I got to thinking, if Marijuana is America's largest cash crop, how much money does organized religion take in per year in the good o'l US of A.

I took a quick look around and found a survey of 50,000 or so Americans, you can view the PDF here. Of the 208 million adults in 2001 in America, the survey says that 37% are "religious." Another 38% "somewhat religious."

So doing a quick calculation, we arrive at some interesting numbers:

208 * 0.37 = 76.96 (million) religious

Now for the sake of argument, let's assume that by religious is also meant a propensity to spend an hour or two a week bleating in unison with others in one of God's approved Wireless Access Points.

Let's also assume a conservative estimate that each member of the 76.96 million strong flock, be they Christian, Muslim, Jew, or Bahai even, gives, say, $5 a week to their prayer palace of choice:

76.96 * $5 = $384.8 (million), per week.
$384.8 * 52 = $20009.6 (million), or $20 billion a year.

Now let's double each of those assuming a $10 a week donation. $769.6 million, and $40 billion respectively.

How about we assume another $1/week from the 38% somewhat religious population?

208 * 0.38 = 79.04 (million), also $79.04/week.
79.04 * 52 = 4110.08 (million), or $4.1 billion a year.

Some pretty big numbers there, next week, I want to spend some time looking at real-estate holdings of major religious groups, for example, The Archdiocese of New York, click the search button on Manhattan... Yeah, next week.