Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
States & Territories

California

West

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California's religious geography starts with the chain of twenty one Spanish Franciscan missions Junipero Serra and his successors built along the coast from San Diego to Sonoma between 1769 and 1823, converting and often coercing the Indigenous population along the way. Gold Rush immigration then made the state one of the most religiously diverse in the country within a generation. Los Angeles became the unlikely birthplace of modern Pentecostalism at the Azusa Street Revival of 1906, and the state has since incubated an unusual share of new religious movements, from the Vedanta Society's early Hindu missions to Zen centers, Scientology and the human potential movement.

Facts
Identity
Jurisdiction Status
U.S. state 1
Religion
Leading Religious Affiliation
Catholic 2
California: Catholic is 25% of adults, ahead of Nothing in particular at 20%. Margin of error plus or minus 2.4 points. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/state/california/
Law and State
Establishment Status
No Establishment 1
California's first constitution, adopted on statehood in 1850, provided for no established church, following the pattern already set by every state admitted after the original thirteen.
Geography
Census Region
West 1
Origins
Origin of the Name
Taken from a mythical island paradise ruled by the warrior queen Calafia in the early sixteenth century Spanish romance Las Sergas de Esplandian, applied by Spanish explorers to the peninsula they believed was an island. 1
Learn More
From Mission Bells to a Revival on Azusa Street

The chain of twenty one Spanish Franciscan missions Junipero Serra and his successors built along the California coast between 1769 and 1823 was, on the church's own terms, an evangelizing project, and modern scholarship on Serra has been explicit that the conversions it produced relied heavily on coercion, forced labor and a mission system that devastated Indigenous populations through disease and disruption of traditional life, a history the state and the church have both had to reckon with directly in recent decades rather than treat as settled. The missions nonetheless remain the oldest continuous thread of organized religion in the state and shaped its earliest colonial geography from San Diego to Sonoma.

A century later California became the source of a very different kind of religious history. The Azusa Street Revival, beginning in 1906 in a converted livery stable in Los Angeles under the leadership of William Seymour, a Black preacher and the son of formerly enslaved parents, is treated by historians of the movement as the founding event of modern global Pentecostalism, a tradition that by the early twenty first century had grown into one of the largest branches of Christianity worldwide. The revival's own interracial worship, unusual for the period, was itself part of what participants and later scholars read as evidence of the Spirit at work. California kept producing new religious movements after Azusa Street as well, from the Vedanta Society's early Hindu missionary presence to Zen centers and the human potential movement, an unusually high concentration of religious innovation for one state across three centuries.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

2009 Resolutions (International Society for Krishna Consciousness Governing Body Commission) names California by its exact full name: g Hridayananda Das Goswami had given in California in November 2008.

This source names California directly: "held 24 to 26 April 2026 in Orange, California and hosted by the Zoroastrian Association of California, describing the 23 April launch of the Z-BUILD infrastructure planning initiative."

This source names California directly: "Bokenkamp, published by the University of California Press, continuing a line of Western academic study of the text that began with Michel Strickmann's pioneering dissertation on the Shangqing..."

This source names California directly: "Church of God in Christ) in Pacoima, California, the congregation founded by their father Benjamin Crouch, a COGIC minister."

Source Andrae Crouch (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names California directly: "(BLIA USA, Hacienda Heights, California) voluntarily filed IRS Form 990, reporting total assets and revenue for the fiscal year ending 31 December 2024."

This source names California directly: "Vinh, travelling from California, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Virginia and Texas, organized several sessions there, among them a multi faith panel on Cao Dai's practices of self realization..."

This source names California directly: "Church of Spiritual Technology, the California nonprofit religious corporation that archives Scientology scripture, incorporated 1982."

Source Church of Spiritual Technology (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names California directly: "Of Charity Foundation, Los Angeles, California, EIN 77-0047181, tax-exempt since April 2000, classified under Philanthropy/Grantmaking Foundations."

This source names California directly: "born 18 February 1919 in Oakland, California, was an American preacher who founded the group that became the Children of God in 1968, first as a coffeehouse ministry called Teens for Christ in..."

Source David Berg (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names California directly: "Berg on 18 February 1919 in Oakland, California, founded Teens for Christ in 1968 in Huntington Beach, renamed it Children of God the same year, and led the group through further renamings as Family..."

Source David Berg (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names California directly: "Mark's Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California, announced to his roughly twenty six hundred member congregation that he had been baptized in the Holy Spirit and had spoken in tongues, an experience..."

This source names California directly: "White died at her home, Elmshaven, near St Helena, California, at the age of eighty seven."

This source names California directly: "Apollo compound in Oregon House, California."

Source Fellowship of Friends (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names California directly: "by Frederick "Fred" Adams in Southern California."

Source Margot Adler, Drawing Down the MoonMargot Adler

This source names California directly: "39th Annual General Meeting in Orange, California and the launch of the Z-BUILD initiative."

This source names California directly: "39th Annual General Meeting in Orange, California, hosted by the Zoroastrian Association of California."

This source names California directly: "ministry founded in 1977 in Arcadia, California by psychologist James Dobson, built originally around a weekly radio broadcast of the same name."

This source names California directly: ""Let's Get Acquainted," in Arcadia, California in 1977."

This source names California directly: "A California personal injury law firm's case-summary blog post, published 17 December 2018, on J.W."

This source names California directly: "at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California."

