Religion in the United States

Religious affiliation in the United States, per Gallup, Inc. (2022)[1]

  Protestantism (34%)
  Catholicism (23%)
  Non-specific Christian (11%)
  Mormonism (2%)
  Judaism (2%)
  Other religions (6%)
  Unaffiliated with organized forms of religion (21%)
  No answer (1%)

Religion in the United States is widespread, diverse, and vibrant, with the country being far more religious than other wealthy Western nations.[2] An overwhelming majority of Americans believe in a higher power,[3] engage in spiritual practices,[4] and consider themselves religious or spiritual.[5][6] Christianity is the most widely professed religion, with most Americans being Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants, or Catholics.[7][8]

Freedom of religion is guaranteed in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Many scholars of religion credit this and the country's separation of church and state for its high level of religiousness;[9] lacking a state church, it completely avoided the experiences of religious warfare and conflict that characterized European modernization.[10] Its history of religion has always been marked by religious pluralism and diversity.[11][12] In colonial times, Anglicans, Quakers, and other mainline Protestants, as well as Mennonites, arrived from Northwestern Europe. Various dissenting Protestants who had left the Church of England greatly diversified the religious landscape.

The religiosity of the country has grown greatly over time.[13] Religious involvement among American citizens has gradually grown from 17% in 1776 to 62% in 2000.[14] The Thirteen Colonies were initially marked by low levels of religiosity.[13][15] The two Great Awakenings — the first in the 1730s and 1740s, the second between the 1790s and 1840s — led to an immense rise in observance and gave birth to many evangelical Protestant denominations. When they began, one in ten Americans were members of congregations; by the time they ended, eight in ten were.[13] The aftermath led to what historian Martin Marty calls the "Evangelical Empire", a period in which evangelicals dominated U.S. cultural institutions. They supported measures to abolish slavery, further women's rights, enact prohibition, and reform education and criminal justice.[16] The Episcopal Church, splitting from the Church of England, came into being in the American Revolution. New Protestant branches like Adventism emerged; Restorationists like the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Latter Day Saint movement, Churches of Christ and Church of Christ, Scientist, as well as Unitarian and Universalist communities all spread in the 19th century. Deism also found support among American upper classes and intellectual thinkers. During the immigrant waves of the mid to late 19th and 20th century, an unprecedented number of Catholic and Jewish immigrants arrived in the United States. Pentecostalism emerged in the early 20th century as a result of the Azusa Street Revival. Unitarian Universalism resulted from the merge of Unitarian and Universalist churches in the 20th century.

The U.S. has the largest Christian and Protestant population in the world.[17] 75% of Americans report praying often or sometimes and religion plays a very (46%) or fairly (26%) important role in their lives.[18] Judaism is the second-largest religion in the U.S., practiced by 2% of the population, followed by Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, each with 1% of the population.[19] Mississippi is the most religious state in the country, with 63% of its adult population described as very religious, saying that religion is important to them and attending religious services almost every week, while New Hampshire, with only 20% of its adult population described as very religious, is the least religious state.[20] Congress overwhelmingly identifies as religious and Christian; both the Republican and Democratic parties generally nominate those who are.[21][22] The Christian left, as seen through figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Jimmy Carter, and William Jennings Bryan; along with many figures within the Christian right have played a profound role in the country's politics.

Pew Research Center surveys conclude 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."[23][24] Many of the unaffiliated retain religious beliefs or practices without affiliating.[25][26][27] There have been variant explanations for secularization, including lack of trust in the labor market, with government, in marriage and in other aspects of life,[28] backlash against the religious right in the 1980s,[29] and sexual abuse scandals, particularly those within the Southern Baptist Convention[30] and Catholic Church.[31]

However, according to some sociologists, perceptions of religious decline are a popular misconception.[32] They state that surveys showing so suffer from methodological deficiencies, that Americans are becoming more religious, and that Atheists and Agnostics make up a small and stable percentage of the population.[33][34] "Religious belief and interest" has remained relatively stable in recent years; "organizational participation", in contrast, has decreased.[35]

