Religious affiliation in the United States, per Gallup, Inc. (2023)[1]
Religion by country |
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Religion in the United States is widespread and diverse, with the country being far more religious than other wealthy Western nations.[2] An overwhelming majority of Americans believe in a higher power,[3] engage in spiritual practices,[4] and consider themselves religious or spiritual.[5][6] Christianity is the most widely professed religion, with the majority of Americans being Evangelicals, Mainline Protestants, or Catholics.[7][8] Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism are so-called mainline religions of America.[9]
Freedom of religion is guaranteed in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Many scholars of religion credit this and the country's separation of church and state for its high level of religiousness;[10] lacking a state church, it completely avoided the experiences of religious warfare and conflict that characterized European modernization.[11] Its history of religion has always been marked by religious pluralism and diversity.[12][13] In colonial times, Anglicans, Quakers, and other mainline Protestants, as well as Mennonites, arrived from Northwestern Europe. Various dissenting Protestants who had left the Church of England greatly diversified the religious landscape. The Episcopal Church, splitting from the Church of England, came into being in the American Revolution.
The religiosity of the country has changed over time.[14] Religious involvement among American citizens has gradually grown from 17% in 1776 to 62% in 2000.[15] The Thirteen Colonies were initially marked by low levels of religiosity.[14][16] The two Great Awakenings — the first in the 1730s and 1740s, the second between the 1790s and 1840s — led to an immense rise in observance and gave birth to many evangelical Protestant denominations. When they began, one in ten Americans were members of congregations; by the time they ended, eight in ten were.[14] The aftermath led to what historian Martin Marty calls the "Evangelical Empire", a period in which evangelicals dominated U.S. cultural institutions. They supported measures to abolish slavery, further women's rights, enact prohibition, and reform education and criminal justice.[17]
New Protestant branches like Adventism emerged; Restorationists like the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Latter Day Saint movement, Churches of Christ and Church of Christ, Scientist, as well as Unitarian and Universalist communities all spread in the 19th century. Deism also found support among American upper classes and intellectual thinkers. During the immigrant waves of the mid to late 19th and 20th century, an unprecedented number of Catholic and Jewish immigrants arrived in the United States. Pentecostalism emerged in the early 20th century as a result of the Azusa Street Revival. Unitarian Universalism resulted from the merge of Unitarian and Universalist churches in the 20th century.
The U.S. has the largest Christian and Protestant population in the world.[18] Judaism is the second-largest religion in the U.S., practiced by 2% of the population, followed by Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, each with 1% of the population.[19] Mississippi is the most religious state in the country, with 63% of its adult population described as very religious, while New Hampshire, with only 20% of its adult population described as very religious, is the least religious state.[20] Congress overwhelmingly identifies as religious and Christian; both the Republican and Democratic parties generally nominate those who are.[21][22] The Christian left, as seen through figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Jimmy Carter, and William Jennings Bryan; along with many figures within the Christian right have had a significant role in the country's politics.
Pew Research Center surveys conclude that "the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or 'nothing in particular,' now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009" and that "both Protestantism and Catholicism are experiencing losses of population share."[23][24] Many of the unaffiliated retain religious beliefs or practices without affiliating.[25][26][27] There have been variant proposed explanations for secularization including lack of trust in the labor market, with government, in marriage and in other aspects of life,[28] backlash against the religious right in the 1980s,[29] sexual abuse scandals, particularly those within the Southern Baptist Convention[30] and Catholic Church.[31]
American adults under the age of 40 are less likely to pray than their elders, less likely to attend church services and less likely to identify with any religion – all of which may portend future declines in levels of religious commitment
The combined nine-in-ten Americans who believe in God or a higher power (91%) were asked a series of follow-up questions about the relationship between God and human suffering.
The vast majority of people — approximately 80 percent — describe themselves as both spiritual and religious. Still, a small but growing minority of Americans describe themselves as spiritual but not religious, as figure 3.4 shows. In 1998, 9 percent of Americans described themselves as at least moderately spiritual but not more than slightly religious. That number rose to 16 percent in the 2010s.
Most people in the United States, however, identify as spiritual and religious.
Stark churching
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Only after the violent attacks on religion in the French Revolution did alarm about the low level of religion in America escalate and enthusiasm for religion catch fire.
Burge 2021
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).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.
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.
Millennials religion
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).