Christianity is the most widely professed religion, with the majority of Americans beingEvangelicals,Mainline Protestants, orCatholics,[9][10] although its dominance has declined in recent decades, and as of 2012 Protestants no longer formed a majority in the US.[11] The United States has thelargest Christian andProtestant population inthe world.[12]Judaism is the second-largest religion in the US, practiced by 2% of the population, followed byHinduism,Buddhism, andIslam, each with 1% of the population.[13] States vary in religiosity fromMississippi, where 63% of adults self-describe as very religious, toNew Hampshire where 20% do.[14] The elected legislators of Congress overwhelmingly identify as religious and Christian; with few exceptions, both theRepublican andDemocratic parties nominate those who are.[15][16]
Social scientists have noted that beginning in the early 1990s, the percentage of Americans professing no religious affiliation began to rise from 6% in 1991[23] to 29% in 2021[24][25][26]—with younger people having higher rates of unaffiliation.[23] Similarly, polling indicated a decline in church attendance,[27] and the number of people agreeing with the statement that religion is "very important" in their lives.[28] Explanations for this trend include lack of trust in numerous institutions,[29] backlash against thereligious right in the 1980s,[30] sexual abuse scandals in established religions,[31][32] the end of theCold War (and its connection of religiosity with patriotism), and theSeptember 11 attacks (by religiousJihadists).[23][33] Many of the "Nones" (those without a religious affiliation) have belief in a god or higher power and spiritual forces beyond the natural world.[34][35] As of 2024, Christianity's decline may have leveled off or slowed, according to the Pew Research Center[36] and Gallup,[1] though according to thePublic Religion Research Institute it has continued to decline.[37]
Ever since its early colonial days, when some Protestantdissenter English and German settlers moved in search ofreligious freedom, America has been profoundly influenced by religion.[38] Throughout its history, religious involvement among American citizens has grown since 1776 from 17% of the US population to 62% in 2000.[39] Approximately 35-40 percent of Americans regularly attended religious services from eighteenth-century colonial America up to 1940.[17] That influence continues in American culture, social life, and politics.[40] Several of the originalThirteen Colonies were established by settlers who wished to practice their own religion within a community of like-minded people: the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established by EnglishPuritans (Congregationalists), Pennsylvania by BritishQuakers, Maryland byEnglish Catholics, and Virginia by EnglishAnglicans. Despite these, and as a result of intervening religious strife and preference in England[41] thePlantation Act 1740 would set official policy for new immigrants coming toBritish America until theAmerican Revolution. While most settlers and colonists during this time were Protestant, a few earlyCatholic andJewish settlers also arrived fromNorthwestern Europe into the colonies; however, their numbers were very slight compared to the Protestant majority. Even in the "Catholic Proprietary" or colony of Maryland, the vast majority of Maryland colonists were Protestant by 1670.[42]
The text of theFirst Amendment in theUS Constitution states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."[43] It guarantees thefree exercise of religion while also preventing the government from establishing astate religion. However, the states were not bound by the provision, and as late as the 1830s Massachusetts provided tax money to local Congregational churches.[44] Since the 1940s, theSupreme Court has interpreted theFourteenth Amendment as applying the First Amendment to state and local governments.[citation needed]
PresidentJohn Adams and a unanimous Senate endorsed theTreaty of Tripoli in 1797 that stated: "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."[45]
Expert researchers and authors have referred to the United States as a "Protestant nation" or "founded on Protestant principles",[46][47][48][49] specifically emphasizing itsCalvinist heritage.[50][51]
According to a 2002 survey by thePew Research Center, nearly 6 in 10 Americans said that religion plays an important role in their lives, compared to 33% in Great Britain, 27% in Italy, 21% in Germany, 12% in Japan, and 11% in France. The survey report stated that the results showed America having a greater similarity to developing nations (where higher percentages say that religion plays an important role) than to other wealthy nations, where religion plays a minor role.[4]
In 1963, 90% of US adults claimed to be Christians while only 2% professedno religious identity.[citation needed] In 2016, 73.7% identified as Christians while 18.2% claimed no religious affiliation.[55] In 2019,Pew Research Center survey report concluded that "the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or 'nothing in particular,' now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009" and that "both Protestantism and Catholicism are experiencing losses of population share."[56][57] Many of the unaffiliated retain religious beliefs or practices without affiliating.[35][58][59] There have been variant proposed explanations for secularization including lack of trust in the labor market, with government, in marriage and in other aspects of life,[29] backlash against thereligious right in the 1980s,[60] sexual abuse scandals, particularly those within theSouthern Baptist Convention[61] andCatholic Church.[62]
Other signs of a decline in religiosity include a decline in the percentage of respondents who say religion is "very important" in their lives compared to those who say it is not (the answer "very important" falling from 70% in 1965 to 45% in 2023, and "not very important" rising from 7 to 28% over the same period in Gallup polls),[28] and a decline in church attendance (those who report attending church monthly or more often having declined from 52% to 45% from 2007 to 2018, according to a Pew Research Center survey).[27] Still other sources insist Americans are becoming more religious,[63] and surveys showing otherwise suffer from methodological deficiencies.[64][36]
A 2022 study by Pew Research Center estimated that the religiously unaffiliated had reached 30% of the population by 2020. It predicted that in the "most plausible" scenario, accounting for observed acceleration of religious switching, this would increase to 42% by 2050.[65]
According to the American legal scholar and academicNoah Feldman, the United States federal government was the first government to be designed with no established religion at all.[67] However, some states had established religions within their borders until the 1830s.
Modeling the provisions concerning religion within theVirginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the framers of the Constitution rejected any religious test for office, and the First Amendment specifically denied the federal government any power to enact any law respecting either an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise, thus protecting any religious organization, institution, or denomination from government interference. The decision was mainly influenced by European Rationalist and Protestant ideals, but was also a consequence of the pragmatic concerns of minority religious groups and small states that did not want to be under the power or influence of a national religion that did not represent them.[68]
The most popular religion in the United States isChristianity, comprising the majority of the population (73.7% of adults in 2016), with the majority of American Christians belonging to aProtestant denomination or a Protestant offshoot (such as theLatter Day Saint movement or theJehovah's Witnesses).[69] According to the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies newsletter published March 2017, based on data from 2010, Christians were the largest religious population in all 3,143 counties in the country.[70] Roughly 48.9% of Americans are Protestants, 23.0% are Catholics, 1.8% areMormons (members ofthe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).[69] Christianity was introduced during the period ofEuropean colonization. The United States has theworld's largest Christian population.[71][72]
According to membership statistics from current reports and official web sites, the five largest Christian denominations are:
The Southern Baptist Convention, with over 13 million adherents, is the largest of more than 200[78] distinctly named Protestant denominations.[79] In 2007, members ofevangelical churches comprised 26% of the American population, while another 18% belonged tomainline Protestant churches, and 7% belonged to historicallyblack churches.[80]
A 2015 study estimates some 450,000 Christian believers from a Muslim background in the country, most of them belonging to some form of Protestantism.[81]
The private schools and colleges established by the mainline Protestant denominations, as a rule, still want to be known as places that foster values, but few will go so far as to identify those values as Christian.... Overall, the distinctiveness of mainline Protestant identity has largely dissolved since the 1960s.[102]
The Founding of Maryland (1634)depictsFather Andrew White, a Jesuit missionary in the left and colonists meeting the people of the Yaocomico branch of the Piscatawy Indian Nation inSt. Mary's City, Maryland, the site of Maryland's first colonial settlement.[103]
Catholicism first came to the territories now forming the United States by way ofSpanish colonists in the present-day Virgin Islands (1493), Puerto Rico (1508), Florida (1513), South Carolina (1566), Georgia (1568–1684), and thesouthwest. The first known Catholic Mass held in what would become the United States was in 1526 byDominican friarsAntonio de Montesinos and Anthony de Cervantes, who ministered to theSan Miguel de Gualdape colonists for the 3 months the colony existed.[104] The influence of theAlta California missions (1769 and onwards) forms a lasting memorial to part of this heritage. Until the 19th century, theFranciscans and other religious orders had to operate their missions under the Spanish andPortuguese governments and military.[105]
While the Puritans were securing their Commonwealth, members of theCatholic Church in England were also planning a refuge, "for they too were being persecuted on account of their religion."[106] Among those interested in providing a refuge for Catholics was the second Lord of Baltimore, George Calvert, who establishedMaryland, a "Catholic Proprietary", in 1634,[106] more than sixty years after the founding of the Spanish Florida mission of St. Augustine.[107] The first US Catholic university,Georgetown University, was founded in 1789. Though small in number in the beginning, Catholicism grew over the centuries to become the largest single denomination in the United States, primarily through immigration, but also through the acquisition of continental territories under the jurisdiction of French and Spanish Catholic powers.[108] Though the European Catholic and indigenous population of these former territories were small,[109] the material cultures there, the original mission foundations with their canonical Catholic names, are still recognized today (as they were formerly known) in any number of cities in California, New Mexico and Louisiana. (The most recognizable cities of California, for example, are named after Catholic saints.)
