Buddhists and Hindus now account for about the same share of the US public as Jews (roughly 2%), a survey, according to a comprehensive, nationwide survey of Asian Americans conducted by the Pew Research Center.

At the same time, most Asian Americans belong to the country’s two largest religious groups: Christians and people who say they have no particular religious affiliation. Christians are the largest religious group among US Asian adults (42%), and the unaffiliated are second (26%). Buddhists are third, accounting for about one-in-seven Asian Americans (14%), followed by Hindus (10%), Muslims (4%) and Sikhs (1%). Followers of other religions make up 2% of US Asians.

A majority of Filipinos in the US are Catholic, while a majority of Korean Americans are Protestant. About half of Indian Americans are Hindu, while about half of Chinese Americans are unaffiliated. A plurality of Vietnamese Americans are Buddhist, while Japanese Americans are a mix of Christians, Buddhists and the unaffiliated.

When it comes to religion, the Asian-American community is a study in contrasts, encompassing groups that run the gamut from highly religious to highly secular, the survey found. For example, Asian Americans who are unaffiliated tend to express even lower levels of religious commitment than unaffiliated Americans in the general public; 76% say religion is not too important or not at all important in their lives, compared with 58% among unaffiliated US adults as a whole.

By contrast, Asian-American evangelical Protestants rank among the most religious groups in the US, surpassing white evangelicals in weekly church attendance (76% vs. 64%). The overall findings, therefore, mask wide variations within the very diverse Asian-American population.

The survey was conducted by Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life and Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends project. “Asian Americans: A Mosaic of Faiths” is the second report based on a nationally representative survey of Asian Americans, which was conducted between January 3 and March 27. The first report on the survey’s findings, “The Rise of Asian Americans,” was released in June. This report examines the same fast-growing population but uses religious affiliation, rather than country of origin, as the primary frame of analysis. The survey is based on telephone interviews, offered in English and seven Asian languages, with 3,511 Asian-American adults (18 years of age and older) living in the United States. The survey was conducted in all 50 states, including Alaska and Hawaii, and the District of Columbia.

Additional key findings include:

· Asian Americans as a whole are less likely than Americans overall to believe in God and to pray on a daily basis. But these measures may not be very good indicators of religion’s role in a mostly non-Christian population that includes Buddhists and others from non-theistic traditions. Most Asian-American Buddhists and Hindus, for instance, maintain traditional religious beliefs and practices. Two-thirds of Buddhists surveyed believe in ancestral spirits (67%), while three-quarters of Hindus keep a shrine in their home (78%), and 95% of all Indian-American Hindus say they celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights.

·  While Asian Americans contribute to the diversity of religion in the U.S., the survey finds evidence that they are also adapting to the U.S. religious landscape. For example, roughly three-quarters of both Asian-American Buddhists (76%) and Asian-American Hindus (73%) celebrate Christmas. Three-in-ten (30%) of the Hindus and 21% of the Buddhists surveyed say they sometimes attend services of different religions (not counting special events such as weddings and funerals). And while about half (54%) of Asian Americans who were raised Buddhist remain Buddhist today, substantial numbers have converted to Christianity (17%) or become unaffiliated with any particular faith (27%).

· U.S. Buddhists and Hindus tend to be inclusive in their understanding of faith. Most Asian-American Buddhists (79%) and Asian-American Hindus (91%), for instance, reject the notion that their religion is the one, true faith and say instead that many religions can lead to eternal life (or, in the case of Buddhists, to enlightenment). In addition, the vast majority of Buddhists (75%) and Hindus (90%) say there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their religion. By contrast, Asian-American Protestants—particularly evangelical Protestants—are more inclined to believe their religion is the one, true faith leading to eternal life. Indeed, Asian-American evangelicals are more likely than white evangelical Protestants in the U.S. to take this position. Nearly three-quarters of Asian-American evangelicals (72%) say their religion is the one, true faith leading to eternal life, while white evangelical Protestants are about evenly split, with 49% saying their religion is the one, true faith leading to eternal life and 47% saying many religions can lead to eternal life.

· The religious affiliation of the six largest subgroups of Asian Americans generally reflects the religious composition of each group’s country of origin. In some cases, however, the percentage of Christians among Asian-American subgroups is much higher than in their ancestral lands. For example, 31% of the Chinese Americans surveyed are Christian; the vast majority, though not all, of this group come from mainland China, where Christians generally are estimated to constitute about 5% of the total population. Similarly, 18% of Indian Americans identify as Christian, though only about 3% of India’s total population is estimated to be Christian. The higher percentages of Christians are a result of the disproportionate number of Christians who choose to migrate to the United States and may also reflect religious switching by immigrants.

The full report, including slideshow galleries highlighting key findings, is available on the Pew Forum’s website.

