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States & Territories

Delaware

South

Delaware's earliest European settlers were Swedish and Finnish Lutherans, who built the Old Swedes Church in Wilmington in 1698, one of the oldest church buildings in the country still standing on its original foundation. Dutch Reformed settlers followed along the Delaware River. Methodism took hold strongly in the eighteenth century under circuit riders trained in the Wesleyan tradition, and the peninsula shared by Delaware, Maryland and Virginia became known for camp meeting revivalism that shaped Methodist practice up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

Facts
Religion
Leading Religious Affiliation
Evangelical Protestant 2
Delaware: tied at 19% of adults with Catholic, recorded as two facts rather than an arbitrary winner. Margin of error plus or minus 7.4 points. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/state/delaware/
Leading Religious Affiliation
Catholic 2
Delaware: tied at 19% of adults with Evangelical Protestant, recorded as two facts rather than an arbitrary winner. Margin of error plus or minus 7.4 points. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/state/delaware/
Law and State
Establishment Status
No Establishment 1
Delaware's founding charters under Swedish, Dutch and English rule never established a single church, and its early constitutions guaranteed free exercise, removing the last religious test for office in 1792.
Geography
Census Region
South 1
Identity
Jurisdiction Status
U.S. state 1
Learn More
The Cradle of Methodism Sits in a Small Delaware Chapel

Barratt's Chapel, built in 1780 on land the landowner Philip Barratt donated near Frederica, is the oldest surviving church building in the country constructed by and for Methodists, and it earned the nickname the Cradle of American Methodism for one specific afternoon rather than for its age alone. On November 14, 1784, Thomas Coke arrived from England carrying instructions from John Wesley himself and preached to a large gathered crowd at the chapel. Francis Asbury, already the movement's leading figure in America, met Coke there after the sermon, and the two spent that day planning what would become, weeks later at Baltimore's Christmas Conference, the founding of the Methodist Episcopal Church as an independent American denomination separate from the Church of England. The sacramental ordinances were administered by Methodist clergy at Barratt's Chapel that same November day for the first time anywhere in America, months before the new church formally existed.

Circuit riders trained in that Wesleyan tradition carried Methodism up and down the Delmarva Peninsula in the following decades, building the camp meeting culture that shaped Methodist practice across the Eastern Seaboard, and it remains visible today in a state where Pew's 2023-24 study found Evangelical Protestant and Catholic identification tied at nineteen percent of adults each, recorded as two facts rather than an arbitrary winner.

Connections

Associated With

Absalom Jones, Historical Figures

This source names Delaware directly: "Absalom Jones was born enslaved in Delaware, taught himself to read from a spelling book and a New Testament, and was brought to Philadelphia by his enslaver, where he attended night school for..."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica: Verified Biographies (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Diocese of Wilmington 2011 Bankruptcy Settlement, Abuse Inquiries and Response Policies
Source Del. Diocese Settles Priest Abuse Claims for 77M
E. Clifford Nelson, The Lutherans in North America, Revised Edition (Fortress Press, 1980), Sources

This source names Delaware directly: "who arrived at Fort Christina on the Delaware River on 17 April 1640, as the first Lutheran pastor to organize a congregation in what would become the United States, and traces the Swedish colonial..."

Source E. Clifford Nelson, The Lutherans in North America, Revised Edition (Fortress Press, 1980)E. Clifford Nelson
Francis Makemie Organizes The First American Presbytery, Spread Events

This source names Delaware directly: "across New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland."

Source Presbytery Of Philadelphia (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Methodism, Denominations

This source names Methodism directly: "Dutch Reformed settlers followed along the Delaware River. Methodism took hold strongly in the eighteenth century under circuit riders trained in the Wesleyan tradition, and the peninsula shared by..."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Pennsylvania Militia Massacres Christian Lenape at the Moravian Mission of Gnadenhutten, Spread Events

This source names Delaware directly: "Day of Remembrance still held with the Delaware Nation each March, to keep the history from being forgotten."

Source The Gnadenhutten Massacre (Ohio Memory, Ohio History Connection)
Reorus Torkillus Organizes the First Lutheran Congregation in North America at Fort Christina, Spread Events

This source names Delaware directly: "arrived at Fort Christina on the Delaware River, near present day Wilmington, on 17 April 1640, having sailed with the second expedition to the colony of New Sweden aboard the Kalmar Nyckel."

Source E. Clifford Nelson, The Lutherans in North America, Revised Edition (Fortress Press, 1980)E. Clifford Nelson
The Gnadenhutten Massacre (Ohio Memory, Ohio History Connection), Sources

This source names Delaware directly: "Park and Museum now holds with the Delaware Nation each March."

Source The Gnadenhutten Massacre (Ohio Memory, Ohio History Connection)
Wilmington, Cities

Regions Where This Is Principal

Evangelicalism, Denominations

Plurality religious identification among the state's adults per the source's survey; the state carries a second, comparably close plurality for Roman Catholicism.

Source Pew Research Center: 2023-24 Religious Landscape StudyPew Research Center
Roman Catholicism, Denominations

Plurality religious identification among the state's adults per the source's survey; the state carries a second, comparably close plurality for Evangelical Protestantism.

Source Pew Research Center: 2023-24 Religious Landscape StudyPew Research Center
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
A Religious History of the American People
Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Yale University Press, 1972View the Source
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