While Catholic Americans were present in small numbers early in United States history, both in Maryland and in the former French and Spanish colonies that were eventually absorbed into the United States, the vast majority of Catholics in the United States today derive from unprecedented waves of immigration from primarily Catholic countries and regions (Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom until 1921 and German unification didn't officially occur until 1871)[110] during the mid-to-late 19th and 20th century.Irish,Hispanic,Italian,Portuguese,French Canadian,Polish,German,[111] andLebanese (Maronite) immigrants largely contributed to the growth in the number of Catholics in the United States. Irish and German Catholics, by far, provided the greatest number of Catholic immigrants before 1900. From 1815 until the close of the Civil War in 1865, 1,683,791 Irish Catholics immigrated to the US. The German states followed, providing "the second largest immigration of Catholics, clergy and lay, some 606,791 in the period 1815-1865, and another 680,000 between 1865 and 1900, while the Irish immigration in the latter period amounted to only 520,000."[112] Of the four major national groups of clergy (early and mid-19th century)—Irish, German, Anglo-American, and French—"the French emigre priests may be said to have been the outstanding men, intellectually."[113] As the number of Catholics increased in the late 19th and 20th century, they built up a vast system of schools (from primary schools to universities) and hospitals. Since then, the Catholic Church has founded hundreds of other colleges and universities, along with thousands of primary and secondary schools. Schools like theUniversity of Notre Dame is ranked best in its state (Indiana), asGeorgetown University is ranked best in the District of Columbia. The following 10 Catholic universities are also ranked among the top 100 universities in the US: University of Notre Dame, Georgetown University,Boston College,Santa Clara University,Villanova University,Marquette University,Fordham University,Gonzaga University,Loyola Marymount University, and theUniversity of San Diego.[114]Leo XIV has beenpope since 2025 and is the first pope from the United States.
Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy
Eastern Orthodoxy was present in North America since theRussian colonization of Alaska; however,Alaska would not become a United States territory until 1867, and most Eastern Orthodox Russian settlers in Alaska returned to Russia after the American acquisition of the Alaskan territory. However the native converts and a few priests remained behind, and Alaska still is represented.[clarification needed]
Most Eastern Orthodoxes arrived in the contiguous United States as immigrants beginning in the late 19th century and throughout the 20th century. Two major groups brought Eastern Orthodoxy to America, one wereEastern Europeans likeRussians,Greeks,Ukrainians,Serbians and others. The second major group were fromLevant likeLebanese,Syrians,Palestinians and others.
The strength of various sects varies greatly in different regions of the country, with rural parts of the South having many evangelicals but very few Catholics (exceptLouisiana and theGulf Coast, and from among theHispanic community, both of which consist mainly of Catholics), while urbanized areas of the north Atlantic states andGreat Lakes, as well as many industrial and mining towns, are heavily Catholic, though still quite mixed, especially due to the heavily Protestant African-American communities. In 1990, nearly 72% of the population ofUtah was Mormon, as well as 26% of neighboringIdaho.[117] Lutheranism is most prominent in theUpper Midwest, withNorth Dakota having the highest percentage of Lutherans (35% according to a 2001 survey).[118]
The largest religion, Christianity, has proportionately diminished since 1990. While the absolute number of Christians rose from 1990 to 2008, the percentage of Christians dropped from 86% to 76%.[119] A nationwide telephone interview of 1,002 adults conducted byThe Barna Group found that 70% of American adults believe that God is "the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the universe who still rules it today", and that 9% of all American adults and 0.5%young adults hold to what the survey defined as a "biblical worldview".[120]
After Christianity,Judaism is the next largest religious affiliation in the United States, though this identification is not necessarily indicative of religious beliefs or practices.[119] The Jewish population in the United States was approximately 6 million in 2010.[127][128] A significant number of people identify themselves asAmerican Jews on ethnic and cultural grounds rather than religious observance. For example, 19% of self-identified American Jews do not believe God exists.[129] The 2001ARIS study projected from its sample that there are about 5.3 million adults in the American Jewish population: 2.83 million adults (1.4% of the US adult population) are estimated to be adherents of Judaism; 1.08 million are estimated to be adherents of no religion; and 1.36 million are estimated to be adherents of a religion other than Judaism.[130] ARIS 2008 estimated about 2.68 million adults (1.2%) in the country identify Judaism as their faith.[119] According to a 2017 study, Judaism is the religion of approximately 2% of the American population.[55] According to a 2020 study by thePew Research Center, the core American Jewish population is estimated at 7.5 million people, this includes 5.8 million Jewish adults.[131] According to a study by the Steinhardt Social Research Institute, as of 2020, the core American Jewish population is estimated at 7.6 million people; this includes 4.9 million adults who identify their religion as Jewish, 1.2 million Jewish adults who identify with no religion, and 1.6 million Jewish children.[132]
Touro Synagogue, (built 1759) in Newport, Rhode Island, has the oldest still existing synagogue building in the United States.
Jews have been present in what is now the United States since the 17th century and allowed explicitly since the British colonialPlantation Act 1740. Although small Western European communities initially developed and grew, large-scale immigration did not occur until the late 19th century, mainly due to persecution in parts ofEastern Europe. The Jewish community in the United States is composed predominantly ofAshkenazi Jews whose ancestors emigrated fromCentral andEastern Europe. There are, however, small numbers of older (and some recently arrived) communities ofSephardi Jews with roots tracing back to 15th-centuryIberia (Spain, Portugal, and North Africa). There are alsoMizrahi Jews (from the Middle East,Caucasia andCentral Asia), as well as much smaller numbers ofEthiopian Jews,Indian Jews, and others from various smallerJewish ethnic divisions. Approximately 25% of the Jewish American population lives in New York City.[133]
According to the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies newsletter published in March 2017, based on data from 2010, Jews were the largest minority religion in 231 counties out of the 3143 counties in the country.[70] According to a 2014 survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 1.7% of adults in the U.S. identified Judaism as their religion. Among those surveyed, 44% said they wereReform Jews, 22% said they wereConservative Jews, and 14% said they wereOrthodox Jews.[134][135] According to the 1990National Jewish Population Survey, 38% of Jews were affiliated with the Reform tradition, 35% were Conservative, 6% were Orthodox, 1% were Reconstructionists, 10% linked themselves to some other tradition, and 10% said they are "just Jewish".[136]
Thus, the majority of American Jews affiliated themselves with the major Jewish movements: Conservative, Orthodox and Reform Judaism.[137][138] Already in the 1980s, 20–30% of members of the largest Jewish communities, such as of New York City, Chicago, and Miami, rejected adenominational label.[137]
According to the 2001National Jewish Population Survey, 4.3 millionAmerican Jewish adults have some sort of strong connection to the Jewish community, whether religious or cultural.[139]Jewishness is generally considered anethnic identity as well as areligious one. Among the 4.3 million American Jews described as "strongly connected" to Judaism, over 80% have some sort of active engagement with Judaism, ranging from attendance at daily prayer services on one end of the spectrum to attendingPassover Seders or lightingHanukkah candles on the other. The survey also discovered that Jews in theNortheast andMidwest are generally more observant than Jews in theSouth orWest.
