Country

United States

Also Known As American

Americas

The United States has no established church and constitutionally guarantees religious free exercise, a framework that has allowed an unusually wide range of traditions to take root and often originate here, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Seventh-day Adventism and modern Pentecostalism. Protestant Christianity in its many denominations remains the largest religious grouping, alongside a substantial Roman Catholic population built up through successive waves of immigration, and significant Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu communities concentrated in different regions and cities. The country has also incubated major esoteric and New Age currents, from nineteenth century Spiritualism and Theosophy to twentieth century Neopaganism and channeling movements, many of which spread internationally from American origins. Indigenous nations across the country maintain their own distinct religious and ceremonial traditions, largely independent of the settler religious history described above.

Facts

Law and State

Establishment Status

No Establishment 3

The First Amendment of 1791 prohibits Congress from establishing a religion while guaranteeing free exercise, with extensive Supreme Court litigation continuing to define the boundary between permissible accommodation and prohibited establishment.

State Funding Mechanism

The United States has no state funding mechanism for religion at the federal level. The First Amendment's Establishment Clause, ratified 1791, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion", has been read since Everson v. Board of Education (1947) as barring direct government funding of religious institutions, though indirect and neutral mechanisms, tax exemption for religious property and organizations chief among them, remain in place nationwide. 4

Apostasy or Blasphemy Law

The United States has no federal blasphemy or apostasy law and none is constitutionally possible: the First Amendment bars Congress from establishing a religion or abridging speech, and the Fourteenth Amendment extends that bar to state and local government. In Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson (1952) the Supreme Court struck down a New York statute banning "sacrilegious" films, holding that "it is not the business of government in our nation to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine, whether they appear in publications, speeches or motion pictures." Several states retained blasphemy statutes on their books into the twentieth century despite that ruling; the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down its own as unconstitutional as recently as 2010. No apostasy offense has ever existed in American law. Burning a religious text, publicly mocking a faith, or declaring apostasy from any religion are all protected speech; the outer limits of that protection are set by ordinary doctrines such as incitement and true threats, not by any religion-specific carve-out. 5

Registration or Recognition Regime

No government registration or permission is required for a religious group to organize, meet, worship or collect funds. The First Amendment forbids a law establishing or restricting religion, and a registration requirement conditioning a group's existence on state approval would itself run against that guarantee. A congregation may still seek voluntary state nonprofit incorporation and, separately, federal tax-exempt recognition under Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3); both are optional civil-law conveniences for holding property, opening accounts and issuing deductible-donation receipts, never a precondition for existing or operating as a religious body. 3

Ban or Official Watchlist

The United States maintains no list of banned or officially watchlisted religious organizations. The First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause bars federal and state governments from prohibiting the free exercise of religion, and constitutional doctrine holds that government may not regulate religious belief itself or punish religiously motivated conduct out of disapproval of a particular religion or of religion in general. 6

Concordat Basis

The United States holds no concordat with the Holy See. Full diplomatic relations were established on 10 January 1984 under President Reagan, ending a gap that had lasted since 1870, but the relationship rests on an exchanged embassy and nunciature rather than a bilateral treaty. The First Amendment's bar on an establishment of religion forecloses the kind of church-state instrument a concordat is, so the absence follows directly from the country's own constitutional structure rather than from any lack of a formal relationship. 7

Geography

Latitude

37.1 degrees north 2

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.

Longitude

95.7 degrees west 2

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.

Status

Legal Status

The First Amendment (1791) prohibits Congress from establishing a religion while guaranteeing free exercise; extensive Supreme Court litigation continues to define the boundary between permissible accommodation and prohibited establishment. 3

Classification

State Funding of Religion

State Neutrality Among Religions 8

Demographics

Religious Composition

Protestant affiliation below half the population; Catholics the largest single denomination at around 20%; religiously unaffiliated around 28-30%; Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and other communities each in the low single digits (Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020). 1

Government

Capital

Washington, D.C. 2

Government Type

constitutional federal republic 2

Sovereignty Status

Sovereign UN member state 2

Established Year

1776 2

4 July 1776 (declared independence from Great Britain); 3 September 1783 (recognized by Great Britain)

Government type (class)

Federal republic 2

Location

Learn More

Religion and History in the United States

The United States is religiously diverse and historically Protestant-majority, though Protestant affiliation has fallen below half the population in recent decades, with Catholics forming the largest single denomination at around 20 percent, religiously unaffiliated Americans now roughly 28 to 30 percent, and Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and other communities each in the low single digits, per estimates including Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020 and its own extensive US-specific surveys.

