America's Military Population

While Janowitz was writing about the conscription-era military and his data on religion were weak relative to other variables, his findings provide a baseline for studying the religious affiliation of today's volunteer military. There are few comprehensive statistics on religious affiliation in the civilian population, in part because the principle of separation of church and state precludes federal statistical programs, such as the decennial census and current population surveys, from collecting data on religion. We do know the civilian American population has been moving away from the traditional Christian religions and toward other religious groups or eschewing any religious affiliation.34 This latter trend is particularly pronounced among young adults, exactly the age groups most likely to enter the military. In general, the armed forces show lower religious affiliation than the civilian population, even among civilians ages 20 to 39 (see Table 5). A larger share of military than civilians reported they are Christians but are not Roman Catholic/ Eastern Orthodox or Protestant, or do not specify a denomination. This category includes such Christian groups as Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, and Jehovah's Witnesses, as well as the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Church of God, Seventh Day Adventist, and Assemblies of God. Smaller Protestant groups have been increasing since the 1960s, while the older, larger Protestant denominations such as Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Methodists have declined. But religious affiliation data are often inconsistent because of the different ways the data were collected and analyzed: Religious affiliation for military personnel is recorded regularly by the Department of Defense, while religious data for civilians is obtained from surveys such as the results from the 2002 General Social Survey (GSS) conducted by the National Opinion Research Center reported in Table 5.

About one-quarter of the American population considers itself to be Roman Catholic, according to the GSS survey. Catholics are slightly underrepresented in the armed forces, as are almost all other traditional religions.

There have been indications of increasing religious diversity in the armed forces, including growing numbers of Muslims.35 However, Jews, Buddhists, and Muslims are underrepresented in the military relative to their share of the civilian population. The number of American military personnel who claimed to be atheists or to have no religion was slightly higher than the GSS estimate for civilians ages 20 to 39, the age range for about 80 percent of military personnel. About 11 percent of military personnel did not provide religious affiliation data or claimed affiliation with other religions, almost four times as high as the GSS data for the 20-to-39-year-olds. Other recent surveys also have reported greater identification with no religion or other nontraditional religions than the GSS, but results vary greatly depending on how data are collected. Recent data suggest that military personnel generally have a lower affiliation with mainstream religious groups than the general population.