The Jewish American community has higher household incomes than average and is one of the best-educated religious communities in the United States.[121]
According to a 2016 Gallup poll, Islam is the third largest religion in the United States by numbers, after Christianity and Judaism, with 0.8% of the population identifying as Muslim.[69] According to the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) in 2018, approximately 3.45 million Muslims are living in the United States, including 2.05 million adults.[140] Compared to other faith groups surveyed (Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Non-Affiliated), ISPU found in 2017 that Muslims were most likely to be born outside of the US (50%), with 36% having undergone naturalization, and the most racially diverse group (Black or African American 25%; White 24%; Arab 18%; Asian/Chinese/Japanese 18%; Mixed 7%; Hispanic 5%; Native American/American Indian/Alaska Native 1%; Other 2%).[141] In addition to diversity, Americans Muslims are most likely to report being low income, and among those who identify as middle class, the majority are Muslim women, not men. Although American Muslim education levels are similar to other religious communities, namely Christians, within the Muslim American population, Muslim women surpass Muslim men in education, with 31% of Muslim women having graduated from a four-year university. 90% of Muslim Americans identify as straight.[141]
Islam in America effectively began with the arrival of African slaves. It is estimated that about 10% of African slaves transported to the United States were Muslim.[142] Most, however, became Christians, and the United States did not have a significant Muslim population until the arrival of immigrants from Arab and East Asian Muslim areas.[143] According to some experts,[144] Islam later gained a higher profile through theNation of Islam, a religious group that appealed to black Americans after the 1940s; its prominent converts includedMalcolm X andMuhammad Ali.[145][146] The first Muslim elected to Congress wasKeith Ellison in 2006,[147] followed byAndré Carson in 2008.[148]
Out of all religious groups surveyed by ISPU, Muslims were found to be the most likely to report experiences of religious discrimination (61%). That can also be broken down when looking at gender (with Muslim women more likely than Muslim men to experience racial discrimination), age (with young people more likely to report experiencing racial discrimination than older people), and race (with Arab Muslims the most likely to report experiencing religious discrimination). Muslims born in the United States are more likely to experience all three forms of discrimination: gender, religious, and racial.[141]
Research indicates that Muslims in the United States are generally more assimilated and prosperous than their counterparts in Europe.[149][150][151] Like other subcultural and religious communities, the Islamic community has generated its own political organizations and charity organizations.
Hinduism is representing approximately 1% of the U.S population in 2010s.[55][152][153] In 2001, there were an estimated 766,000Hindus in the US, about 0.2% of the total population.[154][155]
According to the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies newsletter published in March 2017, based on data from 2010, Hindus were the largest minority religion in 92 counties out of the 3143 counties in the country.[70]
American Hindus have one of the highest rates of educational attainment and household income among all religious communities and tend to have lower divorce rates.[121] Hindus also have higher acceptance towardshomosexuality (71%), which is higher than the general public (62%).[156]
TheBaháʼí Faith was first mentioned in the United States in 1893 at theWorld Parliament of Religions inChicago.[157] Soon after, early American converts began embracing the new religion.Thornton Chase was the first American Baháʼí, dating from 1894.[158] One of the first Baháʼí institutions in the US was established in Chicago to facilitate the establishment of the firstBaháʼí House of Worship in the West, which was eventually built inWilmette, Illinois and dedicated in 1953.[159]
Worldwide, the religion has grown faster than the rate of population growth over the 20th century,[160] and has been recognized since the 1980s as the most widespread minority religion in the countries of the world.[161] Similarly, by 2020, the religion was the largest minority religion in about half of the counties.[162] Since about 1970 the state with the single largest Baháʼí population wasSouth Carolina.[163] From 2010 data the largest populations of Baháʼís at the county-by-county level are in Los Angeles, CA, Palm Beach, FL, Harris County, TX, and Cook County, IL.[164] However, estimates of the total number of Baháʼís varies widely from around 175,000[165] to 500,000.[166]
Druze Faith
Druze began migrating to the United States in the late 1800s from theLevant (Syria andLebanon).[167] Druze emigration to the Americas increased at the outset of the 20th century due to thefamine during World War I that killed an estimated one third to one half of the population, the1860 Mount Lebanon civil war, and theLebanese Civil War between 1975 and 1990.[167] The United States is the second largest home of Druze communities outside the Middle East after Venezuela (60,000).[168] According to some estimates there are about 30,000[169] to 50,000[168]Druzes in the United States, with the largest concentration inSouthern California.[169] American Druze are mostly ofLebanese andSyrian descent.[169]
Members of theDruze faith face the difficulty of finding a Druze partner and practicingendogamy; marriage outside the Druze faith is strongly discouraged according to the Druze doctrine. They also face the pressure of keeping the religion alive because many Druze immigrants to theUnited States converted toProtestantism, becoming communicants of thePresbyterian orMethodist churches.[170][171]
Services at the Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple,Los Angeles, around 1925
Buddhism entered the United States during the 19th century with the arrival of the first immigrants fromEast Asia. The first Buddhist temple was established inSan Francisco in 1853 byChinese Americans. The first prominent US citizen to publicly convert to Buddhism was ColonelHenry Steel Olcott in 1880, who is still honored inSri Lanka for his Buddhist revival efforts. An event that contributed to the strengthening of Buddhism in the United States was theParliament of the World's Religions in 1893, which was attended by many Buddhist delegates sent from India, China, Japan,Vietnam,Thailand andSri Lanka.
In the late 19th century, Buddhist missionaries fromJapan traveled to the US, and during the same time period, US intellectuals started to take an interest in Buddhism.
The early 20th century was characterized by continuing tendencies rooted in the 19th century. The second half, by contrast, saw the emergence of new approaches and the move of Buddhism into the mainstream, making itself a mass and social-religious phenomenon.[176][177]
According to a 2016 study, Buddhists are approximately 1% of the American population.[55] According to the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies newsletter published in March 2017, based on data from 2010, Buddhists were the largest minority religion in 186 counties out of the 3143 counties in the country.[70]
Front of the Stockton Sikh Temple, circa 1915. This wooden structure was replaced with a new building in 1929.
Sikhism is a religion originating from theIndian subcontinent which was introduced into theUnited States when, around the turn of the 20th century,Sikhs started emigrating to the United States in significant numbers to work on farms in California. They were the first community to come from India to the US in large numbers.[178] The first SikhGurdwara in America was built inStockton, California, in 1912.[179] In 2007, there were estimated to be between 250,000 and 500,000 Sikhs living in the United States, with the largest populations living on theEast andWest Coasts, with additional populations inDetroit,Chicago, andAustin.[180][181]
The United States also has a number of non-Punjabi converts to Sikhism.[182]
Adherents ofJainism first arrived in the United States in the 20th century. The most significant time of Jain immigration was in the early 1970s. The United States has since become a center of the Jain Diaspora. TheFederation of Jain Associations in North America is an umbrella organization of local American and Canadian Jain congregations to preserve, practice, and promoteJainism and the Jain way of life.[183]
Taoism
Taoism was popularized throughout the world by the writings and teachings ofLaozi and other Taoists, as well as the practice ofqigong,tai chi, and other Chinesemartial arts.[184] The first Taoists in the United States were immigrants from China during the mid-nineteenth century. They settled mainly in California, where they built the first Taoist temples in the country, including theTin How Temple inSan Francisco's Chinatown and theJoss House inWeaverville. Currently, the Temple of Original Simplicity is outsideBoston, Massachusetts.