Hindus

Asian-American Hindus also maintain some distinctive religious beliefs and practices. Yoga has a long tradition in Hinduism, and nearly three-quarters of U.S. Asian Hindus see it not just as exercise but as a spiritual practice (73%). More than half of Asian-American Hindus say they believe in reincarnation and moksha, defined in the survey as “the ultimate state transcending pain and desire in which individual consciousness ends” (59% each). About half also believe in astrology (53%), defined in the survey as the belief “that the position of the stars and planets can affect people’s lives.” Fewer believe in spiritual energy in physical things (46%) or in ancestral spirits (34%).

In addition, Hindus tend to practice their religion in different ways than do Christians. Although just 19% of Asian-American Hindus say they attend worship services at least once a week, nearly eight-in-ten (78%) have a shrine in their home. The celebration of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, is nearly universal among Indian-American Hindus (95%).

Overall, Asian-American Hindus say they pray less often than do members of the general public. About half of U.S. Hindus surveyed (48%) report praying every day. Among U.S. adults in the general public 56% report praying daily.

Nearly all Asian-American Hindus surveyed trace their heritage to India (93%). But the percentage of Asian-American Hindus who say that religion is very important in their lives (32%) is considerably lower than the percentage of Hindus in India who say this (69%, according to a 2011 survey by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project).

Asian Americans with no religious affiliation, like unaffiliated Americans as a whole, infrequently attend worship services and tend to believe the Bible is a human artifact rather than the word of God. Unaffiliated Asian Americans are more inclined than those in the general public to believe in yoga as a spiritual practice (42% vs. 28%). But they are no more likely to believe in reincarnation, astrology or the presence of spiritual energy in physical things such as mountains, trees or crystals.

Overall, the proportion of native-born U.S. Asians who are religiously unaffiliated (31%) is somewhat higher than among foreign-born Asian Americans (24%). Fully half of Chinese Americans (52%)—including 55% of those born in the U.S. and 51% of those born overseas—describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated. Because Chinese Americans are the largest subgroup of U.S. Asians, nearly half of all religiously unaffiliated Asians in the U.S. are of Chinese descent (49%). While some Chinese Americans come from Taiwan, Hong Kong and elsewhere, they come primarily from mainland China, which has very high government restrictions on religion and where much of the population is religiously unaffiliated.10Fully eight-in-ten Chinese (80%) say they have no religion, according to the 2012 Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes survey in China (for details, seeAppendix 2).

Though not nearly as high as among Chinese Americans, the percentage of Japanese Americans who say they are religiously unaffiliated (32%) is also higher than among the general public (19%). But among other Asian-American groups, the percentage that is unaffiliated either is closer to the general public (Korean Americans at 23%, Vietnamese Americans at 20%) or falls below the number for Americans as a whole (Indian Americans at 10%, Filipino Americans at 8%).

Religious Switching and Intermarriage

One-third of Asian adults in the U.S. no longer belong to the religious group in which they were raised (32%). By comparison, the Pew Forum’s 2007 “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey”found that 28% of adults in the U.S. have switched religions.11(In this analysis, Protestants raised in a denomination different from their current denomination, such as those raised as Methodist and now Presbyterian, are not counted as “switching.”) Conversion rates are higher among Japanese, Chinese and Korean Americans than among other U.S. Asian groups.

There have been substantial gains due to religious switching among Asian Americans who say they are not affiliated with any particular religion. Not quite one-in-five Asian Americans (18%) say they were raised with no affiliation as children, while 26% are unaffiliated today, a net gain of eight percentage points. A similar pattern prevails in the U.S. general public, where the share of the population that is unaffiliated also has grown through religious switching.12

Asian-American Protestants also have seen net growth through switching: 22% of Asian Americans identify as Protestant today, compared with 17% who say they were raised Protestant.

Asian-American Catholics (with a net loss of three percentage points) and Hindus (with a net loss of two percentage points) have stayed roughly the same size, with little net impact from switching.

Asian-American Buddhists have experienced the biggest net losses from religious switching. Roughly one-in-five Asian Americans (22%) say they were raised as Buddhist, and 2% have switched to Buddhism from other faiths (or from having no particular religion). But 10% of Asian Americans have left Buddhism, for a net loss of eight percentage points.

Of all the largest Asian-American religious groups, Hindus have the highest retention rate. Fully 81% of Asian Americans who were raised Hindu remain Hindu today; 12% have become unaffiliated, and the rest have switched to other faiths (or did not give a current religion).

Religious switching is more common among native-born Asian Americans than among foreign-born Asian Americans. Among those born in the U.S., 40% have a religion different from the one in which they were raised. Among foreign-born Asian Americans, this figure is 30%.