Religion in the United States#Protestant denominations

{{Main|History of religion in the United States}}

File:George-Henry-Boughton-Pilgrims-Going-To-Church.jpg by George Henry Boughton (1867)]]

Ever since its early colonial days, when some Protestant dissenter English and German settlers moved in search of religious freedom, America has been profoundly influenced by religion.Sydney Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (Yale UP, 2nd ed. 2004) {{ISBN|0-300-10012-4}} Throughout its history, religious involvement among American citizens has grown since 1776 from 17% of the US population to 62% in 2000.{{cite book|title=The Churching of America, 1776–2005: Winners and Losers in our Religious Economy|last1=Finke|first1=Roger|last2=Stark|first2=Rodney|date=2006|publisher=Rutgers University Press|isbn=978-0813535531|location=New Brunswick, NJ|pages=22, 23}} Approximately 35-40 percent of Americans regularly attended religious services from eighteenth-century colonial America up to 1940. That influence continues in American culture, social life, and politics.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 Several of the original Thirteen 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 English Puritans (Congregationalists), Pennsylvania by British Quakers, Maryland by English Catholics, and Virginia by English Anglicans. Despite these, and as a result of intervening religious strife and preference in EnglandSee: English Civil War, Glorious Revolution, Restoration (England), and Nonconformists the Plantation Act 1740 would set official policy for new immigrants coming to British America until the American Revolution. While most settlers and colonists during this time were Protestant, a few early Catholic and Jewish settlers also arrived from Northwestern 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.Richard Middleton, Colonial America, A History, 1665-1776 (Oxford:Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 166-167.

The text of the First Amendment in the US 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."{{Cite web |title=U.S. Constitution - First Amendment |url=https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/ |access-date=June 19, 2022 |website=constitution.congress.gov}} It guarantees the free exercise of religion while also preventing the government from establishing a state religion. However, the states were not bound by the provision, and as late as the 1830s Massachusetts provided tax money to local Congregational churches.{{cite book|author=David E. Swift|title=Black Prophets of Justice: Activist Clergy Before the Civil War|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bUVNttmT13AC&pg=PA180|year=1989|publisher=LSU Press|page=180|isbn=9780807124994|access-date=October 17, 2015|archive-date=April 24, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160424030433/https://books.google.com/books?id=bUVNttmT13AC&pg=PA180|url-status=live}} Since the 1940s, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment as applying the First Amendment to state and local governments.{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}

President John Adams and a unanimous Senate endorsed the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797 that stated: "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."The treaty [https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp is online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190403100415/http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp |date=April 3, 2019 }}

Expert researchers and authors have referred to the United States as a "Protestant nation" or "founded on Protestant principles",Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise by Kevin M. Schultz, p. 9Obligations of Citizenship and Demands of Faith: Religious Accommodation in Pluralist Democracies by Nancy L. Rosenblum, Princeton University Press, 2000 – 438, p. 156{{cite book |surname=Marty |given=Martin E. |url={{Google books|id=SdGQMrZFVa4C|plainurl=y|page=}} |title=The Protestant Voice in American Pluralism |publisher=University of Georgia Press |year=2004 |isbn=0-8203-2580-5 |place=Aphens, Ga; London |authorlink=Martin E. Marty}}, chapter 1.{{cite web |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/08/27/10-facts-about-religion-in-america/ |title=10 facts about religion in America |date=August 27, 2015 |website=pewresearch.org |access-date=August 27, 2017 |archive-date=November 25, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201125032511/http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/08/27/10-facts-about-religion-in-america/ |url-status=live }} specifically emphasizing its Calvinist heritage.{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_UJXV7HYlaQC&pg=PR13 |title=The Calvinist Roots of the Modern Era |first1=Aliki |last1=Barnstone |first2=Michael Tomasek |last2=Manson |first3=Carol J. |last3=Singley |date=August 27, 1997 |publisher=UPNE |access-date=August 27, 2017 |via=Google Books |isbn=9780874518085 |archive-date=October 19, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171019044726/https://books.google.com/books?id=_UJXV7HYlaQC |url-status=live }}{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/faithsoffounding0000holm |url-access=registration |page=[https://archive.org/details/faithsoffounding0000holm/page/13 13] |quote=united states founded on calvinism. |title=The Faiths of the Founding Fathers |first=David L. |last=Holmes |date=May 1, 2006 |publisher=Oxford University Press, USA |access-date=August 27, 2017 |via=Internet Archive|isbn=9780195300925 }}

The modern official motto of the United States of America, as established in a 1956 law signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, is "In God We Trust".{{USC|36|302}} National motto{{cite web|url=https://www.treasury.gov/about/education/Pages/in-god-we-trust.aspx|title=U.S. on the History of "In God We Trust"|publisher=United States Department of the Treasury|access-date=April 22, 2009|archive-date=April 17, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160417102334/https://www.treasury.gov/about/education/Pages/in-god-we-trust.aspx|url-status=live}}[https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-70/pdf/STATUTE-70-Pg732-2.pdf United States Public Law 84-851] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180705011910/https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-70/pdf/STATUTE-70-Pg732-2.pdf |date=July 5, 2018 }}, United States Public Law 84-851. The phrase first appeared on US coins in 1864.

According to a 2002 survey by the Pew 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.

In 1963, 90% of US adults claimed to be Christians while only 2% professed no religious identity.{{citation needed|date=May 2021}} In 2016, 73.7% identified as Christians while 18.2% claimed no religious affiliation.{{cite book |last1=Cox |first1=Daniel |url=https://www.prri.org/research/american-religious-landscape-christian-religiously-unaffiliated/ |title=America's Changing Religious Identity |last2=Jones |first2=Ribert P. |date=June 9, 2017 |publisher=Public Religion Research Institute |series=2016 American Values Atlas |access-date=February 16, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180131052457/https://www.prri.org/research/american-religious-landscape-christian-religiously-unaffiliated/ |archive-date=January 31, 2018 |url-status=live}} 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."{{Cite web |date=May 12, 2015 |title=America's Changing Religious Landscape |url=http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/ |access-date=October 9, 2016 |website=Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life |series=Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project}}{{cite web |date=October 17, 2019 |title=In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace |url=https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/ |access-date=October 19, 2019 |website=Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life}} Many of the unaffiliated retain religious beliefs or practices without affiliating.{{cite book |last1=Davis |first1=Jim |title=The Great Dechurching: Who's Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? |last2=Graham |first2=Michael |last3=Burge |first3=Ryan |last4=Hansen |first4=Collin |publisher=Zondervan |year=2023 |isbn=9780310147435 |page=121 |language=English |quote=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.}}{{cite book |last1=Johnson |first1=Todd |title=Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion: Vol. 7: Sociology of Atheism |last2=Zurlo |first2=Gina |date=2016 |publisher=Brill |isbn=9789004317536 |editor1-last=Cipriani |editor1-first=Roberto |location=Leiden |pages=58–60 |chapter=Unaffiliated, Yet Religious: A Methodological and Demographic Analysis |quote=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. |editor2-last=Garelli |editor2-first=Franco}} 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, backlash against the religious right in the 1980s,{{cite journal |last1=Hout |first1=Michael |last2=Fischer |first2=Claude |date=2014 |title=Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 1987-2012 |journal=Sociological Science |volume=1 |pages=423–447 |doi=10.15195/v1.a24 |issn=2330-6696 |doi-access=free}} sexual abuse scandals, particularly those within the Southern Baptist Convention{{cite journal |last=Wehner |first=Peter |date=2022-05-24 |title=No Atheist Has Done This Much Damage to the Christian Faith |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/southern-baptist-convention-abuse-report/630173/ |journal=The Atlantic |access-date=2023-01-21}} and Catholic Church.{{cite news |last=Smietana |first=Bob |date=September 13, 2022 |title=U.S. Christian majority could fade in coming decades, models find |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/09/13/us-christians-percentage-pew-secularism/ |access-date=January 21, 2023 |newspaper=The Washington Post}}

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),{{cite news |title=How Religious Are Americans? |url=https://news.gallup.com/poll/358364/religious-americans.aspx |access-date=19 August 2024 |work=Gallup |date=29 March 2024}} 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).{{cite web |title=In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/ |website=pewresearch.org |access-date=19 August 2024 |date=17 October 2019}} Still other sources insist Americans are becoming more religious, and surveys showing otherwise suffer from methodological deficiencies.

File:Large Broadside on the Maryland Toleration Act.jpg secured religious liberty in the English colony of Maryland. Similar laws were passed in the Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. These laws stood in direct contrast with the Puritan theocratic rule in the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies.{{cite web|title=American History: Massachusetts Bay Colony|url=https://www.britannica.com/place/Massachusetts-Bay-Colony|publisher=Encyclopaedia Britannica|access-date=December 15, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201204114232/https://www.britannica.com/place/Massachusetts-Bay-Colony|archive-date=December 4, 2020}}]]

According to the American legal scholar and academic Noah Feldman, the United States federal government was the first government to be designed with no established religion at all.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.") However, some states had established religions within their borders until the 1830s.

Modeling the provisions concerning religion within the Virginia 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.Marsden, George M. 1990. Religion and American Culture. Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, pp. 45–46.

{{Main|Christianity in the United States}}

The most popular religion in the United States is Christianity, comprising the majority of the population (73.7% of adults in 2016), with the majority of American Christians belonging to a Protestant denomination or a Protestant offshoot (such as the Latter Day Saint movement or the Jehovah's Witnesses).{{cite news|url=https://news.gallup.com/poll/200186/five-key-findings-religion.aspx|title=Five Key Findings on Religion in the U.S.|last=Newport|first=Frank|date=December 23, 2016|work=Gallup|access-date=April 5, 2018|language=en-us|archive-date=September 12, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170912113030/http://www.gallup.com/poll/200186/five-key-findings-religion.aspx|url-status=live}} 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.{{cite web|url=https://www.rcms2010.org/images/NL201703LargestNonXnMail.pdf|title=Religion Census Newsletter|date=March 2017|website=RCMS2010.org|publisher=Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies|access-date=March 17, 2017}} Roughly 48.9% of Americans are Protestants, 23.0% are Catholics, 1.8% are Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). Christianity was introduced during the period of European colonization. The United States has the world's largest Christian population.{{cite web |author=ANALYSIS |date=December 19, 2011 |title=Global Christianity |url=https://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Global-Christianity-exec.aspx |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130730062627/http://www.pewforum.org/christian/global-christianity-exec.aspx |archive-date=July 30, 2013 |access-date=August 17, 2012 |publisher=Pewforum.org}}{{cite web|url=http://features.pewforum.org/global-christianity/map.php#/Azerbaijan,ALL|title=Global Christianity|date=December 1, 2014|work=Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project|access-date=August 23, 2015|archive-date=July 19, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140719204928/http://features.pewforum.org/global-christianity/map.php#/Azerbaijan,ALL|url-status=dead}}

According to membership statistics from current reports and official web sites, the five largest Christian denominations are:

• The Catholic Church in the United States, 71,000,000 members{{cite web | url=https://aleteia.org/2019/01/18/the-top-10-most-catholic-countries-in-the-world/ | title=The top 10 most Catholic Countries in the world | date=January 18, 2019 }}
• The Southern Baptist Convention, 13,680,493 members{{Cite web |title=SBC Missions and Ministries |url=https://sbcnet.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/SBC-Fast-Facts-10-26-22.pdf |website=Southern Baptist Convention}}
• The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., 8,415,100 members{{cite web | url=https://baptistworld.org/member/national-baptist-convention-usa-inc/ | title=National Baptist Convention, USA, INC | Baptist World Alliance | date=July 21, 2022 }}
• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6,920,086 members{{cite web | url=https://www.deseret.com/2022/4/2/23005061/latter-day-saint-mormon-membership-increased-in-2021-according-to-new-church-statistical-report | title=Latter-day Saint membership increased this much in 2021, according to new church statistical report | date=April 2, 2022 }}
• The United Methodist Church, 5,714,815 members{{cite web | url=http://www.umdata.org/UMFactsHome.aspx | title=UMData }}

The Southern Baptist Convention, with over 13 million adherents, is the largest of more than 200{{Harvnb|Gaustad|1962}} distinctly named Protestant denominations.{{cite web |url=https://www.sbcec.net/bor/2007/2007SBCAnnual.pdf |title=Annual of the 2007 Southern Baptist Convention |access-date=December 29, 2012 |archive-date=April 21, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210421150549/http://www.sbcec.net/bor/2007/2007SBCAnnual.pdf |url-status=live }} In 2007, members of evangelical churches comprised 26% of the American population, while another 18% belonged to mainline Protestant churches, and 7% belonged to historically black churches.The figures for this 2007 abstract are based on surveies for 1990 and 2001 from the Graduate School and University Center at the City University of New York. {{cite web | last = Kosmin | first = Barry A. | author2 = Egon Mayer | author3 = Ariela Keysar | title = American Religious Identification Survey | publisher = City University of New York.; Graduate School and University Center | year = 2001 | url = https://www.trincoll.edu/NR/rdonlyres/AFCEF53A-8DAB-4CD9-A892-5453E336D35D/0/NEWARISrevised121901b.pdf | access-date = April 4, 2007 | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070614124201/https://www.trincoll.edu/NR/rdonlyres/AFCEF53A-8DAB-4CD9-A892-5453E336D35D/0/NEWARISrevised121901b.pdf | archive-date = June 14, 2007 | df = mdy-all }}

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.{{cite journal|last1=Johnstone|first1=Patrick|last2=Miller|first2=Duane|title=Believers in Christ from a Muslim Background: A Global Census|journal=IJRR|date=2015|volume=11|page=14|url=https://www.academia.edu/16338087|access-date=November 20, 2015|archive-date=September 28, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190928201901/https://www.academia.edu/16338087/Believers_in_Christ_from_a_Muslim_Background_A_Global_Census|url-status=live}}

{{Main|Protestantism in the United States}}

File:First_Congregational_Church,_Cheshire_CT.jpg in Cheshire, Connecticut]]