In 2004, there were an estimated 56,000 Taoists in the US.[185]
The membership of Native American religions in the 21st century comprises about 9,000 people.[191] Since Native Americans practicing traditional ceremonies do not usually have public organizations or membership rolls, these "members" estimates are likely substantially lower than the actual numbers of people who participate in traditional ceremonies.[192]
Generally fundamentalist movements include thePueblo Revolt (1680s), theShawnee Prophet movement (1805–1811), theCherokee Prophet movement (1811–1813), theRed Stick War (1813–1814), White Path's Rebellion (1826), theWinnebago Prophet movement (1830–1832), the first Ghost Dance (1869–1870) and the secondGhost Dance (1889–1890), and the Snake movements among the Cherokee,Choctaw, andMuscogee Creek peoples during the 1890s.[195]
Thus, theLonghouse Religion combines and reinterprets elements of traditionalIroquois beliefs with a revised code such as must refrain from drinking, selling off land, intensive animal farming, and witchcraft, meant to revive traditional consciousness after a long period of cultural disintegration following colonization. It was founded in 1797 by theSeneca prophetHandsome Lake (Sganyodaiyoˀ). The movement had about 5,000 practicing members as of 1969.[196]
TheSun Dance is a prominent living ceremony and movement, theShoshone by origin in 1890, practiced by a number of peoples, primarily those of thePlains Nations. Many of the ceremonies have features in common, such as specific dances and songs, the use of drums, theceremonial pipe, praying, fasting, and, in some cases, the piercing of the skin as a sacrifice. At most ceremonies, other participants stay in the surrounding camp and pray to support the dancers.[195][199]
According to theAmerican Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), there are approximately 30,000druids in the United States.[208] Modern Druidism arrived in North America first in the form of fraternal Druidic organizations in the nineteenth century, and orders such as the Ancient Order of Druids in America were founded as distinct American groups as early as 1912. In 1963, theReformed Druids of North America (RDNA) was established by students atCarleton College,Northfield, Minnesota. They adopted elements of Neopaganism into their practices, for instance, celebrating the festivals of theWheel of the Year.[209]
Unitarian Universalists (UUs) are among the most liberal of all religious denominations in America.[211] The sharedcreed includes beliefs in inherent dignity, a common search for truth, respect for beliefs of others, compassion, and social action.[212] They are unified by their shared search forspiritual growth and by the understanding that an individual's theology is a result of that search and not obedience to an authoritarian requirement.[213] UUs have historical ties to anti-war, civil rights, and LGBTQ rights movements,[214] as well as providing inclusive church services for the broad spectrum of liberal Christians, liberal Jews, secular humanists,LGBTQ people, Jewish-Christian parents and partners, Earth-centered/Wicca, and Buddhist meditation adherents.[215] In fact, many UUs also identify as belonging to another religious group, including atheism and agnosticism.[216]
A 2001 survey directed by Dr. Ariela Keysar for theCity University of New York indicated that, amongst the more than 100 categories of response, "no religious identification" had the greatest increase in population in both absolute and percentage terms. This category includedatheists,agnostics,humanists, and others with no stated religious preferences. Figures are up from 14.3 million in 1990 to 34.2 million in 2008, representing an increase from 8% of the total population in 1990 to 15% in 2008.[119] A nationwidePew Research study published in 2008 put the figure of unaffiliated persons at 16.1%,[155] while another Pew study published in 2012 was described as placing the proportion at about 20% overall and roughly 33% for the 18–29-year-old demographic.[217] It is unknown why the number of self-identified "nones" is rising, although it may relate to a general decline of trust in institutions,[29] theSeptember 11 attacks,[218] rise of thereligious right,[219] and sexual abuse scandals, particularly those within theSouthern Baptist Convention[220] andCatholic Church.[221] The majority of "nones" have religion-like beliefs and believe in some conception of a higher power.[35]
In a 2006 nationwide poll,University of Minnesota researchers found that despite an increasing acceptance of religious diversity, atheists were generally distrusted by other Americans, who trusted them less than Muslims, recent immigrants and other minority groups in "sharing their vision of American society". They also associated atheists with undesirable attributes such as amorality, criminal behavior, rampant materialism and cultural elitism.[222][223] However, the same study also reported that "The researchers also found acceptance or rejection of atheists is related not only to personal religiosity, but also to one's exposure to diversity, education and political orientation – with more educated, East and West Coast Americans more accepting of atheists than their Midwestern counterparts."[224] Some surveys have indicated that doubts about the existence of the divine were growing quickly among Americans under 30.[225]
On March 24, 2012, American atheists sponsored theReason Rally in Washington, D.C., followed by the American Atheist Convention inBethesda, Maryland. Organizers called the estimated crowd of 8,000–10,000 the largest-ever US gathering of atheists in one place.[226]
Secular people in the United States, such as atheist and agnostics, have a distinctive secular tradition that can be traced for at least hundreds of years. They sometimes create religion-like institutions and communities, create rituals, and debate aspects of their shared beliefs.[227]
Belief in the existence of a god
Various polls have been conducted to determine Americans' actual beliefs regarding a god. (Different wording of the poll question gives significantly different results.):[228]
A 2021 Pew Research Center Survey found that 91% of American believe in ahigher power.[229]
A 2018 Pew Research Center Survey found that 90% of American believe in ahigher power.[230]
In 2014 the Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Study showed 63% of Americans believed in God and were "absolutely certain" in their view, while the figure rose to 89% including those who were agnostic.[231]
A 2012 WIN-Gallup International poll showed that 5% of Americans considered themselves "convinced" atheists, which was a fivefold increase from the last time the survey was taken in 2005, and 5% said they did not know or else did not respond.[232]
A 2012 Pew Research Center survey found that doubts about the existence of a god had grown among younger Americans, with 68% telling Pew they never doubt God's existence, a 15-point drop in five years. In 2007, 83% of American millennials said they never doubted God's existence.[225][233]
A 2011 Gallup poll found 92% of Americans said yes to the basic question "Do you believe in God?", while 7% said no and 1% had no opinion.[234]
A 2010 Gallup poll found 80% of Americans believe in a god, 12% believe in a universal spirit, 6% don't believe in either, 1% chose "other", and 1% had no opinion. 80% is a decrease from the 1940s, when Gallup first asked this question.
A late 2009 online Harris poll of 2,303 US adults (18 and older)[235] found that "82% of adult Americans believe in God", the same number as in two earlier polls in 2005 and 2007. Another 9% said they did not believe in God, and 9% said that they were not sure. It further concluded, "Large majorities also believe in miracles (76%), heaven (75%), that Jesus is God or the Son of God (73%), in angels (72%), the survival of the soul after death (71%), and in the resurrection of Jesus (70%). Less than half (45%) of adults believe in Darwin's theory ofevolution but this is more than the 40% who believe increationism..... Many people consider themselves Christians without necessarily believing in some of the key beliefs of Christianity. However, this is not true ofborn-again Christians. In addition to their religious beliefs, large minorities of adults, including many Christians, have "pagan" or pre-Christian beliefs such as a belief in ghosts,astrology, witches andreincarnation.... Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in the Harris Interactive panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated."
A 2008 survey of 1,000 people concluded that, based on their stated beliefs rather than their religious identification, 69.5% of Americans believe in a personal God, roughly 12.3% of Americans areatheist oragnostic, and another 12.1% are deistic (believing in a higher power/non-personal God, but no personal God).[119]
Mark Chaves, aDuke University professor of sociology, religion and divinity, found that 92% of Americans believed in God in 2008, but that significantly fewer Americans have great confidence in their religious leaders than a generation ago.[236]
According to a 2008 ARIS survey, belief in God varies considerably by region. The lowest rate is in the West with 59% reporting a belief in God, and the highest rate is in the South at 86%.[237]
"Spiritual but not religious" (SBNR) is self-identified stance of spirituality that takes issue with organized religion as the sole or most valuable means of furthering spiritual growth. Spirituality places an emphasis upon the wellbeing of the "mind-body-spirit",[238] so holistic activities such as tai chi, reiki, and yoga are common within the SBNR movement.[239] In contrast to religion, spirituality has often been associated with the interior life of the individual.[240]
One fifth of the US public and a third of adults under the age of 30 are reportedly unaffiliated with any religion, however they identify as being spiritual in some way. Of these religiously unaffiliated Americans, 37% classify themselves as spiritual but not religious.[241]
According to some sociologists, perceptions of religious decline are a popular misconception.[63] They state that surveys showing so suffer from methodological deficiencies, that Americans are becoming more religious, and thatAtheists andAgnostics make up a small and stable percentage of the population.[64][242] "Religious belief and interest" has remained relatively stable in recent years; "organizational participation", in contrast, has decreased.[243]
Holiness movement — a movement that emerged chiefly within 19th-century American Methodism with the belief that the Christian life should be free of sin.[22][248]
Messianic Judaism — a movement of the Jews and non-Jews, which arose in the 1960s within Evangelical Protestantism and absorbed elements of theJewish Christian traditions.[252]
Black Hebrew Israelites movement originated at the end of the 19th century, whenFrank Cherry andWilliam Saunders Crowdy both claimed to have received visions that African Americans are descendants of the Bible Hebrews. They practice blend of both Christianity and Judaism.[258][259]
Goddess movement is a widespread non-centralized trend inmodern Paganism with theGoddess veneration, which emerged in the late 1960s. Its belief systems range from monotheistic to polytheistic. Only in the US, it was estimated to have 500,000 members.[260][261]
"I AM" Activity is aneo-Theosophical movement founded in the early 1930s byGuy Ballard and his wifeEdna Anne Wheeler Ballard in Chicago, Illinois. It was a major precursor of several New Age religions. The movement had up to a million followers in 1938 and is still active today on a smaller scale.[264]
Nation of Islam is a non-orthodox new Islamic movement founded byWallace Fard Muhammad in 1930 that focuses its attention on the African Americans. It was estimated to have 50,000 members.[266]
Native American Church, also known as Peyotism and Peyote Religion, formed byQuanah Parker but beginning in 1800[195] and incorporating in 1918. Today it is the most widespread indigenous religion among Native Americans in the United States (exceptAlaska Natives andNative Hawaiians), with an estimated 250,000 followers.[201]
Neoshamanism, the origin of this broad movement has been traced to the second half of the 20th century, especially to two American anthropologists who are seen as promoting and spreading neoshamanic ideas and associated with them teachings and movements, namelyCarlos Castaneda'sTensegrity andMichael Harner's Core Shamanism.[267][268]
Spiritualism is a movement developed and reached its largest following, accomplishingmediums and through variousspiritualist churches, from the 1840s to the 1920s, especially in English-speaking countries, and beliefs that contact with spirits is possible, and that spirits are more advanced than humans.[270][271]
Unitarian Universalist Association was founded in 1961 from the consolidation of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America. Historically Christian denominations, the UUA is no longer Christian and is the largestUnitarian Universalist denomination in the world.