This source names California directly: "from the University of Southern California in 1967 and spent fourteen years as an associate clinical professor of pediatrics at the USC School of Medicine while on staff at Children's Hospital Los..."

This source names California directly: "record for KQED Inc, San Francisco, California, EIN 94-1241309, a 501(c)(3) since March 1955 classified under Media/Communications Organizations."

This source names California directly: "in Riverside County Superior Court, California, in which a woman testified that her stepfather sexually assaulted her from age five to fourteen, abuse she said took place at the family's Lake..."

Los Angeles, Cities

This source names Los Angeles directly: "in the country within a generation. Los Angeles became the unlikely birthplace of modern Pentecostalism at the Azusa Street Revival of 1906, and the state has since incubated an unusual share of new..."

This source names California directly: "Louis Farrakhan's address at the California Convention Center responding to President Obama's endorsement of same-sex marriage."

This source names California directly: "to fourteen at their Lake Elsinore, California home and at meetings and on property of the local congregation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

This source names California directly: "Vinh, travelling from California, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Virginia and Texas, and lists the sessions they organized, including a multi faith panel on Cao Dai's practices of self..."

This source names California directly: "Pacifica Foundation Inc, Los Angeles, California, EIN 94-1347046, a 501(c)(3) since April 1958 classified under Radio."

This source names California directly: "California State University, Fresno's faculty biography page for Professor Partow Hooshmandrad, confirming her PhD in ethnomusicology from UC Berkeley and her production of Music of Yarsan, A Living..."

This source names Pentecostalism directly: "Los Angeles became the unlikely birthplace of modern Pentecostalism at the Azusa Street Revival of 1906, and the state has since incubated an unusual share of new religious movements, from the..."

This source names California directly: "Christian City campus in Costa Mesa, California and other network production sites."

This source names California directly: "reporting the same May 2012 California Convention Center address."

This source names California directly: "Mark's Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California, that he had been baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoken in tongues, his resignation and move to St."

This source names California directly: "Richardson Jr., published by University of California Press in 1995 (ISBN 0-520-08808-5, 671 pages), reviewed in the Journal of American History and awarded the Bancroft Prize for history writing."

Source Robert D. Richardson, Emerson: The Mind on Fire (1995)Robert D. Richardson Jr.

This source names California directly: "John Bosco High School in Bellflower, California, in the 1960s."

This source names California directly: "pastor Bob Pierce in Hollywood, California, relocated to Boone, North Carolina after Franklin Graham became president in 1979."

Source Samaritan's Purse (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names California directly: "Church of God in Christ in Pacoima, California, the congregation their father Benjamin Crouch had founded; his first group, formed in 1960, was itself named the Church of God in Christ Singers, the..."

Source Soon And Very Soon (Hymnology Archive)Chris Fenner, Hymnology Archive

This source names California directly: "for SRI International, Menlo Park, California, EIN 94-1160950, a 501(c)(3) since March 1949 classified as a Science and Technology Research Institute."

This source names California directly: "Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley."

Stockton, Cities

This source names California directly: "across two communities in Badger, California, by 1988."

Source Synanon (World Religions and Spirituality Project)World Religions and Spirituality Project editorial staff

This source names California directly: "published by the University of California Press in 1961, collecting and analyzing narratives told by named Ulithian narrators."

This source names California directly: "published by the University of California Press in 2000."

This source names California directly: "Dance, published in the University of California's Anthropological Records series."

Source The 1870 Ghost Dance (Du Bois)Cora Du Bois

This source names California directly: "published by the University of California Press."

This source names California directly: "published by the University of California Press, is the standard modern critical edition, presenting a complete facsimile of the manuscript alongside transcription, translation and scholarly..."

Source The Codex Mendoza (Frances F. Berdan and Patricia Rieff Anawalt, eds.)Frances F. Berdan and Patricia Rieff Anawalt, editors

This source names California directly: "the Study of Religion, University of California, Riverside, examining the history and contested politics of televised Gurbani broadcast from the Darbar Sahib."

This source names California directly: "Reliable for the shrine's 1986 founding in Stockton, California, by Rev."

Source Tsubaki Grand Shrine Of America (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names California directly: "Grand Shrine of America in Stockton, California, the first Shinto shrine built on the US mainland since the Second World War."

Source Tsubaki Grand Shrine Of America (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names California directly: "The University of California, Berkeley's own Archaeological Research Facility page for its own "Ask an Archaeologist" video series, hosting Episode 7, "Examining Etruscan Eggs: Life, Afterlife and..."

This source names California directly: "The movement spread from Nevada into California and the Plateau region during the 1870s, where local prophets reshaped it into several distinct traditions, including the Earth Lodge cult and, later..."

Source The 1870 Ghost Dance (Du Bois)Cora Du Bois

This source names California directly: "with dual headquarters in Monrovia, California and London, United Kingdom, and its staff draw on various Christian traditions and other faiths."

Source World Vision International (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names California directly: "dual headquarters in Monrovia, California and London, United Kingdom."

Source World Vision International (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Principal Tradition Of

Roman Catholicism, Denominations

Plurality religious identification among the state's adults per the source's survey, not a claim of religious establishment or an outright population majority.

Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
2. Pew Research Center: 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study
Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2025View the Source
Junipero Serra: California's Founding Father
Steven W. Hackel, Hill and Wang, 2013
The Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of the Global Pentecostal Movement
Cecil M. Robeck Jr., Thomas Nelson, 2006
A Religious History of the American People
Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Yale University Press, 1972View the Source
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