Beginning around 1600, Northwestern European settlers introduced the Anglican and Puritan religion, as well as Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Quaker, and Moravian denominations.Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A religious history of the American people (1976) pp. 121-59. Historians agree that members of mainline Protestant denominations have played leadership roles in many aspects of American life, including politics, business, science, the arts, and education. They founded most of the country's leading institutes of higher education.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. According to Harriet Zuckerman, 72% of American Nobel Prize laureates between 1901 and 1972, have identified from Protestant background.Harriet Zuckerman, [https://books.google.com/books?id=HAHCzJfmD5IC&q=Scientific+Elite%3A+Nobel+Laureates+in+the+United+States 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-)

Traditionally Episcopalians{{cite news |author=B. Drummond Ayres Jr. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/28/us/the-episcopalians-an-american-elite-with-roots-going-back-to-jamestown.html |title=The Episcopalians: An American Elite with Roots Going Back to Jamestown |work=The New York Times |date=December 19, 2011 |access-date=August 17, 2012 |archive-date=July 14, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714144740/http://www.nytimes.com/1981/04/28/us/the-episcopalians-an-american-elite-with-roots-going-back-to-jamestown.html |url-status=live }} and Presbyterians{{cite journal |first=Andrew |last=Hacker |title=Liberal Democracy and Social Control |journal=American Political Science Review |year=1957 |volume=51 |issue=4 |pages=1009–1026 [p. 1011] |jstor=1952449 |doi=10.2307/1952449 |s2cid=146933599 }} tended to be wealthier and better educated than most other religious groups, and numbers of the most wealthy and affluent American families as the Vanderbilts and Astors, Rockefeller,Ron Chernow, Titan (New York: Random, 1998) 50.{{cite book|title=Religion, Art, and Money: Episcopalians and American Culture from the Civil War to the Great Depression|first=Peter|last= W. Williams|year= 2016| isbn= 9781469626987| page =176|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|quote=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.}} Du Pont, Roosevelt, Forbes, Fords, Whitneys, Morgans and Harrimans were Mainline Protestant families,Irving Lewis Allen, "WASP—From Sociological Concept to Epithet," Ethnicity, 1975 154+ although 2015/2016 (Pew) studies found households affiliated with Judaism and Hinduism to be more likely to have incomes over $100,000 per year than those in the mainline tradition Protestants, with other American religious groups having lower median incomes.{{Cite web|url=https://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/|title=America's Changing Religious Landscape|work=Pew Research Center|date=May 12, 2015|access-date=August 19, 2019|archive-date=March 24, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210324055753/https://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/|url-status=live}}{{cite web|url=https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/10/11/how-income-varies-among-u-s-religious-groups/ |date=11 October 2016 |author=DAVID MASCI |title=How income varies among U.S. Religious groups |access-date=21 August 2024 }}

Some of the first colleges and universities in America, including Harvard,{{cite web |url=https://www.news.harvard.edu/guide/intro/index.html |title=The Harvard Guide: The Early History of Harvard University |publisher=News.harvard.edu |access-date=August 29, 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100722203532/https://www.news.harvard.edu/guide/intro/index.html |archive-date=July 22, 2010 }} Yale,{{cite web |url=https://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_057300_matherincrea.htm |title=Increase Mather |access-date=February 16, 2022 |archive-date=February 11, 2006 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060211012309/http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_057300_matherincrea.htm |url-status=live }}, Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, Encyclopædia Britannica Princeton,{{cite web|url=https://www.princeton.edu/pr/facts/revolution.html|title=Princeton in the American Revolution|author=Princeton University Office of Communications|access-date=May 24, 2011|archive-date=June 14, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070614194111/https://www.princeton.edu/pr/facts/revolution.html|url-status=live}} 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.'" Columbia,{{cite book |title=Stand, Columbia: A History of Columbia University in the City of New York |url=https://archive.org/details/standcolumbiahis00aaro |url-access=limited |last=McCaughey |first=Robert |year= 2003|publisher=Columbia University Press |location= New York, New York |isbn=0231130082 |page=[https://archive.org/details/standcolumbiahis00aaro/page/n15 1] }} Dartmouth,{{cite web | url = https://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/rauner/dartmouth/dartmouth_history.html | title = A Dartmouth History Lesson for Freshman | first = Francis Lane | last = Childs | work = Dartmouth Alumni Magazine | date = December 1957 | access-date = February 12, 2007 | archive-date = September 8, 2015 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150908080011/http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/rauner/dartmouth/dartmouth_history.html | url-status = live }} Pennsylvania,{{cite book|title=Standing Against the Whirlwind: Evangelical Episcopalians in Nineteenth-Century America|first=Diana |last=Hochstedt Butler|year= 1995| isbn=9780195359053| page =22|publisher=Oxford University Press|quote= Of all these northern schools, only Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania were historically Anglican; the rest are associated with revivalist Presbyterianism or Congregationalism.}}{{cite book|title=Protestant Missionaries in the Levant: Ungodly Puritans, 1820-1860|first=Samir |last=Khalaf|year=2012| isbn=9781136249808| page =31|publisher=Routledge|quote= Princeton was Presbyterian, while Columbia and Pennsylvania were Episcopalian.}} Duke,{{cite web|url=http://library.duke.edu/uarchives/history/duke-umchh-basic.html|title=Duke University's Relation to the Methodist Church: the basics|quote=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|publisher=Duke University|year=2002|access-date=March 27, 2010|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100612020402/http://library.duke.edu/uarchives/history/duke-umchh-basic.html|archive-date=June 12, 2010}} Boston,{{cite web|url=http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/news/releases/display.php?id=381 |title=Boston University Names University Professor Herbert Mason United Methodist Scholar/Teacher of the Year |quote=Boston University has been historically affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1839 when the Newbury Biblical Institute, the first Methodist seminary in the United States, was established in Newbury, Vermont. |publisher=Boston University |year=2001 |access-date=October 20, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101226230616/https://www.bu.edu/phpbin/news/releases/display.php?id=381 |archive-date=December 26, 2010 }} Williams, Bowdoin, Middlebury,W.L. Kingsley et al., "The College and the Church," New Englander and Yale Review 11 (Feb 1858): 600. [https://books.google.com/books?id=42dJAAAAMAAJ&dq=first%20graduate%20of%20the%20university%20of%20vermont&pg=PA600 accessed 2010-6-16] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170413105454/https://books.google.com/books?id=42dJAAAAMAAJ&dq=first%20graduate%20of%20the%20university%20of%20vermont&pg=PA600 |date=April 13, 2017 }} 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. and Amherst, all were founded by mainline Protestant denominations. By the 1920s most had weakened or dropped their formal connection with a denomination. James Hunter argues:

: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.{{cite book|author=James Davison Hunter|title=To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NYpEwnnIIqAC&pg=PA85|date=March 31, 2010|publisher=Oxford UP|page=85|isbn=9780199779529|access-date=March 27, 2016|archive-date=April 13, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170413051652/https://books.google.com/books?id=NYpEwnnIIqAC&pg=PA85|url-status=live}}

Several Christian groups were founded in America during the Great Awakenings. Interdenominational evangelicalism and Pentecostalism emerged; new Protestant denominations such as Adventism; non-denominational movements such as the Restoration Movement (which over time separated into the Churches of Christ, the Christian churches and churches of Christ, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)); Jehovah's Witnesses (called "Bible Students" in the latter part of the 19th century); and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism).

{{Main|Catholic Church in the United States}}

File:The Founding of Maryland.jpg Father Andrew White, a Jesuit missionary in the left and colonists meeting the people of the Yaocomico branch of the Piscatawy Indian Nation in St. Mary's City, Maryland, the site of Maryland's first colonial settlement.[https://books.google.com/books?id=nUi479nzegAC&q=leutze Archaeology, Narrative, and the Politics of the Past: The View from Southern Maryland] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200819154603/https://books.google.com/books?id=nUi479nzegAC&vq=leutze&source=gbs_navlinks_s |date=August 19, 2020 }}, p. 52, UPCC book collections on Project MUSE, Julia A. King, Publisher, Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2012, {{ISBN|9781572338883}}]]

While the Puritans were securing their Commonwealth, members of the Catholic Church in England were also planning a refuge, "for they too were being persecuted on account of their religion."Richard Middleton, Colonial America: a History, 1565-1776 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002) 94-101. Among those interested in providing a refuge for Catholics was the second Lord of Baltimore, George Calvert, who established Maryland, a "Catholic Proprietary", in 1634, more than sixty years after the founding of the Spanish Florida mission of St. Augustine.Alan Taylor, American Colonies, (New York: Viking, 2001) 76-90. 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.Taylor, 454-456; 364-395. Though the European Catholic and indigenous population of these former territories were small,Taylor, 458-459; 365-366, 368. 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.)

File:Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.jpg in Washington, D.C., is the largest Catholic church in the United States.]]

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)Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity, The First Three Thousand Years, (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), 670, 837. during the mid-to-late 19th and 20th century. Irish, Hispanic, Italian, Portuguese, French Canadian, Polish, German,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." and Lebanese (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."Michael V. Gannon, "Before and After Moderism: the Intellectual Isolation of the American Priest," in The Catholic Priest in the United States: Historical Investigations, ed. by John Tracy Ellis (Collegeville: St. John's University Press, 1971), 300. 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."Gannon, p. 301. 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 the University of Notre Dame is ranked best in its state (Indiana), as Georgetown 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 the University of San Diego.U.S. News & World Report, College Rankings, 2024.

Eastern Orthodoxy was present in North America since the Russian 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.{{clarify|date=October 2022}}

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 were Eastern Europeans like Russians, Greeks, Ukrainians, Serbians and others. The second major group were from Levant like Lebanese, Syrians, Palestinians and others.

Armenians, Copts and Assyrians, also brought Oriental Orthodoxy to America.{{sfn|FitzGerald|2007|p=269-279}}Alexei D. Krindatch, ed., Atlas of American Orthodox Christian Churches (Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2011) {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20210816022231/http://www.coptics.info/Books/AtlasAmericanOrthodoxChurchesSample.pdf online]}}.

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 (except Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, and from among the Hispanic community, both of which consist mainly of Catholics), while urbanized areas of the north Atlantic states and Great 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 of Utah was Mormon, as well as 26% of neighboring Idaho.{{cite web |url= https://www.adherents.com/largecom/com_lds.html |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/19991002054904/https://www.adherents.com/largecom/com_lds.html |url-status= usurped |archive-date= October 2, 1999 |title= Largest Latter-day Saint Communities (Mormon/Church of Jesus Christ Statistics) |date= April 12, 2005 |publisher= adherents.com}} Lutheranism is most prominent in the Upper Midwest, with North Dakota having the highest percentage of Lutherans (35% according to a 2001 survey).{{cite web |url= https://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/key_findings.htm |title= American Religious Identification Survey |work= Exhibit 15 |publisher= The Graduate Center, City University of New York |access-date= November 24, 2006 |archive-date= July 9, 2011 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110709082644/http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/key_findings.htm |url-status= live }}

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%. A nationwide telephone interview of 1,002 adults conducted by The 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".{{cite news |title= Barna Survey Examines Changes in Worldview Among Christians over the Past 13 Years |date= March 6, 2009 |publisher= The Barna Group |url= https://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/12-faithspirituality/252-barna-survey-examines-changes-in-worldview-among-christians-over-the-past-13-years |access-date= June 26, 2009 |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20090312095809/https://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/12-faithspirituality/252-barna-survey-examines-changes-in-worldview-among-christians-over-the-past-13-years |archive-date= March 12, 2009 |df= mdy-all }}

Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Eastern Orthodox and United Church of Christ members{{cite web |url=https://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/ |title=America's Changing Religious Landscape |publisher=Pew Research Center: Religion & Public Life |date=May 12, 2015 |access-date=August 19, 2019 |archive-date=March 24, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210324055753/https://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/ |url-status=live }} have the highest number of graduate and post-graduate degrees per capita of all Christian denominations in the United States,{{Citation|url=https://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf|title=US Religious Landscape Survey: Diverse and Dynamic|publisher=The Pew Forum|page=85|date=February 2008|access-date=September 17, 2012|ref=refEducationLevel|archive-date=April 23, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150423044142/http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf|url-status=live}}{{cite web|url=https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/04/the-most-and-least-educated-u-s-religious-groups/|title=The most and least educated U.S. religious group|publisher=Pew Research Center|date=October 16, 2016|access-date=February 16, 2022|archive-date=May 20, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190520033013/https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/04/the-most-and-least-educated-u-s-religious-groups/|url-status=live}} as well as the most high-income earners.{{cite news|url=https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/faith-education-and-income/|title=Faith, Education and Income|work=The New York Times|access-date=May 13, 2011|first=David|last=Leonhardt|date=May 13, 2011|archive-date=July 11, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180711160705/https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/faith-education-and-income/|url-status=live}}{{cite web|url=https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/11/how-income-varies-among-u-s-religious-groups/|title=How income varies among U.S. religious groups|publisher=Pew Research Center|date=October 16, 2016|access-date=February 16, 2022|archive-date=May 11, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190511105021/https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/11/how-income-varies-among-u-s-religious-groups/|url-status=live}} However, owing to the sheer size or demographic head count of Catholics, more individual Catholics have graduate degrees and are in the highest income brackets than have or are individuals of any other religious community."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