Many of the original thirteen colonies were founded explicitly for religious purposes, including Puritan New England seeking to build a model Christian commonwealth and Catholic-founded Maryland and Quaker-founded Pennsylvania offering unusual, if limited, religious toleration for their era, and the First Amendment's 1791 establishment and free exercise clauses, prohibiting a national church while protecting individual religious practice, created a novel constitutional model that avoided the state-church arrangements common in contemporary Europe. American religious history has produced numerous homegrown new religious movements, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints founded by Joseph Smith in 1830, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Seventh-day Adventism and Pentecostalism, alongside recurring waves of religious revival known as the Great Awakenings that reshaped American Protestant life across the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The First Amendment and Church-State Separation Disputes

The First Amendment's religion clauses, prohibiting Congress from establishing a religion while guaranteeing free exercise, have generated extensive and ongoing constitutional litigation over where the line between permissible accommodation and prohibited establishment falls, addressed through evolving Supreme Court tests including the 1971 Lemon test, later narrowed, and a more recent history-and-tradition approach favored by the Court's current majority, applied in cases spanning school prayer, religious displays on public property, funding for religious schools and, especially since the 2010s, disputes over religious exemptions from anti-discrimination and healthcare mandate laws for businesses and institutions objecting on religious grounds, as in the Supreme Court's 2014 Hobby Lobby and 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop decisions.

The country's religious landscape has also shaped its politics directly, from the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement's substantial religious motivation to the twentieth-century civil rights movement's roots in Black church leadership under figures including Martin Luther King Jr, and more recently the rise of the religious right as a durable force in American conservative politics from the late 1970s onward, closely tied to evangelical Protestant mobilization around abortion, and, since 2022, the Supreme Court's reversal of the constitutional right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

United States

1 entry

Status Today

Origin Period Start Year

Derived From (Parent Society)

Polity

Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis

United States

Connections

Ancient and Historical Regions

California

Source GeoNames: GeoNames search results for California

New York

Source GeoNames: GeoNames search results for New York

North America

Source United Nations Statistics Division: UN M49 Standard country or area codes for statistical use: geographic regions

United States

Source United States (Wikipedia)

Associated With

American Civil War

Fought within the United States from 1861 to 1865; its dead were absorbed into a national civil religion of Decoration Day and the Gettysburg Address.

Source God's Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil WarGeorge C. Rable

Ananda Coomaraswamy

Curator of Indian art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from 1917 until his death.

Source Coomaraswamy: His Life and WorkRoger Lipsey

Archdiocese of Boston 2003 Clergy Abuse Settlement

Source Church Abuse Settlement FinalizedMeghan Dorney, The Boston Pilot

Archdiocese of Los Angeles 2007 Clergy Abuse Settlement

Source 660 Million Dollar Settlement in Priest AbusesJoe Mozingo and John Spano, Los Angeles Times

Archdiocese of Milwaukee 2015 Bankruptcy Settlement

Source Judge Approves 21 Million Dollar Milwaukee Archdiocese Settlement

Archdiocese of Santa Fe Chapter 11 Settlement

Source Bankruptcy Court Confirms Archdiocese of Santa Fe Plan of Reorganization Settling Hundreds of Sexual Abuse Claims

Boston Globe Spotlight Investigation

Source The Boston Globe Spotlight Team's Investigation of Clergy Sexual AbuseThe Boston Globe Spotlight Team (Walter V. Robinson, Michael Rezendes, Sacha Pfeiffer, Matt Carroll)

Camden

Christianity

Protestant affiliation below half the population; Catholics the largest single denomination at around 20%.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

Cold War

The United States framed the contest as the defence of faith, adding under God to the pledge and In God We Trust as the national motto.

Source Religion and the Cold WarDianne Kirby (editor)

Colorado Special Master Report on Catholic Clergy Sexual Abuse

Covenant of the Goddess

Covenant of the Goddess is a cross-traditional national Wiccan church formed in and registered in the United States.

Source Covenant Of The Goddess, IRS Form 990 (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer)

Dallas Charter

Source Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People (the Dallas Charter)United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality

The United States banned these ceremonies from 1883 and acknowledged the right to hold them only in 1978, which is the legal background the declaration answers.

