History of religion in the United States

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Religion in the United States began with the religions and spiritual practices of Native Americans. Later, religion also played a role in the founding of some colonies, as many colonists, such as the Puritans, came to escape religious persecution. Historians debate how much influence religion, specifically Christianity and more specifically Protestantism, had on the American Revolution.^[1] Many of the Founding Fathers were active in a local Protestant church; some of them had deist sentiments, such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington. Some researchers and authors have referred to the United States as a "Protestant nation" or "founded on Protestant principles,"^[2][3][4][5] specifically emphasizing its Calvinist heritage.^[6][7] Others stress the secular character of the American Revolution and note the secular character of the nation's founding documents.

Protestantism in the United States, as the largest and dominant form of religion in the country, has been profoundly influential to the history and culture of the United States. African Americans were very active in forming their own Protestant churches, most of them Baptist or Methodist, and giving their ministers both moral and political leadership roles. The group often known as “White Anglo-Saxon Protestants” have dominated American society, culture, and politics for most of the history of the United States, while the so-called “Protestant work ethic” has long held influence over American society, politics, and work culture.^[8][9] In the late 19th and early 20th century, most major American Protestant denominations started overseas missionary activity. The "Mainline Protestant" denominations promoted the "Social Gospel" in the early 20th century, calling on Americans to reform their society; the demand for prohibition of liquor was especially strong. After 1970, the mainline Protestant denominations (such as Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians) lost membership and influence. The more conservative Protestant evangelical, fundamentalist, and charismatic denominations (such as the Southern Baptists) grew rapidly until the 1990s and helped form the Religious Right in politics.

Though Protestantism has always been the predominant and majority form of Christianity in the United States, the nation has had a small but significant Catholic population from its founding, and as the United States expanded into areas of North America that had been part of the Catholic Spanish and French empires, that population increased. Later, immigration waves in the mid to late 19th and 20th century brought immigrants from Catholic countries, further increasing Catholic diversity and augmenting the number of Catholics substantially while also fomenting an increase in virulent American anti-Catholicism. At the same time, these immigration waves also brought a great number of Jewish and Eastern Orthodox immigrants to the United States. Protestantism in general (i.e. all of the Protestant denominations combined) remains by far the predominant and largest form of religion and the dominant and predominant form of Christianity in the United States, though the Catholic Church is technically the largest individual religious denomination in the United States if Protestantism is divided into its various denominations instead of being counted as a single religious grouping. Overall, roughly 43% of Americans identify as Protestants, with 20% identifying as Catholics, 4% identifying with various other Christian groups such as Mormonism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Oriental Orthodox Christianity, and Jehovah's Witnesses; and 2% identifying as Jewish. Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims account for 1% each of the population.

As Western Europe secularized in the late 20th century, the United States largely resisted the trend, so that, by the 21st century, the US was one of the most strongly Christian of all major Western nations. Religiously-based moral positions on issues such as abortion and homosexuality played a hotly debated role in American politics. However, the United States has dramatically and rapidly secularized in recent years, with around 26% of the population currently declaring themselves “unaffiliated”, either in regard to a religion in general or to an organized religion.^[10]