Christianity in the United States
Christianity is the most prevalent religion in the United States. Estimates from 2021 suggest that of the entire U.S. population (332 million) about 63% is Christian (210 million).[1] The majority of Christian Americans are Protestant Christians (140 million; 42%), though there are also significant numbers of American Roman Catholics (70 million; 21%) and other Christian denominations such as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Orthodox Christians and Oriental Orthodox Christians, and Jehovah's Witnesses (about 13 million in total; 4%).[2] The United States has the largest Christian population in the world and, more specifically, the largest Protestant population in the world, with nearly 210 million Christians and, as of 2021, over 140 million people affiliated with Protestant churches, although other countries have higher percentages of Christians among their populations. The Public Religion Research Institute's "2020 Census of American Religion", carried out between 2014 and 2020, showed that 70% of Americans identified as Christian during this seven-year interval.[3] In a 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center, 65% of adults in the United States identified themselves as Christians.[4] They were 75% in 2015,[5][6] 70.6% in 2014,[7] 78% in 2012,[8] 81.6% in 2001,[9] and 85% in 1990. About 62% of those polled claim to be members of a church congregation.[10]
All Protestant denominations accounted for 48.5% of the population, making Protestantism the most prevalent form of Christianity in the country and the majority religion in general in the United States, while the Catholic Church by itself, at 22.7% of the population, is the largest individual denomination if Protestantism is divided into various denominations instead of being counted as a single category.[11] The nation's second-largest church and the single largest Protestant denomination is the Southern Baptist Convention.[12] Among Eastern Christian denominations, there are several Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, with just below 1 million adherents in the U.S., or 0.4% of the total population.[13] Christianity is the predominant religion in all U.S. states and territories. Conversion into Christianity has significantly increased among Korean Americans, Chinese Americans, and Japanese Americans in the United States. In 2012, the percentage of Christians in these communities were 71%, 30% and 37% respectively.[14]
Christianity was introduced to the Americas during European settlement beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries. Immigration further increased Christian numbers. Going forward from its foundation, the United States has been called a Protestant nation by a variety of sources.[15][16][17][18] When the categories of "irreligion" and "unaffiliated" are included as religious categories for statistical purposes, Protestantism is technically no longer the religious category of the majority; however, this is primarily the result of an increase in Americans, such as Americans of Protestant descent or background, professing no religious affiliation, rather than being the result of an increase in non-Protestant religious affiliations, and Protestantism remains by far the majority or dominant form of religion in the United States among American Christians and those Americans who declare a religion affiliation.[19] Today, most Christian churches in the United States are either Mainline Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, or Catholic.[20]
Youth programs[edit]
While children and youth in the colonial era were treated as small adults, awareness of their special status and needs grew in the nineteenth century, as one after another the denominations large and small began special programs for their young people. Protestant theologian Horace Bushnell in Christian Nurture (1847) emphasized the necessity of identifying and supporting the religiosity of children and young adults. Beginning in the 1790s the Protestant denominations set up Sunday school programs. They provided a major source of new members.[112] Urban Protestant churchmen set up the interdenominational YMCA (and later the YWCA) programs in cities from the 1850s.[113] Methodists looked on their youth as potential political activists, providing them with opportunities to engage in social justice movements such as prohibition. Black Protestants, especially after they could form their own separate churches, integrated their young people directly into the larger religious community. Their youth played a major role in the leadership of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and the 1960s. White evangelicals in the twentieth century set up Bible clubs for teenagers and experimented with the use of music to attract young people. The Catholics set up an entire network of parochial schools, and by the late nineteenth century probably more than half of their young members were attending elementary schools run by local parishes.[114] Some Missouri Synod German Lutherans and Dutch Reformed churches also set up parochial schools. In the twentieth century, all the denominations sponsored programs such as the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.[115]