{{Main|American Jews|History of the Jews in the United States}}

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. The Jewish population in the United States was approximately 6 million in 2010.{{Cite web |url=https://www.jewishdatabank.org/Reports/Jewish_Population_in_the_United_States_2010.pdf |year=2009 |author=Ira M. Sheskin and Arnold Dashefsky, University of Miami and University of Connecticut |title=Jewish Population of the United States, 2009 |publisher=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 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120912030237/https://www.jewishdatabank.org/Reports/Jewish_Population_in_the_United_States_2010.pdf |archive-date=September 12, 2012}} The authors concluded 6,543,820 was an over-count due to people who live in more than one state yearly. A significant number of people identify themselves as American Jews on ethnic and cultural grounds rather than religious observance. For example, 19% of self-identified American Jews do not believe God exists.{{citation |contribution-url= https://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/Harris-Interactive-Poll-Research-While-Most-Americans-Believe-in-God-Only-36-pct-A-2003-10.pdf |contribution= While Most Americans Believe in God, Only 36% Attend a Religious Service Once a Month or More Often |title= The Harris Poll #59 |series= HarrisInteractive.com |publisher= Harris Interactive |first= Humphrey |last= Taylor |date= October 15, 2003 |access-date= February 18, 2014 |title-link= Harris Insights & Analytics |archive-date= September 24, 2015 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150924025229/http://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/Harris-Interactive-Poll-Research-While-Most-Americans-Believe-in-God-Only-36-pct-A-2003-10.pdf |url-status= live }} The 2001 ARIS 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.{{cite web |url= https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-Center/PDF/ARIS/ARIS-PDF-version.pdf?ext=.pdf |title= American Identification Survey, 2001 |publisher= The Graduate Center of the City University of New York New York |date= December 19, 2001 |author= Kosmin, Mayer & Keysar |pages= 8–9 |access-date= November 24, 2012 |archive-date= January 3, 2018 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20180103174600/http://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-Center/PDF/ARIS/ARIS-PDF-version.pdf?ext=.pdf |url-status= live}} ARIS 2008 estimated about 2.68 million adults (1.2%) in the country identify Judaism as their faith. According to a 2017 study, Judaism is the religion of approximately 2% of the American population. According to a 2020 study by the Pew Research Center, the core American Jewish population is estimated at 7.5 million people, this includes 5.8 million Jewish adults.{{cite web|url=https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/|title=Jewish Americans in 2020|date=May 11, 2021 |publisher=Pew Research Center|quote=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).}} 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.{{cite news |title= New Brandeis study estimates 7.6 million Jews living in U.S. |last1=Forman |first1=Ethan |url=https://jewishjournal.org/2021/04/22/new-brandeis-study-estimates-7-6-million-jews-living-in-u-s/ |access-date=January 26, 2022 |agency=Jewish Journal |publisher=Jewish Journal}}

File:Touro Synagogue, Newport, RI.jpg, (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 colonial Plantation 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 of Eastern Europe. The Jewish community in the United States is composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews whose ancestors emigrated from Central and Eastern Europe. There are, however, small numbers of older (and some recently arrived) communities of Sephardi Jews with roots tracing back to 15th-century Iberia (Spain, Portugal, and North Africa). There are also Mizrahi Jews (from the Middle East, Caucasia and Central Asia), as well as much smaller numbers of Ethiopian Jews, Indian Jews, and others from various smaller Jewish ethnic divisions. Approximately 25% of the Jewish American population lives in New York City.{{cite web |title= Jewish Community Study of New York |publisher= United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York |year= 2002 |url= https://www.ujafedny.org/atf/cf/%7BAD848866-09C4-482C-9277-51A5D9CD6246%7D/JCommStudyIntro.pdf |access-date= March 22, 2008 |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070614001800/https://www.ujafedny.org/atf/cf/%7BAD848866-09C4-482C-9277-51A5D9CD6246%7D/JCommStudyIntro.pdf |archive-date= June 14, 2007 |df= mdy-all }}

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. 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 were Reform Jews, 22% said they were Conservative Jews, and 14% said they were Orthodox Jews.{{cite web|url=https://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/|title=America's Changing Religious Landscape|date=May 12, 2015|publisher=Pew Research Center: Religion & Public Life|access-date=August 19, 2019|archive-date=March 24, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210324055753/https://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/|url-status=live}}{{cite web |title=CIA Fact Book |url=https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/united-states/ |publisher=CIA World Fact Book |year=2002 |access-date=December 30, 2007 |archive-date=March 21, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210321202516/https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/united-states/ |url-status=live }} According to the 1990 National 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".{{cite book |surname=Wertheimer |given=Jack |authorlink=Jack Wertheimer |title=Jews in the Center: Conservative Synagogues and Their Members|url={{Google books|id=U_nEoAZ6ffgC|plainurl=y|page=68|keywords=|text=}} |year=2002 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |page=68 |isbn=9780813532066 |archive-date=January 9, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160109094436/https://books.google.com/books?id=U_nEoAZ6ffgC&pg=PA68 |url-status=live}}

Thus, the majority of American Jews affiliated themselves with the major Jewish movements: Conservative, Orthodox and Reform Judaism.{{cite book |surname=Wertheimer |given=Jack |authorlink=Jack Wertheimer |chapter=Recent Trends in American Judaism |editor-surname=Neusner |editor-given=Jacob |editor-link=Jacob Neusner |title=An Introduction to Judaism: A Textbook and Reader |place=Louisville, Kentucky |publisher=Westminster/John Knox Press |year=1991 |pages=85–116 |chapter-url={{Google books|id=6M8oxDql1KIC|plainurl=y|page=85|keywords=|text=}} |url={{Google books|id=6M8oxDql1KIC|plainurl=y}} |isbn=0-664-25348-2}} pp. 86–88.{{cite book |surname=Wertheimer |given=Jack |authorlink=Jack Wertheimer |title=The New American Judaism: How Jews Practice Their Religion Today |place=Princeton, NJ; Oxford |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=2018 |url={{Google books|id=1DthDwAAQBAJ|plainurl=y|page=103|keywords=|text=}} |page=103 |isbn=978-0-691-18129-5}} Already in the 1980s, 20–30% of members of the largest Jewish communities, such as of New York City, Chicago, and Miami, rejected a denominational label.

According to the 2001 National Jewish Population Survey, 4.3 million American Jewish adults have some sort of strong connection to the Jewish community, whether religious or cultural.{{cite web | url=https://www.ujc.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=83784 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040515195547/https://www.ujc.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=83784 | url-status=dead | archive-date=May 15, 2004 | title=2001 National Jewish Population Survey | publisher=Ujc.org | access-date=December 29, 2012 | df=mdy-all }} Jewishness is generally considered an ethnic identity as well as a religious 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 attending Passover Seders or lighting Hanukkah candles on the other. The survey also discovered that Jews in the Northeast and Midwest are generally more observant than Jews in the South or West.

The Jewish American community has higher household incomes than average and is one of the best-educated religious communities in the United States.

{{Main|Islam in the United States}}

File:Islamic Center of Washington - 2551 Massachusetts Avenue NW.jpg in the nation's capital is a leading American Islamic Center.]]

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. 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.{{Cite web|url=https://static1.squarespace.com/static/584f0e56ebbd1ae235d63da5/t/5b4f7d04352f534ff9fbe5c7/1531936037053/MAP-NYC-Report-Web.pdf%7Ctitle=An|title=Impact Report of Muslim Contributions to New York City|publisher=Institute for Social Policy and Understanding|date=July 2018|website=Muslims for American Progress|access-date=August 19, 2019|archive-date=February 27, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210227030851/https://static1.squarespace.com/static/584f0e56ebbd1ae235d63da5/t/5b4f7d04352f534ff9fbe5c7/1531936037053/MAP-NYC-Report-Web.pdf%7Ctitle=An|url-status=live}} 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%).{{Cite web|url=https://www.ispu.org/american-muslim-poll-2017/|title=American Muslim Poll 2017 {{!}} ISPU|date=March 21, 2017|website=Institute for Social Policy and Understanding|language=en-US|access-date=December 5, 2018|archive-date=November 21, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181121165732/https://www.ispu.org/american-muslim-poll-2017/|url-status=live}} 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.

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.{{cite web |url= https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/twenty/tkeyinfo/islam.htm |title= Islam in America: From African Slaves to Malcolm X |first= Thomas A. |last= Tweed |publisher= National Humanities Center |access-date= July 21, 2009 |archive-date= December 12, 2021 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20211212032027/http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/twenty/tkeyinfo/islam.htm |url-status= live }} 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.Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, A History of Islam in America: From the New World to the New World Order (Cambridge University Press, 2010) pp. 59–94 According to some experts,{{cite book |url=https://archive.org/details/americasalternat00mill |url-access=registration |quote=Ahmadiyya. | title=America's alternative religions | publisher=State University of New York Press | year=1995 | author=Timothy Miller | page=[https://archive.org/details/americasalternat00mill/page/280 280]| isbn=9780791423974 }} Islam later gained a higher profile through the Nation of Islam, a religious group that appealed to black Americans after the 1940s; its prominent converts included Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.Mattias Gardell, In the Name of Elijah Muhammad: Louis Farrakhan and The Nation of Islam (Duke University Press, 1996)C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America (3rd ed. Eerdmans, 1994) The first Muslim elected to Congress was Keith Ellison in 2006,{{cite news |url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/first-muslim-elected-to-congress/ |title=First Muslim Elected to Congress |publisher=Cbsnews.com |date=February 11, 2009 |access-date=December 29, 2012 |archive-date=October 12, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131012013020/http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/08/politics/main2163201.shtml |url-status=live }} followed by André Carson in 2008.{{cite news |last=Cebula |first=Judith |url=https://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1164415020080312 |title=Second Muslim elected to Congress |publisher=Reuters.com |date=March 11, 2008 |access-date=December 29, 2012 |archive-date=October 8, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201008123719/https://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1164415020080312 |url-status=live }}

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.

Research indicates that Muslims in the United States are generally more assimilated and prosperous than their counterparts in Europe.{{cite web |url=https://www.projectmaps.com/AMP2004report.pdf |title=Zogby phone survey |publisher=Projectmaps.com |access-date=March 17, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130626110709/https://www.projectmaps.com/AMP2004report.pdf |archive-date=June 26, 2013 }}{{cite web |url= https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-muslims2006-09-10-voa17/320857.html |title= America's Muslims after 9/11 |publisher= Voice of America |access-date= May 22, 2010 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110717231216/https://www.voanews.com/english/news/a-13-Muslims2006-09-10-voa17.html |archive-date= July 17, 2011 |url-status= live }}{{cite web |url=https://pewresearch.org/assets/pdf/muslim-americans.pdf |title=Muslim Americans, Pew Research Center |access-date=December 29, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120916051122/https://pewresearch.org/assets/pdf/muslim-americans.pdf |archive-date=September 16, 2012 }} Like other subcultural and religious communities, the Islamic community has generated its own political organizations and charity organizations.

{{Main|Hinduism in the United States}}

File:Iraivan Temple.jpg in Kauai Island in Hawaii is the only Hindu monastery in the United States]]

Hinduism is representing approximately 1% of the U.S population in 2010s.[http://66.223.50.234/asrec/archive/papers/Melton_Hindu_Demographics.pdf Reflections on Hindu Demographics in America: An Initial Report on the First American Hindu Census.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191020183913/http://66.223.50.234/asrec/archive/papers/Melton_Hindu_Demographics.pdf|date=October 20, 2019}} J. Gordon Melton and Constance A. Jones. A paper presented at the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics & Culture meeting in Washington, D.C., April 7–10, 2011.{{cite web |date=May 12, 2015 |title=America's Changing Religious Landscape |url=https://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210324055753/https://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/ |archive-date=March 24, 2021 |access-date=August 19, 2019 |publisher=Pew Research Center: Religion & Public Life}} In 2001, there were an estimated 766,000 Hindus in the US, about 0.2% of the total population.{{cite web |author=Kosmin, Mayer & Keysar |date=December 19, 2001 |title=American Identification Survey, 2001 |url=https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-Center/PDF/ARIS/ARIS-PDF-version.pdf?ext=.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180103174600/http://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-Center/PDF/ARIS/ARIS-PDF-version.pdf?ext=.pdf |archive-date=January 3, 2018 |access-date=November 24, 2012 |publisher=The Graduate Center of the City University of New York New York |page=13}}{{cite web |date=February 2008 |title=Religious Composition of the U.S. |url=https://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150423044142/http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-full.pdf |archive-date=April 23, 2015 |access-date=August 8, 2012 |work=U.S. Religious Landscape Survey |publisher=Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life}}

The first time Hinduism entered the United States is not clearly identifiable. However, large groups of Hindus have immigrated from India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, other parts of the Caribbean, southern Africa, eastern Africa, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mauritius, Fiji, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and other regions and countries since the enactment of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. During the 1960s and 1970s, Hinduism exercised fascination and contributed to the development of New Age thought. During the same decades, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), a Vaishnavite Hindu reform organization, was founded in the US by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. In 2003, the Hindu American Foundation—a national institution protecting the rights of the Hindu community of the US—was founded.

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.

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. Hindus also have higher acceptance towards homosexuality (71%), which is higher than the general public (62%).{{cite news |title=Pewforum religious landscape study |url=https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200103045246/https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/ |archive-date=January 3, 2020 |access-date=February 20, 2020 |newspaper=Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project}}

{{Main|Bahá'í Faith in the United States}}

File:Willmette how.jpg (built 1953) in Wilmette, Illinois, is the oldest extant Bahá'í house of worship in the world and the only one in the United States.]]

