Top all-time · #9588
Ryan Burge
Personal blog · graphsaboutreligion.comculturedata
Ryan Burge writes Graphs about Religion, a personal blog at graphsaboutreligion.com about culture and data. Since 2024, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 31 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-02, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for graphs on US religion and politics drawn from survey data, such as Gallup polling, church attendance and generational trust. Commenters cite its posts as evidence.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Tons of data analysis about religion and politics. Mostly in the United States but a little bit of international stuff, too.
What Hacker News says?
According to Gallup the majority of the US public supports Israel over Palestine, just as it has for decades. It's now "at it's lowest in 25 years" but it's still 46% vs 33% for Palestine, down from around 60% pro Israel in prior years. https://thecradle.co/articles/us-popular-support-for-israel-... About 10% of Americans identify as evangelical protestants https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/how-many-evangelicals…
Comment linking /p/how-many-evangelicals-are-there
on “The United States withdraws from UNESCO”Submitted Who People Talk to When They're Struggling as a story · 70 points
HN discussionhttps://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/catholic-schools-and-w... (“Just 58% of People Raised Catholic Are Still Catholic”) https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/the-lds-church-has-a-r... (“Just a bare majority of kids raised LDS are still LDS as adults (54%)“)
Comment linking /p/the-lds-church-has-a-retention-problem
on “Americans' social activity has steeply declined in the past 30 years”Submitted When Do We Become the Person We Ought to Be? as a story · 39 points
HN discussionReligions lose half their members every generation, I believe the evidence is robust kids can pick a different path than their parents. You can guide, support, and nurture, but their personality is theirs once they reach escape velocity. Empathy and curiosity is brain structure though (the amygdala, broadly speaking). Drop in U.S. Religiosity Among Largest in World - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45916273 - N…
Comment linking /p/the-lds-church-has-a-retention-problem
on “What shall I teach my son?”Submitted The Data Is Clear: People Are Having Less Sex as a story · 18 points
HN discussionprobably American: https://www.statista.com/statistics/235406/undergraduate-enr... https://www.qualityinfo.org/-/college-enrollment-among-recen... https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/03/13/strong-catho... https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/the-catholic-church-is... The Catholic Church is similarly struggling in the UK: https://faithsurvey.co.uk/blog/church-attendance-in-england-...
Comment linking /p/the-catholic-church-is-in-trouble
on “Oxford accused of relying on young academics employed on gig-economy terms”Submitted Gen Z Doesn't Trust Anyone as a story · 4 points
HN discussionGreat comment. To have democracy, you must have an educated, informed electorate. Religiosity is still very high in the US, and religiosity is negatively correlated with intelligence. Perhaps “democracy ready” levels can be inferred from other countries with more functional governance systems and their lower levels of religiosity as a sort of baseline. Graphs About Religion: The Generational Collapse of American Rel…
Comment linking /p/the-generational-collapse-of-american
on “Kiel Institute Analysis: US Americans pay 96% of tariff burden”Submitted Freedom for the Thought That We Hate as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI empathize with the straight white Christian as a fellow human, and wish them support (I donate to organizations that provide crisis support, but this does not scale, we need more scale [community building via robust government support imho]), but also recognize that religious belief is rapidly declining in the US [1], ~100k churches are anticipated to close over the next 5-10 years [2], and so while this support s…
Comment linking /p/the-generational-collapse-of-american
on “Who People Talk to When They're Struggling”Submitted America Got a Little More Religious. No, Really. as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThis whole blog is fascinating, assuming that you're interested in the intersection between (recent) history, demographics, politics, and religion in the US. For example - this one about generations and trust was surprising to me: https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/gen-z-doesnt-trust-any... or this on perception of the religiosity of holidays: https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/is-christmas-a-religio...
Comment linking /p/is-christmas-a-religious-holiday
on “Who People Talk to When They're Struggling”Submitted Canada's Religious Revival That Never Came as a story · 2 points
HN discussionCitation: Are Evangelicals Holding the Line Against Secularization? - https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/are-evangelicals-holdi... - October 1st, 2026 > Let’s say we did a random sample of the adult population of Ohio in 1985. In that poll, we found that 55% of people identified as politically conservative and 35% were liberal, with the remaining 10% indicating that they were ideologically moderate. Then, we did…
Comment linking /p/are-evangelicals-holding-the-line
on “Economics Nobel Laureates' Letter Supporting the California Billionaire Tax [pdf]”Submitted Three Things You're Getting Wrong About Religion Data as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAbsolutely is to some extent, research strongly suggests it's brain structure, specifically around the amygdala. Facial structure can also be used as a predicator. Conservative and Liberal Brains Might Have Some Real Differences - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/conservative-and-... - October 26th, 2020 Kosinski, M., Khambatta, P., & Wang, Y. (2024). Facial recognition technology and human raters can pred…
Comment linking /p/the-generational-collapse-of-american
on “Conservatives are dying at higher rates than liberals”Submitted Are "Real" Catholics as Conservative as Evangelicals? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAdditional citation: Graphs About Religion: When Are Half Your Members Going to be Dead? - https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/when-are-half-your-mem... - January 29th, 2026 https://gist.github.com/ryanburge/2034b9dea297f6b4db4ebad7e8...
Comment linking /p/when-are-half-your-members-going
on “Where Christian nationalism is most dominant in the U.S.”Kiros is a good sign so far outside of NY, winning against a 30 year centrist incumbent in Colorado. Democratic socialist Melat Kiros poised to become the first Gen Z woman in Congress - https://www.npr.org/2026/07/01/nx-s1-5876122/colorado-primar... - July 1st, 2026 Arizona is up next. Democratic Socialists are winning elections nationwide. Is Arizona Next? - https://www.azfamily.com/2026/07/04/democratic-socialist…
Comment linking /p/the-generational-collapse-of-american
on “The Demoralization of the White-Collar Worker”This is a job for using mobile phone and satellite imaging data (objective observations), not surveys, which are somewhat unreliable around religion. Think like a hedge fund. Citation: Hackett, Conrad. 2026. “Has there been a Christian revival among young adults in the U.K.? Recent surveys may be misleading.” Pew Research Center. https://doi.org/10.58094/k9vn-k647 https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/ is also a resou…
Comment linking /
on “Church attendance report pulled after YouGov finds 'fraudulent' responses”Perhaps the poster's curiosity is "Why is the Dallas Morning News hiring a faith reporter?" I follow Ryan Burge and his https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/ Substack to track the decline of religion in the US, so I am very curious about this reporting position, for example; he was also the subject of the piece submitted as Scholar of religion's decline faces his own church's closure - https://news.ycombinator.com/it…
Comment linking /
on “The Dallas Morning News Is Hiring a Faith Reporter”Definitely soaking up some folks, but something to note is these megachurches are mostly non denominational, an average congregation size of 3500, and remain third spaces for people who are not as rigidly religious. They are “religious light” seeking community (imho, based on everything I’ve read on the topic, I am happy to be corrected). They mostly cater to young families with children, who are also on the decline…
Comment linking /p/megachurch-geography-why-americas
on “15,000 churches could close this year amid religious shift in U.S.”
