Pew survey: Way more Buddhists than you’d think

A new study by the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life estimates that between 1 and 1.3 percent of the United States population—between 3 and 4 million people—identifies as Buddhist, a dramatic increase from a 2007 Pew survey that found only about .7 percent of the population to be Buddhist.

The new study, which focused on religious identity and practices of Asian Americans, also estimated that around two-thirds of American Buddhists are Asian American, about double the proportion found in previous surveys. You can read the full report here.

Maybe The Onion ("America's Finest News Source") was on to something with this 2006 magazine cover.

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