The Baháʼí Faith was first mentioned in the United States in 1893 at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago.{{cite news |title=Henry H. Jessup, D.D., Makes an Eloquent and Instructive Address |newspaper=The Inter Ocean |location=Chicago, Illinois |page=2 |date=24 September 1893 |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/309755/1st_newspaper_mention_bahaullahs/ |access-date=Feb 8, 2014}} Soon after, early American converts began embracing the new religion. Thornton Chase was the first American Baháʼí, dating from 1894.{{cite encyclopedia |last=Stockman |first=Robert H. |author-link=Robert Stockman |year=2009 |title=Chase, Thornton (1847–1912) |encyclopedia=Baháʼí Encyclopedia Project |publisher=National Spiritual Assembly of the Baháʼís of the United States |location=Evanston, IL |url=https://www.bahai-encyclopedia-project.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46:chase-thornton-18471912 |access-date=2022-05-06}} One of the first Baháʼí institutions in the US was established in Chicago to facilitate the establishment of the first Baháʼí House of Worship in the West, which was eventually built in Wilmette, Illinois and dedicated in 1953.{{cite book |last=Linfoot |title=The Baháʼí World; An International Record |publisher=Universal House of Justice |volume=XIII, 1954–1963 |year=1970 |pages=846–849 |chapter=In Memoriam; Corine Knight True |chapter-url=http://bahai-library.com/pdf/bw/memoriam_bw_13.pdf}}

Worldwide, the religion has grown faster than the rate of population growth over the 20th century,{{cite book |last1=Johnson |first1=Todd M. |last2=Grim |first2=Brian J. |date=26 March 2013 |title=The World's Religions in Figures: An Introduction to International Religious Demography |chapter=Global Religious Populations, 1910–2010 |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |pages=59–62 |chapter-url={{Google books|CkFVF8nFiqkC |page=59 |plainurl=yes}} |doi=10.1002/9781118555767.ch1 |isbn=9781118555767}} and has been recognized since the 1980s as the most widespread minority religion in the countries of the world.{{cite encyclopedia| title = Religion (&) Bahá'í Faith | encyclopedia = Britannica Book of the Year| page = 303| publisher = Encyclopædia Britannica| date =1988| location = Chicago}} Similarly, by 2020, the religion was the largest minority religion in about half of the counties.{{cite web | title =Largest Non-Christian Religion by County | url =https://www.usreligioncensus.org/sites/default/files/2022-11/Largest%20Non-Christian%20Religion%202020USRC.pdf | website =USReligionCensus.org | date = Nov 4, 2022|publisher=Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies | access-date = Nov 28, 2022 }} Since about 1970 the state with the single largest Baháʼí population was South Carolina.{{cite book|author1=Mike McMullen|author2=Michael McMullen|title=The Baháʼís of America: The Growth of a Religious Movement|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iecWCgAAQBAJ|date=27 November 2015|publisher=NYU Press|isbn=978-1-4798-5152-2|pages=153, 193}} 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.{{cite web |last=Kolodner |first=Alexander |title=The Baha'i Faith Compared to Race in American Counties |date=May 1, 2014 |url=https://sites.tufts.edu/gis/files/2014/11/Kolodner_Alex.pdf |access-date=March 18, 2015}} However, estimates of the total number of Baháʼís varies widely from around 175,000{{cite web |date=June 11, 2014 |title=Quick Facts and Stats |url=https://www.bahai.us/news/bahai-statistics/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140611203810/https://www.bahai.us/news/bahai-statistics/ |archive-date=11 June 2014 |access-date=April 24, 2017 |website=Official website of the Baha'is of the United States |publisher=National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of the United States}} to 500,000.{{cite web |year=2005 |title=Most Baha'i Nations (2005) |url=http://www.thearda.com/QuickLists/QuickList_40c.asp |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181226145149/http://www.thearda.com/QuickLists/QuickList_40c.asp%20 |archive-date=December 26, 2018 |access-date=16 September 2012 |work=QuickLists > Compare Nations > Religions > |publisher=The Association of Religion Data Archives}}

Druze began migrating to the United States in the late 1800s from the Levant (Syria and Lebanon).{{cite book|title=Arab American Women: Representation and Refusal|first=Louise|last= Cainkar|year= 2021| isbn=9780815655138| page =23 |publisher=Syracuse University Press|quote=}} Druze emigration to the Americas increased at the outset of the 20th century due to the famine during World War I that killed an estimated one third to one half of the population, the 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war, and the Lebanese Civil War between 1975 and 1990. The United States is the second largest home of Druze communities outside the Middle East after Venezuela (60,000).{{cite web|url=https://www.juf.org/news/jerusalem.aspx?id=451177|title=Sending relief--and a message of inclusion and love—to our Druze sisters and brothers|date=April 6, 2021|work=Los Angeles Times|access-date=November 22, 2021|archive-date=November 15, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211115024250/https://www.juf.org/news/jerusalem.aspx?id=451177|url-status=live}} According to some estimates there are about 30,000{{cite web|url=https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-druze-future-20170731-story.html|title=Finding a life partner is hard enough. For those of the Druze faith, their future depends on it|date=August 27, 2017|work=Los Angeles Times|access-date=November 22, 2021|archive-date=November 22, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211122142237/https://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-druze-future-20170731-story.html|url-status=live}} to 50,000 Druzes in the United States, with the largest concentration in Southern California. American Druze are mostly of Lebanese and Syrian descent.

Members of the Druze faith face the difficulty of finding a Druze partner and practicing endogamy; 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 the United States converted to Protestantism, becoming communicants of the Presbyterian or Methodist churches.{{cite book|title=The Arab Americans|first=Randa|last=A. Kayyali|year= 2006| isbn= 9780313332197| page =21 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|quote= Many of the Druze have chosen to deemphasize their ethnic identity, and some have officially converted to Christianity.}}{{cite book|title= Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life|first=Jeneen|last=Hobby|year= 2011| isbn= 9781414448916| page =232 |publisher=University of Philadelphia Press|quote= US Druze settled in small towns and kept a low profile, joining Protestant churches (usually Presbyterian or Methodist) and often Americanizing their names..}}

{{Main|Rastafari movement in the United States}}

Rastafarians began migrating to the United States in the 1950s, '60s and '70s from the religion's 1930s birthplace, Jamaica.{{cite news| title=Rastafarian history| url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/rastafari/history/history.shtml| access-date=May 29, 2015| work=BBC.co.uk| archive-date=October 28, 2021| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211028034916/https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/rastafari/history/history.shtml| url-status=live}}{{cite web| last1=Loadenthal| first1=Michael| title=Jah People: The cultural hybridity of white Rastafarians| url=https://www.glocalismjournal.net/Issues/HYBRIDITY/Articles/Jah_People_The_Cultural_Hybridity_Of_White_Rastafarians.kl| website=GlocalismJournal.net| access-date=May 29, 2015| archive-date=September 14, 2019| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190914065108/http://www.glocalismjournal.net/issues/hybridity/articles/jah_people_the_cultural_hybridity_of_white_rastafarians.kl| url-status=live}}

Marcus Garvey, who is considered a prophet by many Rastafarians, rose to prominence and cultivated many of his ideas in the United States.{{cite web| title=Rastari History| url=https://www.religionfacts.com/rastafarianism/history| website=Religionfacts.com| access-date=May 29, 2015| archive-date=November 26, 2021| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211126151547/https://religionfacts.com/rastafarianism/history| url-status=live}}{{cite web| title=Rastafarianism| url=https://www.religionfacts.com/rastafarianism| website=Religionfacts.com| access-date=May 29, 2015| archive-date=February 1, 2022| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220201052135/https://religionfacts.com/rastafarianism| url-status=live}}

{{Main|Buddhism in the United States}}

File:Hongwanji Buddist Temple.jpg, around 1925]]

Buddhism entered the United States during the 19th century with the arrival of the first immigrants from East Asia. The first Buddhist temple was established in San Francisco in 1853 by Chinese Americans. The first prominent US citizen to publicly convert to Buddhism was Colonel Henry Steel Olcott in 1880, who is still honored in Sri Lanka for his Buddhist revival efforts. An event that contributed to the strengthening of Buddhism in the United States was the Parliament of the World's Religions in 1893, which was attended by many Buddhist delegates sent from India, China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand and Sri Lanka.

In the late 19th century, Buddhist missionaries from Japan 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.{{cite web| url=https://www.utne.com/Mind-Body/Buddhism-Fastest-Growing-American-Religion-Stigma.aspx| title=Bad Buddhist Vibes| work=Utne| date=December 20, 2011| access-date=March 5, 2015| archive-date=May 12, 2013| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130512155622/http://www.utne.com/Mind-Body/Buddhism-Fastest-Growing-American-Religion-Stigma.aspx| url-status=live}}{{cite book |url=https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520213012 |title=The Faces of Buddhism in America |series=University of California Press |access-date=March 5, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225014437/https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520213012 |archive-date=February 25, 2021 |url-status=live}}

According to a 2016 study, Buddhists are approximately 1% of the American population. 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.

{{Main|Sikhism in the United States}}

File:The Sikh Temple in Stockton, California, 1915.jpg

Sikhism is a religion originating from the Indian subcontinent which was introduced into the United 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.[https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/h_es/h_es_korit_histical.htm#Pioneers The Pioneers, America, "A historical perspective of Americans of Asian Indian origin 1790–1997"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200410065659/https://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/h_es/h_es_korit_histical.htm#Pioneers |date=April 10, 2020 }} October 31, 2006 The first Sikh Gurdwara in America was built in Stockton, California, in 1912.[https://www.stocktongurdwarasahib.com/ Stockton Gurdwara, America, "Stockton California"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080507014611/https://www.stocktongurdwarasahib.com/ |date=May 7, 2008 }} October 31, 2006 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 the East and West Coasts, with additional populations in Detroit, Chicago, and Austin.{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8R-Kl2C1C7QC&q=sikh+population+united+states&pg=PA116| title=Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs in America: A Short History, p. 120| access-date=August 10, 2012| isbn=9780198044246| last1=Mann| first1=Gurinder Singh| last2=Numrich| first2=Paul| last3=Williams| first3=Raymond| date=December 3, 2007| publisher=Oxford University Press| archive-date=August 17, 2021| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210817235533/https://books.google.com/books?id=8R-Kl2C1C7QC&q=sikh+population+united+states&pg=PA116| url-status=live}}{{cite book| title=The Racialization of Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism in the United States, Khyati Y. Joshi, 2006}}

The United States also has a number of non-Punjabi converts to Sikhism.{{cite book| author=Ronald H. Bayor| title=Multicultural America: An Encyclopedia of the Newest Americans| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YN9jC2_7UHYC&pg=PA985| access-date=June 6, 2013| date=July 31, 2011| publisher=ABC-CLIO| isbn=978-0-313-35787-9| pages=985–| archive-date=April 24, 2016| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160424030244/https://books.google.com/books?id=YN9jC2_7UHYC&pg=PA985| url-status=live}}

{{Main|Jainism in the United States}}

Adherents of Jainism 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. The Federation of Jain Associations in North America is an umbrella organization of local American and Canadian Jain congregations to preserve, practice, and promote Jainism and the Jain way of life.{{cite web |url=https://www.jaina.org/?page=AboutJAINA |access-date=January 16, 2012 |title=About JAINA |archive-date=February 28, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180228231037/http://www.jaina.org/?page=AboutJAINA |url-status=live }}

Taoism was popularized throughout the world by the writings and teachings of Laozi and other Taoists, as well as the practice of qigong, tai chi, and other Chinese martial arts.{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/taoism/ |title=Taoism at a glance |publisher=Bbc.co.uk |date=January 1, 1970 |access-date=December 29, 2012 |archive-date=January 30, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220130054054/https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/taoism/ |url-status=live }} 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 the Tin How Temple in San Francisco's Chinatown and the Joss House in Weaverville. Currently, the Temple of Original Simplicity is outside Boston, Massachusetts.

In 2004, there were an estimated 56,000 Taoists in the US.{{cite web |url=https://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html |title=largest religious groups in the US |publisher=Adherents.com |access-date=December 29, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180820080454/https://www.adherents.com/rel_USA.html |archive-date=August 20, 2018 |url-status=usurped }}

{{Main|Native American religions}}

{{See also|Mythologies of the indigenous peoples of North America}}

File:Bear Butte Scan 0001.jpg, in South Dakota, is a sacred site for over 30 Plains tribes.]]

File:Fort_Hall_Reservation._Shoshone_Indian_Sun_Dance_-_NARA_-_298649.tif Sun Dance at Fort Hall, 1925.]]

Native American ethnic and indigenous faiths historically exhibited much diversity, and are often characterized by animism or panentheism and shamanism.{{sfnm|1a1=Underhill|1y=1965|1pp=|2a1=Gill|2y=1982|2pp=|3a1=Hultkrantz|3y=1987|3pp=|4a1=Hirschfelder|4a2=Molin|4y=2000|4pp=|5a1=Garrett|5a2=Garrett|5y=2003|5pp=|6a1=Melton|6y=2009|6loc="Native American Religions"|6pp=|7a1=Utter|7y=2001|7p=145|8a1=Paper|8y=2007|8pp=}}{{cite book |surname=Leavelle |given=Tracy Neal |chapter=American Indians |title=The Blackwell Companion to Religion in America |editor-surname=Goff |editor-given=Philip |year=2010 |pages=397–416 |place=Malden, Ma; Oxford |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |chapter-url={{Google books|id=ZohdcPSo3LsC|plainurl=y|page=397}} |url={{Google books|id=ZohdcPSo3LsC|plainurl=y}} |isbn=978-1-4051-6936-3}} Common concept is the supernatural world of deities, spirits and wonders, such as the Algonquian manitou or the Lakota's wakan.{{sfn|Underhill|1965|pp=1–9}}{{sfn|Hultkrantz|1987|p=}} In most areas, without Christian influence, was known a supreme Great Spirit or sky deity.{{sfn|Hultkrantz|1987|p=}} Their great creation myths and sacred oral tradition in whole, as anthropologists note, are comparable to the Christian Bible.{{sfn|Tooker|1979|p=31}}

The membership of Native American religions in the 21st century comprises about 9,000 people.Or about .003% of the US population of 300 million.{{cite book| author=James T. Richardson| title=Regulating Religion: Case Studies from Around the Globe| url={{Google books|id=U6opyVE_IYkC|plainurl=y|page=543}}| year=2004| publisher=Springer| page=543| isbn=9780306478864| archive-date=2016-04-24| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160424030516/https://books.google.com/books?id=U6opyVE_IYkC&pg=PA543| url-status=live}} 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.{{sfn|Tooker|1979|p=}}

The following is a list of indigenous American religions those still survive to some degree at the beginning of the 21st century:{{sfnm|1a1=Underhill|1y=1965|1pp=|2a1=Brown|2y=1982|2pp=1–28|3a1=Brown|3a2=Cousins|3y=2001|3pp=|4a1=Hirschfelder|4a2=Molin|4y=2000|4pp=|5a1=Garrett|5a2=Garrett|5y=2003|5pp=|6a1=Melton|6y=2009|6loc="Native American Religions"|6pp=}} Alaska Native religions, Abenaki, Anishinaabe (Ojibwe, Midewiwin society), Apache, Blackfoot, Californian (Kuksu religion, Miwok, Ohlone and Pomo), Choctaw, Crow, Haida, Ho-Chunk, Iroquois (Cherokee, Mohawk, Muscogee Creek, Seneca and Wyandot), Jivaroan, Kwakwakaʼwakw, Lenape, Mapuche, Navajo, Nuu-chah-nulth, Pawnee, Pueblo (Acoma Pueblo, Hopi and Zuni), Sioux (Assiniboine, Dakota and Lakota), Tsimshian, Ute, and Yaqui beliefs.

