It has long been known that the Boy Scouts of America is generally a conservative organization with significant religious involvement. While it aims to teach youth what it deems as good values, it also has a history of discrimination against homosexuals and atheists.

Politics aside, I thought it would be interesting to show, graphically, just how religious an organization it is. These graphs highlight the dominant presence of faith-based chartered organizations. The data represent the number of youth members, but had I used the numbers for scouting units, the religious bias would have been even more pronounced; more than 70% of all units are chartered to faith-based organizations.

There are more than 1.7M Boy Scout youths who are members of faith-based units. By comparison, 743k are in civic units, and only 313k have joined educational units. Almost one in every six Boy Scout youths is in a unit associated with the Mormon Church (Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)!

Data source: http://www.scouting.org/About/FactSheets/operating_orgs.aspx