Source God Is Red: A Native View of Religion, 30th anniversary editionVine Deloria Jr.

Diocese of Camden Chapter 11 Settlement

Source Diocese of Camden Chapter 11 Plan Confirmed by U.S. Bankruptcy Court

Diocese of Duluth Chapter 11 Settlement

Source Duluth Diocese Concludes Bankruptcy

Diocese of Gallup Chapter 11 Settlement

Source Chapter 11 Settlement, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Gallup

Diocese of Harrisburg Chapter 11 Settlement

Source Reorganization Information, Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg

Diocese of Helena Chapter 11 Settlement

Source Judge Confirms Plan Settling Montana Clergy Sex-Abuse Claims

Diocese of New Ulm Chapter 11 Settlement

Source Judge Approves 34 Million Dollar Clergy Abuse Settlement with New Ulm Diocese

Diocese of Norwich Chapter 11 Settlement

Source The Diocese of Norwich Emerges from Chapter 11 Bankruptcy with Confirmation of Reorganization Plan

Diocese of Rochester Chapter 11 Settlement

Source Judge Confirms Bankruptcy Plan for Rochester Diocese

Diocese of Rockville Centre Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Settlement

Diocese of San Diego 2007 Clergy Abuse Settlement

Source San Diego Diocese to Pay 198M to Settle Sexual Abuse Claims by ClergyAssociated Press

Diocese of Syracuse Chapter 11 Settlement

Source Judge to Approve Syracuse Diocese's $176M Bankruptcy Plan

Diocese of Wilmington 2011 Bankruptcy Settlement

Source Del. Diocese Settles Priest Abuse Claims for 77M

Duluth

Feraferia

Feraferia was founded by Frederick Fred Adams in Southern California, United States.

Source Margot Adler, Drawing Down the MoonMargot Adler

Gallup

Harrisburg

Helena

Illinois Attorney General Report on Catholic Clergy Child Sex Abuse

John Jay Report

Source The Nature and Scope of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States, 1950-2002John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Kemetic Orthodoxy

Kemetic Orthodoxy is a modern Kemetic reconstructionist religious organization founded in the United States in 1988.

Source Kemetic Orthodoxy: the faith and its practiceTamara L. Siudathe holders' own account

Maryland Attorney General Report on the Archdiocese of Baltimore

Massachusetts Attorney General Report on the Archdiocese of Boston

Source The Sexual Abuse of Children in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston: A Report by the Attorney GeneralThomas F. Reilly, Attorney General of Massachusetts

Mau Piailug

He navigated Hokulea from Hawaii to Tahiti in 1976 without instruments, and afterwards taught the method to Hawaiian students.

Source Hawaiki Rising: Hokule'a, Nainoa Thompson, and the Hawaiian RenaissanceSam Low

Mexicayotl

The movement later spread from Mexico City into Chicano and Mexican-American communities in the United States.

Source Mexika.org, "The Pseudohistorical Origins of the Mexicayotl Movement," 2017

Milwaukee

Mircea Eliade

He held the chair in the history of religions at Chicago from 1956 until his death in 1986.

Source Mircea Eliade: The Romanian Roots, 1907-1945Mac Linscott Ricketts

New Ulm

Norwich

Orthodox Union Special Commission Report on NCSY Misconduct

Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report

Source Report 1 of the 40th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury (Pennsylvania)40th Statewide Investigating Grand Jury, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Rochester

Santa Fe

SBC Guidepost Report

Source Report of the Independent Investigation, Sexual Abuse Task Force of the Southern Baptist Convention (the Guidepost Report)Guidepost Solutions LLC

Stregheria

Source Sabina Magliocco, Witching CultureSabina Magliocco

Syracuse

Vatican McCarrick Report

Source Report on the Holy See's Institutional Knowledge and Decision-Making Related to Former Cardinal Theodore Edgar McCarrick (1930 to 2017)Secretariat of State, Holy See

Showing 1 to 50 of 52 in Associated With, page 1 of 2.

Conducted

Wounded Knee Massacre

Source The Last Days of the Sioux NationRobert M. Utley

Contains

Smithsonian Institution

Source Smithsonian Institution (institutional record)Smithsonian Institutionthe holders' own account

Temple Square