There are also numerous indigenist revitalization movements within them that are divided into fundamentalist and reform.{{sfn|Underhill|1965|pp=254–270}}{{sfn|Champagne|2005|p=}}

Generally fundamentalist movements include the Pueblo Revolt (1680s), the Shawnee Prophet movement (1805–1811), the Cherokee Prophet movement (1811–1813), the Red Stick War (1813–1814), White Path's Rebellion (1826), the Winnebago Prophet movement (1830–1832), the first Ghost Dance (1869–1870) and the second Ghost Dance (1889–1890), and the Snake movements among the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Muscogee Creek peoples during the 1890s.{{sfn|Champagne|2005|p=}}

Generally syncretic reform movements include the Yaqui religion (1500–present), the Longhouse religion (1797–present), the Munsee Prophetess movement (1804–1805), the Kickapoo Prophet movement (1815–present), the Cherokee Keetoowah Society (1858–present), the Washat Dreamers religion (1850–present), the Indian Shakers (1881–present), the Native American Church (1800s–present), the Shoshoni Sun Dance (1890–present), the New Tidings religion or Wocekiye of the Canadian Sioux (1900–present), and Ojibwe Drummer movement (contemporary).{{sfn|Champagne|2005|p=}}

Thus, the Longhouse Religion combines and reinterprets elements of traditional Iroquois 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 the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake (Sganyodaiyoˀ). The movement had about 5,000 practicing members as of 1969.{{sfn|Wallace|2010|p=3}}

Since 1889, in accordance with the millenarian teachings of the Northern Paiute spiritual leader Wovoka, the Ghost Dance ceremony was incorporated into numerous native belief systems.{{sfn|Mooney|1896}}{{sfn|Kehoe|2006}}

The Sun Dance is a prominent living ceremony and movement, the Shoshone by origin in 1890, practiced by a number of peoples, primarily those of the Plains Nations. Many of the ceremonies have features in common, such as specific dances and songs, the use of drums, the ceremonial 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.{{sfn|Champagne|2005|p=}}{{sfn|Underhill|1965|pp=142–153}}

The Native American Church is a 19th-century origin syncretistic religious tradition involving the ceremonial and sacred use of Lophophora williamsii (peyote).{{sfn|Aberle|1991|pp=}}{{sfn|Stewart|1987|pp=}}{{cite web |last=Beyer |first=Catherine |date=2015-04-02 |title=Peyote and the Native American Church |access-date=2023-12-04 |url=http://altreligion.about.com/od/alternativereligionsaz/p/Peyote-And-The-Native-American-Church.htm|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402092953/http://altreligion.about.com/od/alternativereligionsaz/p/Peyote-And-The-Native-American-Church.htm |archive-date=April 2, 2015 }}{{cite web |last=Fikes |first=Jay |date=2007-08-21 |title=CSP — 'A Brief History of the Native American Church' |url=http://www.csp.org/communities/docs/fikes-nac_history.html |access-date=2023-12-04 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070821191748/http://www.csp.org/communities/docs/fikes-nac_history.html |archive-date=August 21, 2007 }}

{{Main|Contemporary Paganism}}

Neopaganism in the United States is represented by widely different movements and organizations. The largest Neopagan religion is Wicca, followed by Neo-Druidism.Barbara Jane Davy, Introduction to Pagan Studies, p. 151 (2007)Rosemary Guiley, The Encyclopedia of Magic and Alchemy, p. 84 (2006) Other neopagan movements include Germanic Neopaganism, Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism, Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism, and Semitic neopaganism.

Wicca advanced in North America in the 1960s by Raymond Buckland, an expatriate Briton who visited Gardner's Isle of Man coven to gain initiation.Raymond Buckland, Scottish Witchcraft: The history & magick of the Picts, p. 246 (1991) Universal Eclectic Wicca was popularized in 1969 for a diverse membership drawing from both Dianic and British Traditional Wiccan backgrounds.{{cite web |title=Siver Chalice Ancestry |url=https://www.angelfire.com/rant/ingwitch/sca.html |website=Angelfire |access-date=February 16, 2022 |archive-date=February 24, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210224153506/https://www.angelfire.com/rant/ingwitch/sca.html |url-status=live }}

According to the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), there are approximately 30,000 druids in the United States.Trinity ARIS 2008; [https://prog.trincoll.edu/ISSSC/DataArchive/Access.asp Trinity ARIS 2001] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100625210111/https://prog.trincoll.edu/ISSSC/DataArchive/Access.asp |date=June 25, 2010 }} 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, the Reformed Druids of North America (RDNA) was established by students at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota. They adopted elements of Neopaganism into their practices, for instance, celebrating the festivals of the Wheel of the Year.Adler 2006. pp. 337–339.

{{Main|New Thought}}

A group of churches that started in the 1830s in the United States is known under the banner of "New Thought." These churches share a spiritual, metaphysical and mystical predisposition and understanding of the Bible and were strongly influenced by the Transcendentalist movement, particularly the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Another antecedent of this movement was Swedenborgianism, founded on the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg in 1787.William James, [https://archive.today/20120707202152/https://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=JamVari.sgm&images=images/modeg&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=parsed&tag=public&part=all "The Varieties of Religious Experience"]. pp. 92–93. New York 1929 The New Thought concept was named by Emma Curtis Hopkins ("teacher of teachers") after Hopkins broke off from Mary Baker Eddy's Church of Christ, Scientist. The movement had been previously known as the Mental Sciences or the Christian Sciences. The three major branches are Religious Science, Unity Church, and Divine Science.

{{Main|Unitarian Universalism}}

Unitarian Universalists (UUs) are among the most liberal of all religious denominations in America.{{Cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/2017/06/24/534248664/unitarian-universalists-denounce-white-supremacy-make-leadership-changes|title=Unitarian Universalists Denounce White Supremacy, Make Leadership Changes|website=NPR.org|access-date=April 3, 2018|archive-date=July 10, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180710164831/https://www.npr.org/2017/06/24/534248664/unitarian-universalists-denounce-white-supremacy-make-leadership-changes|url-status=live}} The shared creed includes beliefs in inherent dignity, a common search for truth, respect for beliefs of others, compassion, and social action.{{Cite web|url=https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/principles|title=Unitarian Universalism's Seven Principles|date=November 24, 2014|website=UUA.org|access-date=October 5, 2017|archive-date=May 1, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110501031105/http://www.uua.org/visitors/6798.shtml|url-status=live}} They are unified by their shared search for spiritual growth and by the understanding that an individual's theology is a result of that search and not obedience to an authoritarian requirement.(The 4th principle of Unitarian Universalism) [https://www.uua.org/visitors/6798.shtml UUA.org Seven principles] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110501031105/http://www.uua.org/visitors/6798.shtml |date=May 1, 2011 }} UUs have historical ties to anti-war, civil rights, and LGBT rights movements,{{Cite web|url=https://www.uua.org/beliefs/who-we-are/history/faith|title=Unitarian Universalist Origins: Our Historic Faith|date=February 8, 2013|website=UUA.org|access-date=October 5, 2017|archive-date=October 6, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171006062221/https://www.uua.org/beliefs/who-we-are/history/faith|url-status=live}} as well as providing inclusive church services for the broad spectrum of liberal Christians, liberal Jews, secular humanists, LGBT, Jewish-Christian parents and partners, Earth-centered/Wicca, and Buddhist meditation adherents.{{Cite web |url=https://www.uucnc.org/100q.html#q84 |title=Unitarian Universalist Congregration of Northern Chautauqua |access-date=October 5, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171006112301/https://www.uucnc.org/100q.html#q84 |archive-date=October 6, 2017 |url-status=dead }} In fact, many UUs also identify as belonging to another religious group, including atheism and agnosticism.{{Cite web|title=Who We Are {{!}} UUA.org|url=https://www.uua.org/beliefs/who-we-are|access-date=April 8, 2021|website=www.uua.org|language=en|archive-date=September 15, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170915075352/http://www.uua.org/beliefs/who-we-are|url-status=live}}

{{Main|Irreligion in the United States}}

In 2020, approximately 28% of Americans declared themselves to be not religiously affiliated.{{cite web |title=Measuring Religion in Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel |url=https://www.pewforum.org/2021/01/14/measuring-religion-in-pew-research-centers-american-trends-panel/ |website=Measuring Religion in Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel | Pew Research Center |publisher=Pew Research Center |access-date=February 9, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210208090614/https://www.pewforum.org/2021/01/14/measuring-religion-in-pew-research-centers-american-trends-panel/ |archive-date=February 8, 2021 |date=January 14, 2021 |url-status=live}} Statistics are from the 2020 ATP profile survey after adjustments from NPORS.

{{See also|Discrimination against atheists in the United States}}

A 2001 survey directed by Dr. Ariela Keysar for the City 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 included atheists, 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. A nationwide Pew Research study published in 2008 put the figure of unaffiliated persons at 16.1%, 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.{{cite news |title=Some Church Folk Ask: 'What Would Jesus Brew?' |first1=Erica E. |last1=Phillips |first2=Ben |last2=Kesling |type=paper |newspaper=The Wall Street Journal |date=March 9–10, 2013 }} It is unknown why the number of self-identified "nones" is rising, although it may relate to a general decline of trust in institutions,{{cite web |last1=Masci |first1=David |date=January 8, 2016 |title=Q&A: Why Millennials are less religious than older Americans |url=http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/01/08/qa-why-millennials-are-less-religious-than-older-americans/ |website=Pew Research Center}} the September 11 attacks,{{cite journal |last=Thompson |first=Derek |date=2019-09-26 |title=Three Decades Ago, America Lost Its Religion. Why? |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/atheism-fastest-growing-religion-us/598843/ |journal=The Atlantic |access-date=2022-10-02 |quote=...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.}} rise of the religious right,{{Cite journal |last1=Hout |first1=Michael |last2=Fischer |first2=Claude |date=2014 |title=Explaining Why More Americans Have No Religious Preference: Political Backlash and Generational Succession, 1987-2012 |journal=Sociological Science |volume=1 |pages=423–447 |doi=10.15195/v1.a24 |issn=2330-6696 |doi-access=free}} and sexual abuse scandals, particularly those within the Southern Baptist Convention{{cite journal |last=Wehner |first=Peter |date=2022-05-24 |title=No Atheist Has Done This Much Damage to the Christian Faith |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/southern-baptist-convention-abuse-report/630173/ |journal=The Atlantic |access-date=2023-01-21}} and Catholic Church.{{cite news |last=Smietana |first=Bob |date=September 13, 2022 |title=U.S. Christian majority could fade in coming decades, models find |newspaper=The Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/09/13/us-christians-percentage-pew-secularism/ |access-date=January 21, 2023}} The majority of "nones" have religion-like beliefs and believe in some conception of a higher power.{{cite news |last1=Burge |first1=Ryan |date=February 24, 2021 |title=Most 'Nones' Still Keep the Faith |work=Research |publisher=Christianity Today |url=https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2021/february/nones-religious-unaffiliated-faith-research-church-belief.html |quote=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.}}

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.{{cite web |url= https://www.asanet.org/press/20060503.cfm |title= Atheists Are Distrusted |date= May 3, 2006 |access-date= February 16, 2010 |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20100613173056/https://asanet.org/press/20060503.cfm |archive-date= June 13, 2010 |df= mdy-all }}{{cite web |url= https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1786422&page=1 |title= Who's Counting: Distrusting Atheists |date= April 2, 2006 |access-date= February 16, 2010 |first= John Allen |last= Paulos |work= ABC News |archive-date= August 6, 2020 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20200806193528/https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1786422&page=1 |url-status= live }} 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."{{cite web |url= https://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2006/UR_RELEASE_MIG_2816.html |title= Atheists identified as America's most distrusted minority, according to new U of M study |publisher= UMN News |access-date= March 22, 2006 |archive-date= April 23, 2014 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20140423133228/http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2006/UR_RELEASE_MIG_2816.html |url-status= live }} Some surveys have indicated that doubts about the existence of the divine were growing quickly among Americans under 30.{{cite news |url=https://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/12/pew-survey-doubt-of-god-growing-quickly-among-millennials/ |title=Pew survey: Doubt of God growing quickly among millennials |publisher=Religion.blogs.cnn.com |date=August 16, 2012 |access-date=December 29, 2012 |archive-date=November 17, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211117083856/https://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/12/pew-survey-doubt-of-god-growing-quickly-among-millennials/ |url-status=dead }}

On March 24, 2012, American atheists sponsored the Reason Rally in Washington, D.C., followed by the American Atheist Convention in Bethesda, Maryland. Organizers called the estimated crowd of 8,000–10,000 the largest-ever US gathering of atheists in one place.{{cite news |url=https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/24/atheist-rally_n_1377443.html |title=Atheists Rally on National Mall |publisher=Huffingtonpost.com |date=March 24, 2012 |access-date=December 29, 2012 |first=Paul |last=Raushenbush |archive-date=June 8, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160608032038/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/24/atheist-rally_n_1377443.html |url-status=live }}

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.{{cite book |last=Blankholm |first=Joseph |title=The Secular Paradox: On the Religiosity of the Not Religious |year=2022 |publisher=New York University Press |isbn=9781479809509 |pages=3, 8 |quote=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.}}

Various polls have been conducted to determine Americans' actual beliefs regarding a god. (Different wording of the poll question gives significantly different results.):{{cite web |title=How Many Americans Believe in God? |url=https://news.gallup.com/poll/268205/americans-believe-god.aspx |website=Gallup |access-date=19 August 2024 |date=24 June 2022}}

