Utah is widely believed to be a particularly religious state, but the share of Utah adults who identify as religiously unaffiliated is actually several points higher than the national average, according to a major new religion study from Pew Research Center.
The survey, which was fielded in 2023 and 2024, showed that more than one-third of adult Utahns (34%) are religious “nones,” compared to 29% of U.S. adults overall.
Meanwhile, 63% of adults in Utah identify as Christian. That’s in line with the national average of 62%.
A less surprising takeaway from Pew’s new report is that Utah is home to many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Half of Utah adults identify as Latter-day Saints, while just 2% of U.S. adults overall claim the label, according to the report.
The share of Latter-day Saints in Utah is down slightly from 2007, when Pew released its first Religious Landscape Study.
In 2007, 58% of Utah adults identified as Latter-day Saints. In 2014, when Pew fielded its second RLS, 55% did.
Pew’s Religious Landscape Study
Pew’s report, which is nearly 400 pages long, offers an in-depth look at the U.S. religious landscape, including how it’s changed over the past two decades.
Most of the main report is focused on national trends. State-level data is available in an accompanying interactive website.
Here are some other Utah-specific religion facts from the website:
- Two percent of Utah adults identify as a member of a non-Christian faith group.
- Around half of Utah adults (51%) pray at least daily. That figure has dropped 16 percentage points since 2007.
- Forty-three percent of adult Utahns say religion is “very important” to them.
- A similar share of adult Utahns (41%) goes to religious services at least once each week. Just 33% of U.S. adults overall fall into that camp.
- More than 8 in 10 Utah adults (84%) believe in God or a universal spirit, compared to 83% of all U.S. adults.
Pew’s 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study was conducted from July 17, 2023, to March 4, 2024, in English and Spanish.
Pew used address-based sampling to create its nationally representative sample of 36,908 U.S. adults.
The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 0.8 percentage points.