  1. ^ Staff (June 8, 2007). "In Depth: Topics A to Z (Religion)". Gallup, Inc. Retrieved November 1, 2023.
  2. ^ Fahmy, 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. Retrieved January 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
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ Froese, Paul; Uecker, Jeremy E. (September 2022). "Prayer in America: A Detailed Analysis of the Various Dimensions of Prayer". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 61 (3–4): 663–689. doi:10.1111/jssr.12810. ISSN 0021-8294. S2CID 253439298.
  5. ^ Chaves, Mark (2017). American Religion: Contemporary Trends. Princeton, NJ; London: Princeton University Press. pp. 38–39. ISBN 9780691177564. 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.
  6. ^ Pearce, Lisa D.; Gilliland, Claire C. (2020). Religion in America. Sociology in the Twenty-First Century, 6. Oakland, Ca: University of California Press. p. 5. ISBN 9780520296411. Most people in the United States, however, identify as spiritual and religious.
  7. ^ Melton, J. Gordon (2012) [2003]. Protestant Faith in America (2nd ed.). New York: Chelsea House/Facts On File. ISBN 978-1-4381-4039-1.
  8. ^ Pearce, Lisa D.; Gilliland, Claire C. (2020). Religion in America. Sociology in the Twenty-First Century, 6. Oakland, Ca: University of California Press. pp. 7–8. ISBN 9780520296411.
  9. ^ Holifield, 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.
  10. ^ Donadio, Rachel (November 22, 2021). "Why Is France So Afraid of God?". The Atlantic. Retrieved September 20, 2023.
  11. ^ Melton, J. Gordon; et al., eds. (2009) [1978]. Melton's Encyclopedia of American Religions (8th ed.). Detroit, Mi: Gale Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-0-787-69696-2.
  12. ^ Pasquier, Michael (2023) [2016]. Religion in America: The Basics (2nd ed.). London; New York: Routledge. pp. 6–7. ISBN 9780367691806.
  13. ^ a b c Sullivan, Andrew (September 14, 2018). "The American Past: A History of Contradictions". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 28, 2023.
  14. ^ Cite error: The named reference Stark churching was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  15. ^ Edwards, Mark (July 2, 2015). "Was America founded as a Christian nation?". CNN. Retrieved September 28, 2023. Only after the violent attacks on religion in the French Revolution did alarm about the low level of religion in America escalate and enthusiasm for religion catch fire.
  16. ^ Conroy-Krutz, Emily (June 7, 2013). "Religion and Reform". The American Yawp. Retrieved March 19, 2023.
  17. ^ ANALYSIS (December 19, 2011). "Global Christianity". Pewforum.org. Archived from the original on July 30, 2013. Retrieved August 17, 2012.
  18. ^ "Religion Historical Trends". Gallup. 2022.
  19. ^ "In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace" Archived October 3, 2021, at the Wayback Machine, Pew Research Center, October 17, 2019, Retrieved July 27, 2020.
  20. ^ Newport, Frank (February 4, 2016). "New Hampshire Now Least Religious State in U.S." Gallup. Archived from the original on August 19, 2017. Retrieved August 3, 2016.
  21. ^ Giatti, Ian M.; Reporter, Christian Post (January 6, 2023). "Christians continue to dominate Congress even as fewer Americans identify as religious: survey". The Christian Post. Retrieved September 20, 2023.
  22. ^ Contreras, Russell (April 23, 2023). "Our lawmakers are more religious than we are". Axios. Retrieved September 20, 2023.
  23. ^ "America's Changing Religious Landscape". Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project. May 12, 2015. Retrieved October 9, 2016.
  24. ^ "In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace". Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. October 17, 2019. Retrieved October 19, 2019.
  25. ^ Cite error: The named reference Burge 2021 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  26. ^ 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. ISBN 9780310147435. 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 stubborn 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.
  27. ^ 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. ISBN 9789004317536. 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.
  28. ^ Cite error: The named reference Millennials religion was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  29. ^ Hout, Michael; Fischer, Claude (2014). "Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 1987-2012". Sociological Science. 1: 423–447. doi:10.15195/v1.a24. ISSN 2330-6696.
  30. ^ Wehner, Peter (May 24, 2022). "No Atheist Has Done This Much Damage to the Christian Faith". The Atlantic. Retrieved January 21, 2023.
  31. ^ Smietana, Bob (September 13, 2022). "U.S. Christian majority could fade in coming decades, models find". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 21, 2023.
  32. ^ Cite error: The named reference Johnson 2022 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  33. ^ Johnson, 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%.
  34. ^ Johnson, Byron R.; Levin, Jeff (July 28, 2022). "Religion Is Dying? Don't Believe It". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved September 20, 2023.
  35. ^ Grose, Jessica (April 19, 2023). "Lots of Americans Are Losing Their Religion. Have You?". New York Times. Retrieved October 23, 2023.