• A 2021 Pew Research Center Survey found that 91% of American believe in a higher power.{{cite web |last1=Mitchell |first1=Travis |title=Few Americans Blame God or Say Faith Has Been Shaken Amid Pandemic, Other Tragedies |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/11/23/few-americans-blame-god-or-say-faith-has-been-shaken-amid-pandemic-other-tragedies/ |website=Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project |date=23 November 2021|quote= [...] 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.}}
• A 2018 Pew Research Center Survey found that 90% of American believe in a higher power.{{cite web |date=April 25, 2018 |title=Key findings about Americans' belief in God |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/25/key-findings-about-americans-belief-in-god/ |website=Pew Research Center |quote=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.}}
• 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.{{Cite web|url=https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/belief-in-god/|title=Religious Landscape Study - Pew Research Center|date=May 11, 2015|access-date=July 4, 2016|archive-date=January 14, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220114090718/https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/belief-in-god/|url-status=live}}
• 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.{{cite web|url=https://www.wingia.com/web/files/richeditor/filemanager/Global_INDEX_of_Religiosity_and_Atheism_PR__6.pdf|title=Religiosity and Atheism|access-date=December 29, 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120906165952/https://www.wingia.com/web/files/richeditor/filemanager/Global_INDEX_of_Religiosity_and_Atheism_PR__6.pdf|archive-date=September 6, 2012}}
• 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.{{cite news|url=https://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/12/pew-survey-doubt-of-god-growing-quickly-among-millennials/|title=Pew Survey: Doubt of God Growing Quickly among Millennials|date=June 12, 2012|publisher=CNN|author=Merica, Dan|access-date=June 14, 2012|archive-date=November 17, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211117083856/https://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/12/pew-survey-doubt-of-god-growing-quickly-among-millennials/|url-status=dead}}
• 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.{{cite web|url=https://www.gallup.com/poll/147887/americans-continue-believe-god.aspx|title=More Than 9 in 10 Americans Continue to Believe in God|date=June 3, 2011|publisher=Gallup.com|access-date=December 29, 2012|archive-date=August 30, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170830010744/http://www.gallup.com/poll/147887/americans-continue-believe-god.aspx|url-status=live}}
• 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){{cite web|url=https://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/Harris_Poll_2009_12_15.pdf|title=What People Do and Do Not Believe in|date=December 15, 2009|work=Harris Interactive|access-date=May 15, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110124052812/https://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/Harris_Poll_2009_12_15.pdf|archive-date=January 24, 2011|url-status=dead}} 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 of evolution but this is more than the 40% who believe in creationism..... Many people consider themselves Christians without necessarily believing in some of the key beliefs of Christianity. However, this is not true of born-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 and reincarnation.... 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 are atheist or agnostic, and another 12.1% are deistic (believing in a higher power/non-personal God, but no personal God).
• Mark Chaves, a Duke 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.{{cite web|url=https://today.duke.edu/2011/08/chaves|title=according to Mark Chaves|date=August 16, 2011|publisher=Today.duke.edu|author=Eric Ferreri|access-date=December 29, 2012|archive-date=January 27, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210127104803/https://today.duke.edu/2011/08/chaves|url-status=live}}
• 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%.{{cite web|url=https://www.gallup.com/poll/109108/Belief-God-Far-Lower-Western-US.aspx|title=Belief in God Far Lower in Western U.S.|date=July 28, 2008|publisher=The Gallup Organization|author=Newport, Frank|access-date=September 4, 2010|archive-date=September 11, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170911051359/http://www.gallup.com/poll/109108/Belief-God-Far-Lower-Western-US.aspx|url-status=live}}

{{main|Spiritual but not religious}}

"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",Heelas, Spiritualities of Life, 63. so holistic activities such as tai chi, reiki, and yoga are common within the SBNR movement.Heelas, Spiritualities of Life, 64. In contrast to religion, spirituality has often been associated with the interior life of the individual.Carette and King, Selling Spirituality, 41.

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.{{cite web|last1=Funk|first1=Cary|last2=Smith|first2=Greg|title="Nones" on the Rise: One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation|url=https://www.pewforum.org/files/2012/10/NonesOnTheRise-full.pdf|website=pewforum.org|publisher=The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life|access-date=December 6, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140826234925/http://www.pewforum.org/files/2012/10/NonesOnTheRise-full.pdf|archive-date=August 26, 2014|url-status=dead}}

According to some sociologists, perceptions of religious decline are a popular misconception. 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.{{cite journal |last1=Johnson |first1=Byron |last2=Stark |first2=Rodney |last3=Bradshaw |first3=Matt |last4=Levin |first4=Jeff |date=2022 |title=Are Religious "Nones" Really Not Religious?: Revisiting Glenn, Three Decades Later |journal=Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion |volume=18 |issue=7 |quote=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%.}}{{Cite news |last1=Johnson |first1=Byron R. |last2=Levin |first2=Jeff |date=2022-07-28 |title=Religion Is Dying? Don't Believe It |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/religion-is-dying-dont-believe-it-nones-others-surveys-faith-institutions-atheists-agnostics-practice-minority-11659017037 |access-date=2023-09-20 |work=The Wall Street Journal |language=en-US |issn=0099-9660}} "Religious belief and interest" has remained relatively stable in recent years; "organizational participation", in contrast, has decreased.{{Cite web |last=Grose |first=Jessica |date=April 19, 2023 |title=Lots of Americans Are Losing Their Religion. Have You? |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/19/opinion/religion-america.html |access-date=October 23, 2023 |website=New York Times}}

{{See also|List of religious movements that began in the United States}}

File:The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston, October 1974 (2).jpg in Boston, Massachusetts]]

• Adventism — began as an inter-denominational movement during the Second Great Awakening (1790–1840). Its most vocal leader was William Miller, who in the 1830s in New York became convinced of an imminent Second Coming of Jesus. The most prominent modern group to emerge from this is the Seventh-day Adventists.{{cite book |surname=Olson |given=Roger E. |authorlink=Roger E. Olson |surname2=Mead |given2=Frank S. |surname3=Hill |given3=Samuel S. |surname4=Atwood |given4=Craig D. |chapter=Adventist and Sabbatarian (Hebraic) Churches |title=Handbook of Denominations in the United States |edition=14th [updated] |year=2018 |orig-year=1951 |place=Nashville, Tn |publisher=Abingdon Press |isbn=9781501822513}}{{sfn|Backman|1983|loc=}}{{sfn|Morgan|2001}}{{cite book |surname=Bergman |given=Jerry |year=1995 |chapter=The Adventist and Jehovah's Witness Branch of Protestantism |editor-surname=Miller |editor-given=Timothy |editor-link=Timothy Miller |title=America's Alternative Religions |publisher=SUNY Press |place=Albany, NY |pages=33–46 |isbn=978-0-7914-2397-4 |chapter-url={{Google books|id=og_u0Re1uwUC|plainurl=y|page=33|keywords=|text=}} |url={{Google books|id=og_u0Re1uwUC|plainurl=y}} |url-status=live |archive-date=2020-07-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200724210513/https://books.google.com/books?id=og_u0Re1uwUC}}
• Charismatic movement — a broad movement within mainstream Christian denominations to adopt beliefs and practices of Charismatic Christianity and similar to Pentecostalism, with an emphasis on baptism with the Holy Spirit, and the use of spiritual gifts (charismata). Since 1960, it has affected most denominations in the US, and has spread widely across the world.{{sfn|Reid|Linder|Shelley|Stout|1990|pp=241–242}}
• Christian Science — a faith healing movement associated with the Church of Christ, Scientist that founded in 1879 in New England by Mary Baker Eddy.{{sfn|Backman|1983|loc=}}
• Holiness movement — a movement that emerged chiefly within 19th-century American Methodism with the belief that the Christian life should be free of sin.{{sfn|Backman|1983|loc=}}{{sfn|Queen|Prothero |Shattuck|1996|p=295}}
• Jehovah's Witnesses — originated with the nontrinitarian movement known as Bible Students, which was founded in Pennsylvania in the late 1870s by Charles Taze Russell. In their early years, the Bible Students were loosely connected with Adventism, and the Jehovah's Witnesses still share some similarities with it.{{sfn|Backman|1983|loc=}}{{sfn|Chryssides|2016}}
• Latter Day Saint movement, a.k.a. Mormonism, founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith in upstate New York — a product of the Christian revivalist movement of the Second Great Awakening and based in Christian primitivism. Multiple Latter Day Saint denominations can be found throughout the United States. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), the largest denomination, is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, and it has members in many countries. The Community of Christ, the second-largest denomination, is headquartered in Independence, Missouri.{{sfn|Backman|1983|loc=}}{{sfn|Mauss|1994}}{{sfn|Bowman|2012}}
• Messianic Judaism — a movement of the Jews and non-Jews, which arose in the 1960s within Evangelical Protestantism and absorbed elements of the Jewish Christian traditions.{{sfn|Melton|2005|p=[{{Google books|id=bW3sXBjnokkC|plainurl=y|page=373}} 373]|loc="Messianic Judaism"}}
• Pentecostalism — a large movement which emphasizes the role of the baptism with the Holy Spirit and the use of spiritual gifts, finds its historic roots in the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles from 1904 to 1906, sparked by Charles Parham.{{sfn|Backman|1983|loc=}}{{sfn|Ahlstrom|2004|pp=1103–6}}{{sfn|Robeck|2006}}
• Oneness Pentecostalism — a nontrinitarian, namely "Jesus Only", movement within Pentecostalism that began in 1913.{{sfn|Patterson|Rybarczyk|2007|pp=123–4}}
• Restoration Movement, a.k.a. Campbellism — groups that began during the Second Great Awakening (1790–1840) and idealized early Christianity.{{sfn|Backman|1983|loc=}}{{sfn|Garrett|2002|p=}}
• Universalist Church of America's first regional conference was founded in 1793.{{sfn|Eddy|1884}}

{{Also|List of new religious movements}}

• Black Hebrew Israelites movement originated at the end of the 19th century, when Frank Cherry and William Saunders Crowdy both claimed to have received visions that African Americans are descendants of the Bible Hebrews. They practice bland of both Christianity and Judaism.{{sfn|Chireau|Deutsch|2000}}{{cite book |surname=Dorman |given=Jacob S. |chapter=Black Israelites |editor-surname=Gallagher |editor-given=Eugene V. |editor-link=Eugene V. Gallagher |editor2-surname=Ashcraft |editor2-given=W. Michael |title=Jewish and Christian Traditions |series=Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America, 2 |year=2006 |publisher=Greenwood Pub. |place=Westport, Conn |isbn=978-0-275-98714-5 |url={{Google books|id=ClaySHbUEogC|plainurl=y|page=}} |oclc=315689134 |lccn=2006022954 }}
• Goddess movement is a widespread non-centralized trend in modern Paganism with the Goddess 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.{{cite encyclopedia |entry=Goddess movement |surname=Rountree |given=Kathryn |title=Encyclopedia of new religious movements |pages=240–242 |publisher=Routledge |year=2006 |editor=Peter B. Clarke |editor-link=Peter B. Clarke |place=London; New York |url={{Google books|id=heeCAgAAQBAJ|plainurl=y|page=|keywords=|text=}} |isbn=9-78-0-415-26707-6}}{{sfn|Adler|2006|loc=Ch. 8. Women, Feminism, and the Craft}}
• Eckankar is new religious movement founded in Las Vegas in 1965 by Paul Twitchell and drawing from the Radha Soami new Indian movement.{{cite book|year=2001|title=The A to Z of New Religious Movements|place=Oxford, UK|publisher=Scarecrow Press|page=298|author=George D. Chryssides|quote=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 ...}}
• Humanistic Judaism is a nontheistic worldwide movement that emphasizes Jewish culture and history as the sources of Jewish identity. Originated in Detroit, Michigan in 1963 with the founding figure, Reform rabbi Sherwin Wine, in 1969 was established the Society for Humanistic Judaism.{{cite news |last=Niebuhr |first=Gustav |date=June 30, 1994 |title=Humanist Synagogue Tests Reform Judaism |newspaper=The Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/05/17/humanist-synagogue-tests-reform-judaism/1ac3f620-73ab-4cfb-aebb-8057245f5ad2/ |url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220809115340/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1994/05/17/humanist-synagogue-tests-reform-judaism/1ac3f620-73ab-4cfb-aebb-8057245f5ad2/ |archive-date=August 9, 2022}}
• "I AM" Activity is a neo-Theosophical movement founded in the early 1930s by Guy Ballard and his wife Edna 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.{{cite book |surname=Barrett |given=David V. |author-link=David V. Barrett |url=https://archive.org/details/newbelieverssurv00barr |title=The new believers: a survey of sects, cults and alternative religions |edition=Rev. |place=London |publisher=Cassell |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-304-35592-1}}
• International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) or Hare Krishna movement, which founded in 1966 in New York City by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. It preaches Gaudiya Vaishnavism, a sect of Hinduism{{sfn|Gibson|2002|pp=4, 6}}
• Nation of Islam is a non-orthodox new Islamic movement founded by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930 that focuses its attention on the African Americans. It was estimated to have 50,000 members.{{citation |surname=Berg |given=Herbert |date=2005 |title=Mythmaking in the African American Muslim Context: The Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, and the American Society of Muslims |journal=Journal of the American Academy of Religion |volume=73 |issue=3 |pages=685–703 |doi=10.1093/jaarel/lfi075}}
• Native American Church, also known as Peyotism and Peyote Religion, formed by Quanah Parker but beginning in 1800{{sfn|Champagne|2005|p=}} and incorporating in 1918. Today it is the most widespread indigenous religion among Native Americans in the United States (except Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians), with an estimated 250,000 followers.{{sfn|Stewart|1987|pp=}}
• 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, namely Carlos Castaneda's Tensegrity and Michael Harner's Core Shamanism.{{sfn|Robert|2003|p=}}{{citation |surname=Scuro |given=Juan |surname2=Rodd |given2=Robin |entry=Neo-Shamanism |title=Encyclopedia of Latin American Religions |editor=Henri Gooren |publisher=Springer International Pub. |year=2015 |pages=1–6 |entry-url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304036146 |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-08956-0_49-1 |isbn=978-3-319-08956-0 |s2cid=239249964}}
• New Thought Movement—two of the early proponents of New Thought beliefs during the mid to late 19th century were Phineas Parkhurst Quimby and the Mother of New Thought, Emma Curtis Hopkins. The three major branches are Religious Science, Unity Church and Divine Science.
• Reconstructionist Judaism, which founded by Mordecai Kaplan and started in the 1920s.{{cite journal |surname=Liebman |given=Charles S. |date=1970 |authorlink=Charles Liebman |title=Reconstructionism in American Jewish Life |journal=American Jewish Year Book 1971 |format=PDF |pages=3–99 |url=http://www.bjpa.org/Publications/details.cfm?PublicationID=1925}}
• Self-Realization Fellowship is a neo-Hindu movement founded in Los Angeles by Paramahansa Yogananda in 1920.
• Spiritualism is a movement developed and reached its largest following, accomplishing mediums and through various spiritualist 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.{{sfn|Carroll|1997}}{{sfn|Albanese|2007}}
• Theosophy is an influential esoteric religion established during the late 19th century by Helena Blavatsky.{{sfn|Ryan|1975}}
• 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 largest Unitarian Universalist denomination in the world.{{clear}}
• 3HO is a sect of Sikhism, founded in Los Angeles in 1971 by Yogi Bhajan and followed mostly by White Americans.{{citation|author=Eleanor Nesbitt|title=Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zD8SDAAAQBAJ|year=2016|publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-106277-3|pages=101–102}}
• {{citation|author1=Pashaura Singh|author2=Louis E. Fenech|title=The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7YwNAwAAQBAJ |year=2014|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-100411-7|pages=8, 358, 515–522}}
• {{citation|author1= Kristen Haar|author2= Sewa Singh Kalsi|title=Sikhism|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=YOI1nB_zTyAC&pg=PA9| year=2009|publisher =Infobase Pub.| isbn=978-1-4381-0647-2|pages= 9–14}}
• {{citation|author=Opinderjit Kaur Takhar|title=Sikh Identity: An Exploration of Groups Among Sikhs|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UaeoDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT161|year=2016|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=978-1-351-90010-2|pages=161–168}}[https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sikhism/Sects-and-other-groups Sects in Sikhism], Encyclopedia Britannica Online

{{See also|List of U.S. states and territories by religiosity}}

{{Pie chart

| thumb = right

| caption = Self-identified religiosity (2023 The Wall Street Journal-NORC poll){{cite web|last=Staff|date=2022|title=March 2023 NORC/AP poll|url=https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/WSJ_NORC_ToplineMarc_2023.pdf|access-date=March 27, 2023|website=Wall Street Journal}}

| label1 = Very religious

| value1 = 17

| color1 = DarkBlue

| label2 = Moderately religious

| value2 = 31

| color2 = Lightblue

| label3 = Slightly religious

| value3 = 23

| color3 = Grey

| label4 = Not religious at all

| value4 = 29

| color4 = White

}}

The US census does not ask about religion. Various groups have conducted surveys to determine approximate percentages of those affiliated with each religious group.