TheUS census does not ask about religion. Various groups have conducted surveys to determine approximate percentages of those affiliated with each religious group.
Independent polling results on religion are questionable due to numerous factors:[277]
polls consistently fail to predict political election outcomes, signifying consistent failure to capture the actual views of the population
very low response rates for all polls since the 1990s
biases in wording or topic affect how people respond to polls
polls categorize people based on limited choices
polls often generalize broadly
polls have shallow or superficial choices, which complicate capturing complexity of religious beliefs and practices
poll interviewer and respondent fatigue is very common
Researchers note that an estimated 20-40% of the population changes their self-reported religious affiliation/identity over time due to numerous factors and that usually it is their answers on surveys that change, not necessarily their religious practices or beliefs.[63]
Researchers advise caution when looking at the "Nones" demographics on surveys because different surveys systematically have discrepancies that amount to 8% and growing of estimates, part of it being that the respondents on surveys are not consistent and also the questions asked are worded differently, generating consistent discrepancies in responses.[278]
According to Gallup there are variations on the responses based on how they ask questions. They routinely ask on complex things like belief in God since the early 2000s in 3 different wordings and they constantly receive 3 different percentages in responses.[279]
The Association of Religion Data Archives (1900-2050)
ThePublic Religion Research Institute (PRRI) has made annual estimates about religious adherence in the United States every year since 2013, and they most recently updated their data in 2020. Their data can be broken down to the state level, and data has also been made available of several large metro areas. Data is collected from roughly 50,000 telephone interviews conducted every year.[281]
Their most recent data shows that approximately 70% of Americans are Christians (down from 71% in 2013), with about 46% of the population professing belief inProtestant Christianity, and another 22% adhering toCatholicism. About 23% of the population adheres to no religion, and 7% more of the population professes a Non-Christian religion (such asJudaism,Islam, orHinduism).[281][282]
Religion in the United States according to the American Values Atlas published by the PRRI (2020)[281]
The map above shows plurality religious denomination by state as of 2010 according to a survey of religious denominations.Protestantism
60%+
50 - 59%
40 - 49%
30 - 49%
Catholicism
60%+
50 - 59%
40 - 49%
30 - 39%
Mormonism
60%+
30 - 39%
TheAssociation of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB) surveyed congregations for their memberships. Churches were asked for their membership numbers. Adjustments were made for those congregations that did not respond and for religious groups that reported only adult membership.[283] ASARB estimates that most of the churches not responding were black Protestant congregations. Significant difference in results from other databases include the lower representation of adherents of (1) all kinds (62.7%), (2) Christians (59.9%), (3) Protestants (less than 36%); and the greater number of unaffiliated (37.3%).
Percentage of religion against average, 2001
Major
>10%
>20%
Catholic
Baptist
Lutheran
Methodist
No religion
Mormonism
Protestant
Pentecostal
Christian(unspecified/other)
Plurality of religious preference by state in 2014.
<20%
<30%
<40%
<50%
>50%
Baptist
Catholic
Mormon
Lutheran
Religious groups
Religious group
Number in year 2010
% in year 2010
Total US pop year 2010
308,745,538
100.0%
Evangelical Protestant
50,013,107
16.2%
Mainline Protestant
22,568,258
7.3%
Black Protestant
4,877,067
1.6%
Protestant total
77,458,432
25.1%
Catholic
58,934,906
19.1%
Orthodox
1,056,535
0.3%
adherents (unadjusted)
150,596,792
48.8%
unclaimed
158,148,746
51.2%
other – including Mormon & Christ Scientist
13,146,919
4.3%
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon, LDS)
The table below shows the religious affiliations among theethnicities in the United States, according to thePew Forum 2014 survey.[134] People ofBlack ethnicity were most likely to be part of a formal religion, with 80% percent being Christians. Protestant denominations make up the majority of the Christians in the ethnicities.
Religion
Non-Hispanic White (62%)
Black (13%)
Hispanic (17%)
Other/mixed (8%)
Christian
70%
79%
77%
49%
Protestant
48%
71%
26%
33%
Catholic
19%
5%
48%
13%
Mormon
2%
<0.5%
1%
1%
Jehovah's Witness
<0.5%
2%
1%
1%
Orthodox
1%
<0.5%
<0.5%
1%
Other
<0.5%
1%
<0.5%
1%
Non-Christian faiths
5%
3%
2%
21%
Jewish
3%
<0.5%
1%
1%
Muslim
<0.5%
2%
<0.5%
3%
Buddhist
<0.5%
<0.5%
1%
4%
Hindu
<0.5%
<0.5%
<0.5%
8%
Other world religions
<0.5%
<0.5%
<0.5%
2%
Other faiths
2%
1%
1%
2%
Unaffiliated (including atheist and agnostic)
24%
18%
20%
29%
ARIS findings regarding self-identification
The United States government does not collect religious data in its census. The survey below, theAmerican Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) of 2008, was a random digit-dialed telephonesurvey of 54,461 American residential households in thecontiguous United States. The 1990 sample size was 113,723; 2001 sample size was 50,281.
Adult respondents were asked theopen-ended question, "What is your religion, if any?" Interviewers did not prompt or offer a suggested list of potential answers. The religion of the spouse or partner was also asked. If the initial answer was "Protestant" or "Christian" further questions were asked to probe which particular denomination. About one third of the sample was asked more detailed demographic questions.
Religious Self-Identification of the US Adult Population: 1990, 2001, 2008[119] Figures are not adjusted for refusals to reply; investigators suspect refusals are possibly more representative of "no religion" than any other group.
The ARIS 2008 survey was carried out during February–November 2008 and collected answers from 54,461 respondents who were questioned in English or Spanish.
The American population self-identifies as predominantly Christian, but Americans are slowly becoming less Christian.
86% of American adults identified as Christians in 1990 and 76% in 2008.
The historic mainline churches and denominations have experienced the steepest declines, while the non-denominational Christian identity has been trending upward, particularly since 2001.
The challenge to Christianity in the US does not come from other religions but rather from a rejection of all forms of organized religion.
34% of American adults considered themselves "Born Again or Evangelical Christians" in 2008.
The US population continues to show signs of becoming less religious, with one out of every seven Americans failing to indicate a religious identity in 2008.
The "Nones" (no stated religious preference, atheist, or agnostic) continue to grow, though at a much slower pace than in the 1990s, from 8.2% in 1990, to 14.1% in 2001, to 15.0% in 2008.
Asian Americans are substantially more likely to indicate no religious identity than other racial or ethnic groups.
One sign of the lack of attachment of Americans to religion is that 27% do not expect a religious funeral at their death.
Based on their stated beliefs rather than their religious identification in 2008, 70% of Americans believe in a personal God, roughly 12% of Americans are atheist (no God) or agnostic (unknowable or unsure), and another 12% are deistic (a higher power but no personal God).
