents claim to attend church weekly, leading to the assumption that other actions — like listening to religious radio and watching TV — complement church attendance and do not generally take the place of it.

The Pew report did seem to find a tie between church attendance and those who share their faith online, as 31 percent of individuals who attend church weekly report sharing their religious views online as opposed to only 8 percent who rarely or never attend services and report doing the same.

Many of the faithful have also been sharing their views offline as well, with 59 percent of white evangelicals, 42 percent of black Protestants, 38 percent of Catholics and 34 percent of white mainline Protestants reporting that they shared their religious perspective with someone offline in the past week.

The data for this survey came from Pew's American Trends Panel, "a nationally representative panel of randomly selected adults in U.S. households."

The statistics in this study were drawn from interviews conducted between May 30 and June 20 among 3,217 respondents, with a margin of error of +/- 2.2 percentage points.

Read the complete results here.

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