Since the first American census in 1790, census forms have never asked the religion of participants, with Vincent P. Barabba, former head of the United States Census Bureau, stating in April 1976 that "asking such a question in the decennial census, in which replies are mandatory, would appear to infringe upon the traditional separation of church and state" and "could affect public cooperation in the census". Data on religious affiliation comes from independent pollsters{{Cite web |last1=Diamant |first1=Jeff |last2=Leppert |first2=Rebecca |date=April 12, 2023 |title=Why the U.S. census doesn't ask Americans about their religion |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2023/04/12/why-the-us-census-doesnt-ask-americans-about-their-religion/ |access-date=2023-04-14 |website=Pew Research Center |quote=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.}} by the Pew Research Center and other agencies or, on membership, from religious associations, such the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches of the National Council of Churches.

Independent polling results on religion are questionable due to numerous factors:{{cite book|title=Inventing American Religion: Polls Surveys, and the Tenuous Quest for a Nation's Faith|last1=Wuthnow|first1=Robert|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2015|isbn=9780190258900|chapter=8. Taking Stock}}

• 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.{{cite journal |last1=Johnson |first1=Byron |last2=Stark |first2=Rodney |last3=Bradshaw |first3=Matt |last4=Levin |first4=Jeff |title=Are Religious "Nones" Really Not Religious?: Revisiting Glenn, Three Decades Later |journal=Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion |date=2022 |volume=18 |issue=7}}

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.{{cite journal |last1=Burge |first1=Ryan P. |title=How Many "Nones" Are There? Explaining the Discrepancies in Survey Estimates |journal=Review of Religious Research |date=March 2020 |volume=62 |issue=1 |pages=173–190 |doi=10.1007/s13644-020-00400-7|s2cid=256240351 }}

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.{{cite web |last1=Saad |first1=Lydia |last2=Hrynowski |first2=Zach |title=How Many Americans Believe in God? |url=https://news.gallup.com/poll/268205/americans-believe-god.aspx |website=Gallup.com |publisher=Gallup |language=en |date=24 June 2022 |quote=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.}}

The Public 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.{{cite web |title=PRRI — American Values Atlas |url=https://ava.prri.org |website=The American Values Atlas |publisher=Public Religion Research Institute |access-date=July 9, 2021 |archive-date=February 11, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220211132716/http://ava.prri.org/ |url-status=live }}

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 in Protestant Christianity, and another 22% adhering to Catholicism. About 23% of the population adheres to no religion, and 7% more of the population professes a Non-Christian religion (such as Judaism, Islam, or Hinduism).{{Cite web |title=The 2020 Census of American Religion |url=https://www.prri.org/research/2020-census-of-american-religion/ |access-date=2023-01-18 |website=PRRI |date=July 8, 2021 |language=en-US}}

[[File:Plurality Religious Denomination by U.S. State.svg|thumb|right|upright=1.35|The map above shows plurality religious denomination by state as of 2014 according to the Pew Research Center.
Protestantism

{{legend|#08519C|70 - 79%}}

{{legend|#3182BD|60 - 69%}}

{{legend|#6BAED6|50 - 59%}}

{{legend|#9ECAE1|40 - 49%}}

{{legend|#C6DBEF|30 - 39%}}

Catholicism

{{legend|#FC9272|40 - 49%}}

{{legend|#FCBBA1|30 - 39%}}

Mormonism

{{legend|#9E9AC8|50 - 59%}}

Unaffiliated

{{legend|#D9D9D9|30 - 39%}}]]

[[File:Plurality Religious Denomination by U.S. State (ARDA).svg|thumb|The map above shows plurality religious denomination by state as of 2010 according to a survey of religious denominations.

Protestantism

{{legend|#08519C|60%+}}

{{legend|#3182BD|50 - 59%}}

{{legend|#6BAED6|40 - 49%}}

{{legend|#9ECAE1|30 - 49%}}

Catholicism

{{legend|#CC5500|60%+}}

{{legend|#ED872D|50 - 59%}}

{{legend|#FC9272|40 - 49%}}

{{legend|#FCBBA1|30 - 39%}}

Mormonism

{{legend|#9932CC|60%+}}

{{legend|#9E9AC8|30 - 39%}}]]

The Association 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.{{cite web |url= https://www.thearda.com/mapsReports/rcms_notes.asp |title= ARDA Sources for Religious Congregations & Membership Data |publisher= ARDA |year= 2000 |access-date= May 29, 2010 |archive-date= July 25, 2012 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120725042715/http://www.thearda.com/mapsreports/RCMS_Notes.asp |url-status= live }} 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%).[[File:Highest percentage against the religious national average in the United States.svg|thumb|upright=1.35|Percentage of religion against average, 2001

]]

[[File:Largest religious group in the United States by state (no legend).svg|thumb|upright=1.35|Plurality of religious preference by state in 2014.

]]

The table below shows the religious affiliations among the ethnicities in the United States, according to the Pew Forum 2014 survey. People of Black 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.

===ARIS findings regarding self-identification===

The United States government does not collect religious data in its census. The survey below, the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) of 2008, was a random digit-dialed telephone survey of 54,461 American residential households in the contiguous United States. The 1990 sample size was 113,723; 2001 sample size was 50,281.

Adult respondents were asked the open-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
Figures are not adjusted for refusals to reply; investigators suspect refusals are possibly more representative of "no religion" than any other group.

Highlights:

1. 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.
2. The American population self-identifies as predominantly Christian, but Americans are slowly becoming less Christian.
3. * 86% of American adults identified as Christians in 1990 and 76% in 2008.
4. * The historic mainline churches and denominations have experienced the steepest declines, while the non-denominational Christian identity has been trending upward, particularly since 2001.
5. * The challenge to Christianity in the US does not come from other religions but rather from a rejection of all forms of organized religion.
6. 34% of American adults considered themselves "Born Again or Evangelical Christians" in 2008.
7. 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.
8. * 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.
9. * Asian Americans are substantially more likely to indicate no religious identity than other racial or ethnic groups.
10. One sign of the lack of attachment of Americans to religion is that 27% do not expect a religious funeral at their death.
11. 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).
12. 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%.
13. 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.

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{{cite web |title=Cultural Research Center |url=https://www.arizonachristian.edu/culturalresearchcenter/research/ |website=Arizona Christian University |access-date=29 August 2024}} (AWVI 2024, organized by the Cultural Research Center located at the Arizona 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.{{YouTube|hQhK4lXTcK8|Stats Say Evangelical Christianity Losing Ground in America}} CBN News.{{cite web | title=Barna, CRC Research finds America's evangelicals are fewer, less biblically grounded and politically disengaged | website=Pathway | date=8 August 2024 | url=https://mbcpathway.com/2024/08/08/barna-crc-research-finds-americas-evangelicals-are-fewer-less-biblically-grounded-and-politically-disengaged/ | access-date=26 August 2024}}{{cite web|website=Arizona Christian University|url=https://www.arizonachristian.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/CRC-Release-AWVI-4-Aug-6-2024-Fourth-Draft.pdf|title=American Worldview Inventory 2024 (Release #4) New Research Reveals the Limitations of Christian Evangelicalism in American Society|first1=George|last1=Barna|first2=Tracy|last2=Munsil}}

[[File:Weekly religious service attendance by US State gradient (2014).svg|thumb|upright=1.35|Church, synagogue, or mosque attendance by state (2014)

{{legend|#023858|≥50% attending weekly}}

{{legend|#045a8d|45-49% attending weekly}}

{{legend|#0570b0|40-44% attending weekly}}

{{legend|#3690c0|35-39% attending weekly}}

{{legend|#74a9cf|30-34% attending weekly}}

{{legend|#a6bddb|25-29% attending weekly}}

{{legend|#d0d1e6|20-24% attending weekly}}

{{legend|#ece7f2|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 after World 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.{{cite news |last1=Lardieri |first1=Alexa |title=Church Membership Hits All-Time Low in 2020, Gallup Finds |url=https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2021-03-29/church-membership-hits-all-time-low-in-2020-gallup-finds |publisher=US News |date=March 29, 2021 |access-date=March 30, 2021 |archive-date=March 29, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210329191142/https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2021-03-29/church-membership-hits-all-time-low-in-2020-gallup-finds |url-status=live }}{{cite news |last1=Jones |first1=Jeffrey |title=U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time |url=https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx |publisher=Gallup |date=March 29, 2021 |access-date=March 30, 2021 |archive-date=October 16, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211016131919/https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx |url-status=live }}

A 2013 Public Religion Research Institute survey reported that 31% of Americans attend religious services at least weekly.{{cite news| last1=Kaleem| first1=Jaweed| title=Americans Exaggerate How Much They Go To Religious Services, According To Study| url=https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/17/religious-attendance-exaggeration-survey_n_5344535.html| access-date=May 31, 2014| work=The Huffington Post| date=May 17, 2014| archive-date=May 23, 2014| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140523105126/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/17/religious-attendance-exaggeration-survey_n_5344535.html| url-status=live}} margin of error of 2.5 According to a 2022 Gallup poll, 75% of Americans report praying often or sometimes and religion plays a very (46%) or fairly (26%) important role in their lives.{{cite web |date=2022 |title=Religion Historical Trends |url=https://news.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx |website=Gallup}}

In a 2009 Gallup survey, 41.6%{{cite web |url=https://www.gallup.com/poll/125999/mississippians-go-church-most-vermonters-least.aspx |title=Mississippians Go to Church the Most; Vermonters, Least |date=February 17, 2010 |publisher=Gallup.com |access-date=March 17, 2012 |archive-date=August 30, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170830152813/http://www.gallup.com/poll/125999/Mississippians-Go-Church-Most-Vermonters-Least.aspx |url-status=live }} 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.{{cite news |title= 'One in 10' attends church weekly |url= https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6520463.stm |work= BBC News |date= April 3, 2007 |access-date= August 1, 2007 |archive-date= December 22, 2007 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20071222011331/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6520463.stm |url-status= live }}[https://www.ncls.org.au/default.aspx?docid=2250&track=82083 NCLS releases latest estimates of church attendance] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211221055313/http://www.ncls.org.au/default.aspx?docid=2250&track=82083 |date=December 21, 2021 }}, National Church Life Survey, media release, February 28, 2004 Church attendance varies considerably by state and region. The figures, updated to 2014, ranged from 51% in Utah 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). 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".

{{Main|Religion and politics in the United States}}

{{See also|Religious affiliations of presidents of the United States|Religious affiliation in the United States Senate}}

File:Civil marriage is a civil right.JPG, 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.{{cite web|url=https://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID=1079|publisher=Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life|title=Religion Losing Influence in America|access-date=September 16, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100920003855/https://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID=1079|archive-date=September 20, 2010|url-status=dead}}

Politicians frequently discuss their religion when campaigning, and fundamentalists and black Protestants are highly politically active. However, to keep their status as tax-exempt organizations they must not officially endorse a candidate. Historically Catholics were heavily Democratic before the 1970s, while mainline Protestants comprised the core of the Republican 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.{{cite web |url=https://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=174 |title=Religion and the 2006 Elections |publisher=Pew Forum |date=December 1, 2006 |access-date=March 17, 2012 |archive-date=April 22, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100422162848/http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=174 |url-status=live }}

Only four presidential candidates for major parties have been Catholics, all for the Democratic party:

• Alfred E. Smith in presidential 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 the 1960 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 the 2004 election religion was hardly an issue, and most Catholics voted for his Protestant opponent George W. Bush.{{cite web |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/id/5297138 |title=Exit poll - Decision 2004- NBCNews.com |work=NBC News |access-date=December 29, 2012 |archive-date=September 24, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200924003400/http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5297138 |url-status=dead }}
• Joe Biden, a Catholic, won the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, and then won the 2020 presidential election, becoming the second Catholic president, after John F. Kennedy.{{Cite web|author=NBC News|date=January 19, 2021|title=Biden to become the second Catholic president in U.S. history, after JFK|url=https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/biden-to-become-the-second-catholic-president-in-u-s-history-after-jfk-99673157918|access-date=January 20, 2021|website=NBC News|language=en|archive-date=January 19, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210119212606/https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/biden-to-become-the-second-catholic-president-in-u-s-history-after-jfk-99673157918|url-status=live}} Biden was also the first Catholic vice president.{{cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/blogs/politicaljunkie/2009/01/the_first_catholic_vice_presid.html|title=The First Catholic Vice President?|date=January 9, 2009|work=NPR.org|access-date=March 5, 2015|archive-date=January 14, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150114120137/http://www.npr.org/blogs/politicaljunkie/2009/01/the_first_catholic_vice_presid.html|url-status=live}}

Joe Lieberman was the first major presidential candidate that was Jewish, on the Gore–Lieberman campaign of 2000 (although John Kerry and Barry Goldwater both had Jewish ancestry, they were practicing Christians). Bernie Sanders ran against Hillary 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.{{cite web|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bernie-sanders-finally-answers-the-god-question/2016/01/26/83429390-bfb0-11e5-bcda-62a36b394160_story.html|title=Why Bernie Sanders doesn't participate in organized religion|date=January 27, 2016|work=www.washingtonpost.com|access-date=December 4, 2016|archive-date=November 10, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161110184459/https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bernie-sanders-finally-answers-the-god-question/2016/01/26/83429390-bfb0-11e5-bcda-62a36b394160_story.html|url-status=live}}

In 2006 Keith Ellison of Minnesota became the first Muslim elected to Congress; when re-enacting his swearing-in for photos, he used the copy of the Qur'an once owned by Thomas Jefferson.Michael Isikoff, "I'm a Sunni Muslim", [https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16474497/site/newsweek/page/0/ Newsweek Jan. 4, 2007]{{dead link|date=August 2024|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}} André Carson is the second Muslim to serve in Congress.