America's religious geography has been transformed since 1990. Religious switching along with Hispanic immigration has significantly changed the religious profile of some states and regions. Between 1990 and 2008, the Catholic population proportion of the New England states fell from 50% to 36% and in New York fell from 44% to 37%, while it rose in California from 29% to 37% and in Texas from 23% to 32%.
Overall the 1990–2008 ARIS time series shows that changes in religious self-identification in the first decade of the 21st century have been moderate in comparison to the 1990s, which was a period of significant shifts in the religious composition of the United States.
2024 Barna Group findings
The media estimates of the number of adult US citizens who consider themselves evangelicals is too high according to 2024 data from the American Worldview Inventory 2024[285] (AWVI 2024, organized by the Cultural Research Center located at theArizona Christian University, under the leadership of researcher George Barna). Rather than the conventional estimate of 25% to 40%, only 10% of adult US citizens consider themselves evangelicals, and of that 10% self-identifying as evangelicals, roughly two thirds do not follow major points of Christian Evangelical doctrine.[286][287][288]
Attendance
Church, synagogue, or mosque attendance by state (2014)
≥50% attending weekly
45-49% attending weekly
40-44% attending weekly
35-39% attending weekly
30-34% attending weekly
25-29% attending weekly
20-24% attending weekly
15-19% attending weekly
Gallup survey data found that 73% of Americans were members of a church, synagogue or mosque in 1937, peaking at 76% shortly afterWorld War II, before trending slightly downward to 70% by 2000. The percentage declined steadily during the first two decades of the 21st century, reaching 47% in 2020. Gallup attributed the decline to increasing numbers of Americans expressing no religious preference.[289][290]
A 2013Public Religion Research Institute survey reported that 31% of Americans attendreligious services at least weekly.[291] According to a 2022 Gallup poll, 75% of Americans reportpraying often or sometimes and religion plays a very (46%) or fairly (26%) important role in their lives.[292]
In a 2009 Gallup survey, 41.6%[293] of American residents stated that they attended a church, synagogue, or mosque once a week or almost every week. This percentage is higher than other surveyed Western countries.[294][295]Church attendance varies considerably by state and region. The figures, updated to 2014, ranged from 51% inUtah to 17% in Vermont.
When it comes to mosque attendance specifically, data collected by a 2017 poll by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) shows that American Muslim women and men attend the mosque at similar rates (45% for men and 35% for women).[141] Additionally, when compared to the general public looking at the attendance of religious services, young Muslim Americans attend the mosque at closer rates to older Muslim Americans. Muslim Americans who regularly attend mosques are more likely to work with their neighbors to solve community problems (49 vs. 30 percent), be registered to vote (74 vs. 49 percent), and plan to vote (92 vs. 81 percent). Overall, "there is no correlation between Muslim attitudes toward violence and their frequency of mosque attendance".[141]
The US guaranteesfreedom of religion, and some churches in the US take strong stances on political subjects.
In August 2010, 67% of Americans said religion was losing influence, compared with 59% who said this in 2006. Majorities of white evangelical Protestants (79%), white mainline Protestants (67%), black Protestants (56%), Catholics (71%), and the religiously unaffiliated (62%) all agreed that religion was losing influence on American life; 53% of the total public said this was a bad thing, while just 10% see it as a good thing.[296]
Politicians frequently discuss their religion when campaigning, andfundamentalists and black Protestants are highly politically active. However, to keep their status astax-exempt organizations they must not officially endorse a candidate. Historically Catholics were heavilyDemocratic before the 1970s, while mainline Protestants comprised the core of theRepublican Party. Those patterns have faded away—Catholics, for example, now split about 50–50. However, white evangelicals since 1980 have made up a solidly Republican group that favors conservative candidates. Secular voters are increasingly Democratic.[297]
Only four presidential candidates for major parties have been Catholics, all for the Democratic party:
Alfred E. Smith inpresidential election of 1928 was subjected to anti-Catholic rhetoric, which seriously hurt him in the Baptist areas of the South and Lutheran areas of the Midwest, but he did well in the Catholic urban strongholds of the Northeast.
John F. Kennedy secured the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960. In the1960 election, Kennedy faced accusations that as a Catholic president he would do as the Pope would tell him to do, a charge that Kennedy refuted in a famous address to Protestant ministers.
John Kerry, a Catholic, won the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. In the2004 election religion was hardly an issue, and most Catholics voted for his Protestant opponentGeorge W. Bush.[298]
Joe Biden, a Catholic, won the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, and then won the2020 presidential election, becoming the second Catholic president, after John F. Kennedy.[299] Biden was also the first Catholic vice president.[300]
Joe Lieberman was the first major presidential candidate that was Jewish, on theGore–Liebermancampaign of 2000 (althoughJohn Kerry andBarry Goldwater both had Jewish ancestry, they were practicing Christians).Bernie Sanders ran againstHillary Clinton in the Democratic primary of 2016. He was the first major Jewish candidate to compete in the presidential primary process. However, Sanders noted during the campaign that he does not actively practice any religion.[301]
A Gallup poll released in 2007[303] indicated that 53% of Americans would refuse to vote for anatheist as president, up from 48% in 1987 and 1999. But then the number started to drop again and reached record low 43% in 2012 and 40% in 2015.[304][305]
The Pew Research Center in 2020 reported that teenagers have lower levels of affiliation with Christianity than their parents and have higher levels of non-affiliation. The gender gap among teenagers was not significant in the poll; comparatively among adults women tend to be more religious than men.[316]
Religious affiliations among teenagers (13-17 years old) compared to their parents
Religion
Teenagers
Parents of teenagers
Christianity
63%
72%
Judaism
1%
1%
Islam
1%
1%
Buddhism
1%
1%
Hinduism
1%
1%
Other world religions
<1
<1
"Something else"
<1
<1
Unaffiliated
32%
24%
No answer
1%
<1%
By gender
According to the 2023-2024 Religious Landscape Study done by Pew Research Center, women are more likely to be religious than men in terms of affiliation.[317]
^abFahmy, Dalia (July 31, 2018)."Americans are far more religious than adults in other wealthy nations". Pew Research Center.Archived from the original on January 9, 2020. RetrievedJanuary 23, 2020.American adults under the age of 40 are less likely to pray than their elders, less likely to attend church services and less likely to identify with any religion – all of which may portend future declines in levels of religious commitment
^Mitchell, Travis (November 23, 2021)."Few Americans Blame God or Say Faith Has Been Shaken Amid Pandemic, Other Tragedies". Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project.The combined nine-in-ten Americans who believe in God or a higher power (91%) were asked a series of follow-up questions about the relationship between God and human suffering.
^Chaves 2017, pp. 38–39, quote: The vast majority of people — approximately 80 percent — describe themselves as both spiritual and religious. Still, a small but growing minority of Americans describe themselves as spiritual but not religious, as figure 3.4 shows. In 1998, 9 percent of Americans described themselves as at least moderately spiritual but not more than slightly religious. That number rose to 16 percent in the 2010s..
^Pearce & Gilliland 2020, p. 5, quote: Most people in the United States, however, identify as spiritual and religious..
^abHolifield, E. Brooks (2015). Why Are Americans So Religious? The Limitations of Market Explanations.Religion and the Marketplace in the United States. pp. 33–60. ISBN 9780199361809.
^"America's Changing Religious Landscape".Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. May 12, 2015. RetrievedOctober 9, 2016.
^"Are all religiously unaffiliated adults in the US nonbelievers?".Pew Research Center. January 24, 2024. Archived fromthe original on January 28, 2024.Not all 'nones' are nonbelievers. Far from it. While the "nones" include many nonbelievers, 70% of "nones" say they believe in God or another higher power, and 63% say they believe in spiritual forces beyond the natural world...Roughly two-thirds of "nones" say they think humans have souls or spirits in addition to their physical bodies. This includes 60% of agnostics and 78% of U.S. adults whose religion is "nothing in particular." By comparison, 31% of atheists believe a person has a soul or spirit in addition to a body.
^abcBurge, Ryan (February 24, 2021)."Most 'Nones' Still Keep the Faith".Research. Christianity Today.What I discovered was that while many people have walked away from a religious affiliation, they haven't left all aspects of religion and spirituality behind. So, while growing numbers of Americans may not readily identify as Christian any longer, they still show up to a worship service a few times a year or maintain their belief in God. The reality is that many of the nones are really "somes."...The center of the Venn diagram indicates that just 15.3 percent of the population that are nones on one dimension are nones on all dimensions. That amounts to just about 6 percent of the general public who don't belong to a religious tradition and don't attend church and hold to an atheist or agnostic worldview.
