Religion in the United States is both widespread and diverse, with higher reported levels of belief than other wealthy Western nations. Polls indicate that an overwhelming majority of Americans believe in a higher power (2021), engage in spiritual practices (2022), and consider themselves religious or spiritual (2017).
Christianity is the most widely professed religion, with the majority of Americans being evangelicals, mainline Protestants, or Catholics, although its dominance has declined in recent decades, and as of 2012 Protestants no longer formed a majority in the US. The United States has the largest Christian and Protestant population in the world. Judaism is the second-largest religion in the US, practiced by 2% of the population, followed by Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam, each with 1% of the population."In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace" , Pew Research Center, October 17, 2019, Retrieved July 27, 2020. States vary in religiosity from Mississippi, where 63% of adults self-describe as very religious, to New Hampshire where 20% do. The elected legislators of Congress overwhelmingly identify as religious and Christian; with few exceptions, both the Republican and Democratic parties nominate those who are.
Among the historical and social characteristics of the United States that some scholars of religion credit for the country's high level of religiousness include its Constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and legal tradition of separation of church and state;Holifield, E. Brooks (2015). Why Are Americans So Religious? The Limitations of Market Explanations. Religion and the Marketplace in the United States. pp. 33–60. ISBN 9780199361809. the early immigration of religious dissenters from Northwestern Europe (Anglicans, Quakers, Mennonites, and other mainline Protestants); the religious revivalism of the first (1730s and 1740s), and second (1790s and 1840s) Great Awakenings, which led to an enormous growth in Christian congregations—from 10% of Americans being members before the Awakenings, to 80% belonging after.
The aftermath led to what historian Martin Marty calls the "Evangelical Empire", a period in which evangelicals dominated US cultural institutions. They influenced measures to abolish slavery, further women's rights, enact prohibition, and reform education and criminal justice. New denominations were formed (Adventism, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Latter Day Saint movement (Mormonism), Churches of Christ and Church of Christ, Scientist, Unitarian and Universalist, Pentecostalism). Outside of Protestantism, an unprecedented number of Catholic and Jewish immigrants arrived in the United States during the immigrant waves of the mid to late 19th and 20th century.
Social scientists have noted that beginning in the early 1990s, the percentage of Americans professing no religious affiliation began to rise from 6% in 1991 to 29% in 2021—with younger people having higher rates of unaffiliation. Similarly, polling indicated a decline in church attendance, and the number of people agreeing with the statement that religion is "very important" in their lives. Explanations for this trend include lack of trust in numerous institutions, backlash against the religious right in the 1980s, sexual abuse scandals in established religions, the end of the Cold War (and its connection of religiosity with patriotism), and the September 11 attacks (by religious Jihadists). Many of the "Nones" (those without a religious affiliation) have belief in a god or higher power and spiritual forces beyond the natural world. As of 2024, Christianity's decline may have leveled off or slowed, according to the Pew Research Center and Gallup, though according to the Public Religion Research Institute it has continued to decline.
History
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) Throughout its history, religious involvement among American citizens has grown since 1776 from 17% of the US population to 62% in 2000. 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." 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. Since the 1940s, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment as applying the First Amendment to state and local governments.
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 is online
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, chapter 1. specifically emphasizing its Calvinist heritage.
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". National mottoUnited States Public Law 84-851 , 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. In 2016, 73.7% identified as Christians while 18.2% claimed no religious affiliation. In 2019, a 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." Many of the unaffiliated retain religious beliefs or practices without affiliating. 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, sexual abuse scandals, particularly those within the Southern Baptist Convention and Catholic Church.
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), 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). Still other sources insist Americans are becoming more religious, and surveys showing otherwise suffer from methodological deficiencies.
A 2022 study by Pew Research Center estimated that the religiously unaffiliated had reached 30% of the population by 2020. It predicted that in the "most plausible" scenario, accounting for observed acceleration of religious switching, this would increase to 42% by 2050.
Freedom of religion
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.
Christianity
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). 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. 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.