A Gallup poll released in 2007{{cite web |url= https://www.gallup.com/poll/26611/Some-Americans-Reluctant-Vote-Mormon-72YearOld-Presidential-Candidates.aspx |title= Some Americans Reluctant to Vote for Mormon, 72-Year-Old Presidential Candidates. Strong support for black, women, Catholic candidates |publisher= Gallup News Service |author= Jeffrey M. Jones |access-date= December 25, 2007 |date= February 20, 2007 |archive-date= September 15, 2017 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170915093145/http://www.gallup.com/poll/26611/Some-Americans-Reluctant-Vote-Mormon-72YearOld-Presidential-Candidates.aspx |url-status= live }} indicated that 53% of Americans would refuse to vote for an atheist 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.{{cite web |url= https://www.gallup.com/poll/155285/atheists-muslims-bias-presidential-candidates.aspx |title= Atheists, Muslims See Most Bias as Presidential Candidates |publisher= Gallup News Service |author= Jeffrey M. Jones |access-date= March 26, 2017 |date= June 21, 2012 |archive-date= August 31, 2017 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170831200517/http://www.gallup.com/poll/155285/atheists-muslims-bias-presidential-candidates.aspx |url-status= live }}{{cite web |url= https://www.gallup.com/poll/183713/socialist-presidential-candidates-least-appealing.aspx |title= In U.S., Socialist Presidential Candidates Least Appealing |publisher= Gallup News Service |author= Justin Mccarthy |access-date= March 26, 2017 |date= June 22, 2015 |archive-date= September 11, 2017 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170911040245/http://www.gallup.com/poll/183713/socialist-presidential-candidates-least-appealing.aspx |url-status= live }}

Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, is Mormon and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He is the former governor of the state of Massachusetts, and his father George Romney was the governor of the state of Michigan.

On January 3, 2013, Tulsi Gabbard became the first Hindu member of Congress, using a copy of the Bhagavad Gita while swearing-in.{{cite news|last1=Kaleem|first1=Jaweed|title=Tulsi Gabbard, First Hindu In Congress, Uses Bhagavad Gita At Swearing-In|url=https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/04/tulsi-gabbard-hindu-bhagavad-gita-swearing-in_n_2410078.html|work=HuffPost|access-date=October 17, 2017|date=January 4, 2013|archive-date=January 7, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170107085902/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/04/tulsi-gabbard-hindu-bhagavad-gita-swearing-in_n_2410078.html|url-status=live}}

{{Pie chart

| thumb = right

| caption = Self-identified religious affiliation among 18-29 year olds (Spring 2023 Harvard Youth Poll){{Cite web |last=Staff |date=April 24, 2023 |title=Spring 2023 Harvard Youth Poll: Top Findings and Takeaways |url=https://iop.harvard.edu/youth-poll/spring-2023-harvard-youth-poll |access-date=April 25, 2023 |website=The Institute of Politics at Harvard University |language=en}}

| label1 = Unaffiliated

| value1 = 33

| color1 = White

| label2 = Catholicism

| value2 = 19

| color2 = Purple

| label3 = Evangelical Christian

| value3 = 14

| color3 = Blue

| label4 = Mainline Protestant

| value4 = 8

| color4 = Lightblue

| label5 = LDS/Mormon

| value5 = 2

| color5 = Teal

| label6 = Judaism

| value6 = 2

| color6 = Pink

| label7 = Muslim

| value7 = 2

| color7 = Green

| label8 = Other religion

| value8 = 7

| color8 = Orange

| label9 = Not sure

| value9 = 6

| color9 = Grey

| label10 = Decline to answer/Refuse

| value10 = 7

| color10 = Black

}}

The Pew Research Center has routinely conducted surveys surrounding theism, religion, and morality since 2002, asking:{{Cite web |last=Staff |date=April 20, 2023 |title=Topline Questionnaire: Spring 2022 Global Attitudes Survey |url=https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/sr_2023.04.18_faith_topline.pdf |access-date=April 23, 2023 |website=Pew Research Center}}

Which of the following statements comes closest to your opinion?

• American civil religion
• Christianity in the United States
• Confucianism in the United States
• Church property disputes in the United States
• Freedom of religion in the United States
• Historical religious demographics of the United States
• List of religious movements that began in the United States
• List of U.S. states and territories by religiosity
• Protestantism in the United States
• Relationship between religion and science
• Religion in United States prisons
• School prayer in the United States
• Separation of church and state in the United States
• Televangelism

{{Reflist|30em}}

The following list of selected printed bibliographies on the topic includes both cited works and further reading.

{{Refbegin|30em|indent=yes}}

• {{cite book |surname=Aberle |given=David F. |authorlink=David Aberle |title=The Peyote Religion among the Navajo |others=With Harvey C. Moore and Denis F. Johnston |year=1991 |orig-year=1982 |edition=2nd |place=Norman, Ok; London |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |isbn=0-8061-2382-6 |url=https://archive.org/details/peyotereligionam0000aber_q0z8/page/n3/mode/1up |url-access=registration}}
• {{cite book |surname=Adler |given=Margot |authorlink=Margot Adler |title=Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today |edition=Reprint rev. and expand. |publisher=Penguin/Arcana |place=New York |year=2006 |orig-year=1979 |isbn=0-14-019536-X}} | at [https://archive.org/details/drawingdownmoonw00adle_3 Archive.org]
• {{cite book |surname=Ahlstrom |given=Sydney E. |authorlink=Sydney E. Ahlstrom |year=2004 |orig-year=1972 |title=A Religious History of the American People |edition=2nd |publisher=Yale University Press |place=New Haven, Conn |isbn=0-30010-012-4}}
• {{cite book |editor-surname=Alba |editor-given=Richard |editor-link=Richard Alba |editor-surname2=Raboteau |editor-given2=Albert |editor-link2=Albert J. Raboteau |editor-surname3=DeWind |editor-given3=Josh |year=2008 |title=Immigration and Religion in America: Comparative and Historical Perspectives |series=American Journal of Sociology |publisher=New York University Press |place=New York |url=https://www.academia.edu/29234371 |isbn=9780814705049}}
• {{cite book |surname=Albanese |given=Catherine L. |year=2007 |title=A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion |place=New Haven, Conn; London |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=9780300136159}}
• {{cite encyclopedia |year=2018 |editor-surname=Alexander |editor-given=Estrelda Y. |title=The Dictionary of Pan-African Pentecostalism. Volume One: North America |place=Eugene, Or |publisher=Cascade Books |url={{Google books|id=xwZlDwAAQBAJ|plainurl=y|page=|keywords=|text=}} |isbn=978-1-4982-8477-6}}
• {{cite book |surname=Ammerman |given=Nancy T. |authorlink=Nancy Ammerman |chapter=North American Protestant Fundamentalism |chapter-url={{Google books|id=qd5yzP5hdiEC|plainurl=y|page=1|keywords=|text=}} |editor-surname=Marty |editor-given=Martin E. |editor-link=Martin E. Marty |editor-surname2=Appleby |editor-given2=R. Scott |editor-link2=R. Scott Appleby |year=1991 |title=Fundamentalisms Observed |series=The Fundamentalism Project, 1 |place=Chicago, Il; London |publisher=University of Chicago Press |pages=1–65 |url={{Google books|id=qd5yzP5hdiEC|plainurl=y|page=}} |isbn=0-226-50878-1}}
• Anderson, Owanah (1988). Jamestown Commitment: the Episcopal Church and the American Indian. Cincinnati, Ohio: Forward Movement Pub. {{ISBN|0-88028-082-4}}.
• {{cite book |surname=Ariel |given=Yaakov |title=Evangelizing the Chosen People: Missions to the Jews in America, 1880–2000 |year=2000 |url={{Google books|id=r3hCgIZB790C|plainurl=y|page=}} |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |place=Chapel Hill, NC; London |isbn=0-8078-2566-2 |oclc=43708450 }}
• Askew, Thomas A.; Spellman, Peter W. (1984). The Churches and the American Experiment: Ideals and Institutions.
• {{cite book |surname=Backman |given=Milton V. Jr. |year=1983 |authorlink=Milton V. Backman |title=Christian Churches of America: Origins and Beliefs |edition=2nd, rev. |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |place=New York |url=https://archive.org/details/christianchurche0000back/page/n4/mode/1up |url-access=registration |isbn=0-02-305090-X}}
• {{cite book |surname=Balmer |given=Randall Herbert |surname2=Winner |given2=Lauren F. |title=Protestantism in America |url=https://archive.org/details/protestantismame00balm_593 |url-access=registration |year=2002 |publisher=Columbia University Press |place=New York |isbn=9780231111300 }}
• {{cite book |surname=Baltzell |given=E. Digby |authorlink=E. Digby Baltzell |year=1964 |title=The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America |url=https://archive.org/details/protestantestabl00baltrich |url-access=registration |place=New York |publisher=Random House}}
• Beale, David (2021). Christian Fundamentalism in America: The Story of the Rest from 1857 to 2020.
• {{cite book |editor-surname=Best |editor-given=Felton O. |year=1998 |title=Black Religious Leadership from the Slave Community to the Million Man March; flames of fire |publisher=Edwin Mellen Press |place=Lewiston, NY}}
• {{cite book |surname=Blankholm |given=Joseph |title=The Secular Paradox: On the Religiosity of the Not Religious |year=2022 |place=New York |publisher=New York University Press |isbn=9781479809509}}
• {{cite book |surname=Blau |given=Joseph Leon |author-link=Joseph Leon Blau |year=1976 |title=Judaism in America. From Curiosity to Third Faith |publisher=University of Chicago Press |place=Chicago, Il |isbn=0-22605-727-5}}
• {{cite book |surname=Bloom |given=Harold |author-link=Harold Bloom |year=1992 |title=The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation |publisher=Simon & Schuster |place=New York |isbn=0-671-67997-X}} | at [https://archive.org/details/americanreligio000bloo/page/n6/mode/1up Archive.org]
• {{cite book |surname=Bonomi |given=Patricia U. |title=Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America |url={{Google books|id=sf6cvNsd-rYC|plainurl=y|page=}} |year=2003 |orig-year=1986 |edition=updated |place=New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0-19-516217-X}} {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120721014800/https://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=90445659 |date=2012-07-21}}
• {{cite book |surname=Bowman |given=Matthew |title=The Mormon People: The Making of an American Faith |year=2012 |place=New York |publisher=Random House |url=https://archive.org/details/mormonpeoplemaki00bowm_0/ |url-access=registration |isbn=978-0-679-64490-3}}
• {{cite book |surname=Brackney |given=William H. |year=2006 |authorlink=William H. Brackney |title=Baptists in North America: An Historical Perspective |publisher=Blackwell Pub. |isbn=1-4051-1865-2}}
• Brown, Brian Edward (1999). Religion, Law, and the Land: Native Americans and the Judicial Interpretations of Sacred Land. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. {{ISBN|978-0-313-30972-4}}.
• {{cite book |surname=Brown |given=Joseph Epes |authorlink=Joseph Epes Brown |title=The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian |place=New York |publisher=Crossroad Pub. Co. |year=1982 |url={{Google books|id=IZGzo_NC58sC|plainurl=y|page=}} |isbn=0-8245-0489-5}}
• {{cite book |surname=Brown |given=Joseph Epes |authorlink=Joseph Epes Brown |surname2=Cousins |given2=Emily |title=Teaching Spirits: Understanding Native American Religious Traditions |place=Oxford; New York |publisher=Oxford University Press. |year=2001 |url={{Google books|id=4O-c4qoPSbsC|plainurl=y|page=}} |isbn=0-19-513875-9}}
• {{cite book |last=Brown |first=Michael F. |year=1997 |title=The Channeling Zone: American Spirituality in an Anxious Age |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/channelingzoneam00brow |place=Cambridge, Ma |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=9780674108820 }}
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• {{cite book |surname=Burgan |given=Michael |year=2003 |title=Buddhist Faith in America |series=Faith in America. J. Gordon Melton, series editor |place=New York |publisher=Facts On File |url={{Google books|id=nQKHO5xypkcC|plainurl=y|page=}} |isbn=0-8160-4988-2 }}
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{{Refend}}

{{commonscat}}

{{wikiquote}}

{{Religion by Country}}

• [https://www.thearda.com The ARDA] — the Association of Religion Data Archives' online compilation of primarily US religion data from a project jointly supported by Penn State University, Chapman University, the Lilly Endowment, and the John Templeton Foundation
• [https://commons.trincoll.edu/aris/ The ARIS (American Religious Identification Survey) time series surveys] - website of academic research team that conducted "three large replicate, representative, national surveys of adults" in the continental United States in 1990, 2001 and 2008. Includes reports, data sets, and other information.
• [https://www.materialreligion.org/ Material History of American Religion Project] - based at the Vanderbilt University Divinity School and supported by the Lilly Endowment
• [https://www.pewforum.org/ Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life] - a project of the Pew Research Center, publishing statistical reports on religion and American life
• [https://www.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx Religion: Gallup Historical Trends] - opinion polling of Americans by the Gallup Poll from the 1940s to the present

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Category:Religious demographics