^abFahmy, Gregory A. Smith, Alan Cooperman, Becka A. Alper, Besheer Mohamed, Chip Rotolo, Patricia Tevington, Justin Nortey, Asta Kallo, Jeff Diamant and Dalia (February 26, 2025)."Decline of Christianity in the U.S. Has Slowed, May Have Leveled Off".Pew Research Center. RetrievedApril 22, 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Sydney Ahlstrom,A Religious History of the American People (Yale UP, 2nd ed. 2004)ISBN0-300-10012-4
^Finke, Roger; Stark, Rodney (2006).The Churching of America, 1776–2005: Winners and Losers in our Religious Economy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. pp. 22, 23.ISBN978-0813535531.
^Kevin M. Schultz, and Paul Harvey, "Everywhere and Nowhere: Recent Trends in American Religious History and Historiography",Journal of the American Academy of Religion, March 2010, Vol. 78 Issue 1, pp. 129–162
^Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise by Kevin M. Schultz, p. 9
^Obligations of Citizenship and Demands of Faith: Religious Accommodation in Pluralist Democracies by Nancy L. Rosenblum, Princeton University Press, 2000 – 438, p. 156
^abcdCox, Daniel; Jones, Ribert P. (June 9, 2017).America's Changing Religious Identity. 2016 American Values Atlas. Public Religion Research Institute.Archived from the original on January 31, 2018. RetrievedFebruary 16, 2018.
^"America's Changing Religious Landscape".Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. May 12, 2015. RetrievedOctober 9, 2016.
^Davis, Jim; Graham, Michael; Burge, Ryan; Hansen, Collin (2023).The Great Dechurching: Who's Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?. Zondervan. p. 121.ISBN9780310147435.What is often overlooked is that when people say they no longer go to church or affiliate with a religious institution, that doesn't mean they leave all vestiges of religion behind...They left the religious label behind but not their belief. In the same way, a lack of church attendance doesn't necessarily mean someone has given up on the idea of God. Among those who report never attending church in the General Social Survey, the share who don't believe in God is about 20 percent. But the share of these never attenders who say they believe in God without any doubts is also about 20 percent. Despite the fact that about 40 percent of Americans never attend church and 30 percent say they have no religious affiliation, just one in ten Americans says God does not exist or that we have no way to know if God exists. Religious belief is persistent in the United States, and while someone may not act on that belief by going to a house of worship on Sunday morning, that doesn't mean they think their spiritual life is unimportant.
^Johnson, Todd; Zurlo, Gina (2016). "Unaffiliated, Yet Religious: A Methodological and Demographic Analysis". In Cipriani, Roberto; Garelli, Franco (eds.).Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion: Vol. 7: Sociology of Atheism. Leiden: Brill. pp. 58–60.ISBN9789004317536.While much of the media - as well as non-religious advocacy groups - honed on the fact that "unaffiliated" category was growing, Pew stressed their finding that most unaffiliated adults had religious and spiritual leanings. According to the Pew survey, 68% of the unaffiliated said they believed in God; more than a third described themselves as "spiritual but not religious"; and 21% said they prayed every day. This report provided evidence that that people who check "nothing in particular" are not uniformly non-religious; many are individuals who are unaffiliated with traditional religious structures like churches or synagogues but still engage in religious practices and hold religious beliefs.
^abcJohnson, Byron; Stark, Rodney; Bradshaw, Matt; Levin, Jeff (2022). "Are Religious "Nones" Really Not Religious?: Revisiting Glenn, Three Decades Later".Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion.18 (7).
^abJohnson, Byron; Stark, Rodney; Bradshaw, Matt; Levin, Jeff (2022). "Are Religious "Nones" Really Not Religious?: Revisiting Glenn, Three Decades Later".Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion.18 (7).As briefly noted above, proportions of atheists and intense, practicing Christians appear to be somewhat stable across time, casting some doubt on a major decline in religiosity (Stark 2008, 2011; Hout and Smith 2015; Stetzer 2015). According to Stark (2008:177), data from multiple population surveys show that the proportion of the U.S. population that identifies as atheist was unchanged for at least 70 years, from the 1940s until the past decade, at about 4%.
^Feldman, Noah (2005).Divided by God. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 10 ("For the first time in recorded history, they designed a government with no established religion at all.")
^Marsden, George M. 1990.Religion and American Culture. Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, pp. 45–46.
^abcd"Religion Census Newsletter"(PDF).RCMS2010.org. Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. March 2017. RetrievedMarch 17, 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
^ANALYSIS (December 19, 2011)."Global Christianity". Pewforum.org.Archived from the original on July 30, 2013. RetrievedAugust 17, 2012.
^"Global Christianity".Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. December 1, 2014. Archived fromthe original on July 19, 2014. RetrievedAugust 23, 2015.
^Sydney E. Ahlstrom,A religious history of the American people (1976) pp. 121-59.
^McKinney, William. "Mainline Protestantism 2000."Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 558, Americans and Religions in the Twenty-First Century (July 1998), pp. 57-66.
^Harriet Zuckerman,Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States New York, The Free Press, 1977, p.68: Protestants turn up among the American-reared laureates in slightly greater proportion to their numbers in the general population. Thus 72 percent of the seventy-one laureates but about two thirds of the American population were reared in one or another Protestant denomination-)
^abcW. Williams, Peter (2016).Religion, Art, and Money: Episcopalians and American Culture from the Civil War to the Great Depression. University of North Carolina Press. p. 176.ISBN9781469626987.The names of fashionable families who were already Episcopalian, like the Morgans, or those, like the Fricks, who now became so, goes on interminably: Aldrich, Astor, Biddle, Booth, Brown, Du Pont, Firestone, Ford, Gardner, Mellon, Morgan, Procter, the Vanderbilt, Whitney. Episcopalians branches of the Baptist Rockefellers and Jewish Guggenheims even appeared on these family trees.
^Irving Lewis Allen, "WASP—From Sociological Concept to Epithet,"Ethnicity, 1975 154+
^Princeton University Office of Communications."Princeton in the American Revolution".Archived from the original on June 14, 2007. RetrievedMay 24, 2011. The original Trustees of Princeton University "were acting in behalf of the evangelical or New Light wing of the Presbyterian Church, but the college had no legal or constitutional identification with that denomination. Its doors were to be open to all students, 'any different sentiments in religion notwithstanding.'"
^Hochstedt Butler, Diana (1995).Standing Against the Whirlwind: Evangelical Episcopalians in Nineteenth-Century America. Oxford University Press. p. 22.ISBN9780195359053.Of all these northern schools, only Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania were historically Anglican; the rest are associated with revivalist Presbyterianism or Congregationalism.
^Khalaf, Samir (2012).Protestant Missionaries in the Levant: Ungodly Puritans, 1820-1860. Routledge. p. 31.ISBN9781136249808.Princeton was Presbyterian, while Columbia and Pennsylvania were Episcopalian.
^"Duke University's Relation to the Methodist Church: the basics". Duke University. 2002. Archived fromthe original on June 12, 2010. RetrievedMarch 27, 2010.Duke University has historical, formal, on-going, and symbolic ties with Methodism, but is an independent and non-sectarian institution ... Duke would not be the institution it is today without its ties to the Methodist Church. However, the Methodist Church does not own or direct the University. Duke is and has developed as a private nonprofit corporation which is owned and governed by an autonomous and self-perpetuating Board of Trustees
^W.L. Kingsley et al., "The College and the Church,"New Englander and Yale Review11 (Feb 1858): 600.accessed 2010-6-16Archived April 13, 2017, at theWayback Machine Note: Middlebury is considered the first "operating" college in Vermont as it was the first to hold classes in Nov 1800. It issued the first Vermont degree in 1802; UVM followed in 1804.
^Diarmaid MacCulloch,Christianity, The First Three Thousand Years, (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), 670, 837.
^The Catholic Priest in the United States: Historical Investigations, John Tracey Ellis, editor (Collegeville: St. John's University Press, 1971), 31. Ellis notes: Between 1850-1900,"the net German Catholic population reached a total of 1,134,887, not to mention the additional thousands of German-speaking immigrants during the same years among the 42,289 Catholics from Switzerland, and the 443,230 who came from Austria-Hungry."
