The exact number of Pagans in the United States has always been a bit of a mystery. However, a survey performed in June 2001 by the Graduate Center at the City University of New York may, for the first time, offer some concrete insight into the actual number of Pagans in America. It was called the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) and the results can be found at: http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/aris_index.htm.

In compiling the ARIS results, researches conducted a randomly dialed telephone survey of 50,281 American residential households in the continental United States. Adult respondents where then presented with the initial question: "What is your religion, if any?" Responses were then weighted according to the population estimates of the US Census.

Among the several surprising results of this survey, the occult path of Wicca, by some measures, would appear to be the fastest growing religion in the continental United States, with the number of individuals self-identifying as Wiccan increasing nearly seventeen-fold in an 11 year period.

More generally, the family of religious and magickal paths comprising Paganism, of which Wicca is only a part, is also demonstrating numbers large enough to appear in the survey results. For example, when the survey was last performed in 1990, Druids did not appear in large enough numbers to be included. In 2001, however, there were enough Druid respondents to indicate an American presence of 33,000.

Altogether, the 2001 ARIS survey estimates that in addition to 134,000 Wiccans, there are now also 140,000 Pagans, 68,000 New Agers, 33,000 Druids, and 22,000 Santerians currently residing in the United States.

Even Wicca, which demonstrated such dramatic growth, still remains small, however, when compared with other religions - comprising a mere 0.06 percent of the adult population. If Wiccan, Pagan, and Druid categories are combined, this percentage increases to 0.15 percent, or about 3 practitioners for every 2,000 Americans. The largest religious category in America is still Christianity, with over 159 million adherents, or about 76.5 percent of the population.

It should also be understood that while Wicca grew at a faster rate than any other religion, its very small initial size also means most other religions show larger gains when measured in absolute terms. Episcopalians, for example, increased in size 13 percent during the same period (compared with the Wiccan 1675%), but with so many existing Episcopalians, even this modest increase translated into 400,000 additional practitioners. Of all the categories, the largest absolute gain was made among individuals claiming no religious identification at all, growing from 14.3 million in 1990 to 29.4 million in 2001 for an net increase of 15.1 million.

Other key ARIS findings show a decrease in the total percentage of the American population that self-identifies as Christian, declining from 86% in 1990 to about 77% in 2001. A slight increase is also seen in those who self-identify with a religion other than Christianity, rising from 3.3% of the total population in 1990 to about 3.7% in 2001.

One of the more useful aspects of the ARIS survey is its reliance on the US Census for determining how it related to real numbers in the US population. Because the US Census also provides numbers for specific geographies, such as the National Capital Region, which includes the cities of Baltimore and Washington, DC; a rough guess can also be made as to the number of Pagans in any one particular area.

For example, the National Capital Region is considered the fourth largest metropolitan area in the United States with 7.6 million individuals. If only 0.15% of that population is Pagan (as ARIS would indicate), there could be as many as 11,000 Pagans in our area alone. Using 0.15% as a baseline, the number of Pagans can be similarly estimated for any region in the United States.

Portions of this article by Shea Thomas of The Open Hearth Foundation, Inc. (OHF) first appeared under "Perspectives" of PaganSpace.Org. Rights remain with the OHF.