^Michael V. Gannon, "Before and After Moderism: the Intellectual Isolation of the American Priest," inThe Catholic Priest in the United States: Historical Investigations, ed. by John Tracy Ellis (Collegeville: St. John's University Press, 1971), 300.
^"The most and least educated U.S. religious groups," and "how income varies among U.S. religious groups" in Pew Research Center: 26% and 19% of 75 million Catholics are college graduates and high income earners, respectively. No religious community can match those numbers
^Ira M. Sheskin and Arnold Dashefsky, University of Miami and University of Connecticut (2009)."Jewish Population of the United States, 2009"(PDF). Mandell L. Berman North American Jewish Data Bank in cooperation with the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry and the Jewish Federations of North America. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on September 12, 2012. The authors concluded 6,543,820 was an over-count due to people who live in more than one state yearly.
^Kosmin, Mayer & Keysar (December 19, 2001)."American Identification Survey, 2001"(PDF). The Graduate Center of the City University of New York New York. pp. 8–9.Archived(PDF) from the original on January 3, 2018. RetrievedNovember 24, 2012.
^"Jewish Americans in 2020". Pew Research Center. May 11, 2021.In absolute numbers, the 2020 Jewish population estimate is approximately 7.5 million, including 5.8 million adults and 1.8 million children (rounded to the closest 100,000).
^Kosmin, Mayer & Keysar (December 19, 2001)."American Identification Survey, 2001"(PDF). The Graduate Center of the City University of New York New York. p. 13.Archived(PDF) from the original on January 3, 2018. RetrievedNovember 24, 2012.
^ab"Religious Composition of the U.S."(PDF).U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. February 2008.Archived(PDF) from the original on April 23, 2015. RetrievedAugust 8, 2012.
^"Quick Facts and Stats".Official website of the Baha'is of the United States. National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States. June 11, 2014. Archived fromthe original on June 11, 2014. RetrievedApril 24, 2017.
^"Most Baha'i Nations (2005)".QuickLists > Compare Nations > Religions >. The Association of Religion Data Archives. 2005. Archived fromthe original on December 26, 2018. RetrievedSeptember 16, 2012.
^abCainkar, Louise (2021).Arab American Women: Representation and Refusal. Syracuse University Press. p. 23.ISBN9780815655138.
^A. Kayyali, Randa (2006).The Arab Americans. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 21.ISBN9780313332197.Many of the Druze have chosen to deemphasize their ethnic identity, and some have officially converted to Christianity.
^Hobby, Jeneen (2011).Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life. University of Philadelphia Press. p. 232.ISBN9781414448916.US Druze settled in small towns and kept a low profile, joining Protestant churches (usually Presbyterian or Methodist) and often Americanizing their names..
^Phillips, Erica E.; Kesling, Ben (March 9–10, 2013). "Some Church Folk Ask: 'What Would Jesus Brew?'".The Wall Street Journal (paper).
^Thompson, Derek (September 26, 2019)."Three Decades Ago, America Lost Its Religion. Why?".The Atlantic. RetrievedOctober 2, 2022....when it comes to religion, Americans really are exceptional. No rich country prays nearly as much as the U.S, and no country that prays as much as the U.S. is nearly as rich... Stubbornly pious Americans threw a wrench in the secularization thesis. Deep into the 20th century, more than nine in 10 Americans said they believed in God and belonged to an organized religion, with the great majority of them calling themselves Christian. That number held steady—through the sexual-revolution '60s, through the rootless and anxious '70s, and through the "greed is good" '80s. But in the early 1990s, the historical tether between American identity and faith snapped. Religious non-affiliation in the U.S. started to rise—and rise, and rise. By the early 2000s, the share of Americans who said they didn't associate with any established religion (also known as "nones") had doubled. By the 2010s, this grab bag of atheists, agnostics, and spiritual dabblers had tripled in size. History does not often give the satisfaction of a sudden and lasting turning point. History tends to unfold in messy cycles—actions and reactions, revolutions and counterrevolutions—and even semipermanent changes are subtle and glacial. But the rise of religious non-affiliation in America looks like one of those rare historical moments that is neither slow, nor subtle, nor cyclical. You might call it exceptional.
^Blankholm, Joseph (2022).The Secular Paradox: On the Religiosity of the Not Religious. New York University Press. pp. 3, 8.ISBN9781479809509.Secular people's efforts to avoid religion and the creative ways in which they embrace it generate the diversity in American secularism. This book makes sense of secular people's strange ambivalence toward religion. Though being secular means being not religious, it also means participating in a secular tradition and sharing ways of life with other secular people. The secular paradox is the tension between what secular people do not share and what they have in common between avoiding religion and embracing something like it...all secular people live with the secular paradox." & "Each chapter of this book examines a different aspect of religion: belief, community, ritual, conversion, and tradition. Because secular people struggle to simply remove all of these religion-like elements from their lives, they affirm them in part or entirely, sometimes uncritically but more often quite carefully and not without reservations.
^Mitchell, Travis (November 23, 2021)."Few Americans Blame God or Say Faith Has Been Shaken Amid Pandemic, Other Tragedies".Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project.[...] nearly six-in-ten U.S. adults (58%) say they believe in God as described in the Bible, and an additional one-third (32%) believe there is some other higher power or spiritual force in the universe.
^"Key findings about Americans' belief in God".Pew Research Center. April 25, 2018.The vast majority of Americans (90%) believe in some kind of higher power, with 56% professing faith in God as described in the Bible and another 33% saying they believe in another type of higher power or spiritual force. Only one-in-ten Americans say they don't believe in God or a higher power of any kind.
^Adler 2006, Ch. 8. Women, Feminism, and the Craft.
^George D. Chryssides (2001).The A to Z of New Religious Movements. Oxford, UK: Scarecrow Press. p. 298.Emanating from the Radhosoami Satsang (q.v.) background, which is a synthesis of Hinduism and Sikhism (qq.v.), Eckankar teaches a form of surat sabda yoga ...
^Berg, Herbert (2005), "Mythmaking in the African American Muslim Context: The Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, and the American Society of Muslims",Journal of the American Academy of Religion,73 (3):685–703,doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfi075
^Diamant, Jeff; Leppert, Rebecca (April 12, 2023)."Why the U.S. census doesn't ask Americans about their religion".Pew Research Center. RetrievedApril 14, 2023.Census forms in the United States don't ask about religion, but relatively few U.S. adults (25%) know this, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted shortly before census forms were mailed out in 2020. Indeed, while the Census Bureau has long collected troves of data on Americans' income, employment, race, ethnicity, housing and other things, the decennial census, held since 1790, has never directly asked Americans about their religion.
^Wuthnow, Robert (2015). "8. Taking Stock".Inventing American Religion: Polls Surveys, and the Tenuous Quest for a Nation's Faith. Oxford University Press.ISBN9780190258900.
^Burge, Ryan P. (March 2020). "How Many "Nones" Are There? Explaining the Discrepancies in Survey Estimates".Review of Religious Research.62 (1):173–190.doi:10.1007/s13644-020-00400-7.S2CID256240351.
^Saad, Lydia; Hrynowski, Zach (June 24, 2022)."How Many Americans Believe in God?".Gallup.com. Gallup.The answer to how many Americans believe in God depends on how the question is asked. Gallup has measured U.S. adults' belief in God three different ways in recent years, with varying results.
^abc"PRRI — American Values Atlas".The American Values Atlas. Public Religion Research Institute.Archived from the original on February 11, 2022. RetrievedJuly 9, 2021.
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^Those are traditions and denominations that trace their history back to theProtestant Reformation or otherwise heavily borrow from the practices and beliefs of theProtestant Reformers.
^abcdefThis is more of a movement then an institutionalized denomination.
^Denominations that don't fit in the subsets mentioned above.
^Those are traditions and denominations that trace their origin back to theGreat Awakenings and/or are joined together by a common belief that Christianity should be restored along the lines of what is known about the apostolic early church.
^The Holiness movement is an interdenominational movement that spreads over multiple traditions (Methodist, Quakers, Anabaptist, Baptist, etc.). However, here are mentioned only those denominations that are part of Restorationism as well as the Holiness movement, but are not part of any other Protestant tradition.
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