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Ohio

Midwest

Kirtland, in northeastern Ohio, was the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints from 1831 to 1838, and the Kirtland Temple built there in 1836 was the first temple the Mormon movement ever completed, predating the more famous temples of Missouri, Illinois and Utah. Ohio also hosted several Shaker communities, including Union Village and North Union, and the Zoar Separatists, a German Pietist communal sect that settled Zoar in 1817 and held property in common for nearly eighty years. That density of nineteenth century communal religious experiment makes Ohio one of the richest states for it outside New York.

Facts
Religion
Leading Religious Affiliation
Evangelical Protestant 2
Ohio: Evangelical Protestant is 26% of adults, ahead of Nothing in particular at 19%. Margin of error plus or minus 3.4 points. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/state/ohio/
Identity
Jurisdiction Status
U.S. state 1
Law and State
Establishment Status
No Establishment 1
Ohio has had no established church since its admission as a state in 1803, the first state carved from the Northwest Territory.
Geography
Census Region
Midwest 1
Origins
Origin of the Name
From an Iroquoian word usually translated as great river or good river. 1
Learn More
Kirtland's Temple and the Communities That Shared Its Century

The Kirtland Temple, completed in 1836 in northeastern Ohio, was the first temple the Latter day Saint movement ever finished, built while Joseph Smith still led the church from Kirtland rather than from the Missouri, Illinois or Utah headquarters that followed it. The building predates the movement's more famous temples by decades and survives today as a National Historic Landmark, still standing on the site where Smith reported the visions that shaped the church's early temple theology.

Kirtland was not an isolated experiment. Ohio in the same general period hosted several Shaker communities, including Union Village and North Union, congregations of the United Society of Believers practicing celibacy and communal ownership under leadership the tradition held to be divinely guided, and the Zoar Separatists, a German Pietist sect that settled Zoar in 1817 and held all property in common for nearly eighty years before dissolving in 1898. Both groups organized their whole economic and social life around a specific reading of scripture, holding possessions in common in a way most of their Protestant neighbors found alarming, and both left behind physical settlements, since restored, that document how thoroughly the arrangement extended into daily work and domestic life rather than remaining a matter of Sunday belief alone. Ohio's run of these experiments, Mormon, Shaker and Pietist alike, makes the state one of the richest sites for nineteenth century communal religious history outside New York's own Burned over District.

Connections

Associated With

AME Church Delegates Name Six New Bishops While Retaining Same-Sex Marriage Ban (Word&Way), Sources

This source names Ohio directly: "52nd Quadrennial Session in Columbus, Ohio."

Source AME Church Delegates Name Six New Bishops While Retaining Same-Sex Marriage Ban (Word&Way)
Daniel Alexander Payne, Historical Figures

This source names Ohio directly: "purchase of Wilberforce University in Ohio, becoming its president and the first African American to head a college in the United States."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica: Verified Biographies (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors
Earl P. Olmstead, Blackcoats Among the Delaware: David Zeisberger on the Ohio Frontier (Kent State University Press), Sources

This source names Ohio directly: "the founding and destruction of the Ohio mission villages Zeisberger built among the Lenape and Mahican, including Gnadenhutten, and the years the Moravian mission in North America spent recovering..."

Source Earl P. Olmstead, Blackcoats Among the Delaware: David Zeisberger on the Ohio Frontier (Kent State University Press)Earl P. Olmstead
Joseph Rutherford Is Elected President of the Watch Tower Society, Spread Events

This source names Ohio directly: "Jehovah's Witnesses at a Columbus, Ohio convention in 1931, already recorded here."

Source Jehovah's Witnesses, One Hundred Years: 1917 (2017 Yearbook, jw.org)
Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, Denominations

This source names Ohio directly: "Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin signed a constitution founding the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States."

Source About The LCMS (LCMS.org)
New York, Cities

This source names New York directly: "of the richest states for it outside New York."

Source The Oxford Handbook of MormonismTerryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (eds.)
Ninety Years Embracing the Name Jehovah's Witnesses (jw.org), Sources

This source names Ohio directly: "Witnesses at a convention in Columbus, Ohio, documenting Joseph Rutherford's presentation of the resolution, the roughly fifteen thousand attendees, the broadcast to about 450 radio stations, and..."

Source Ninety Years Embracing the Name Jehovah's Witnesses (jw.org)
Parapsychological Association Inc, IRS Form 990-EZ, EIN 56-1492959 (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer), Sources

This source names Ohio directly: "Association Inc, Columbus, Ohio, EIN 56-1492959, a 501(c)(3) classified as a Professional Society/Association."

Source Parapsychological Association Inc, IRS Form 990-EZ, EIN 56-1492959 (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer)
Pennsylvania Militia Massacres Christian Lenape at the Moravian Mission of Gnadenhutten, Spread Events

This source names Ohio directly: "recorded here, the Moravian Church's Ohio mission suffered the deadliest single attack any of its converted communities endured in North America."

Source The Gnadenhutten Massacre (Ohio Memory, Ohio History Connection)
Shakers, Denominations

This source names Shakers directly: "Kirtland, in northeastern Ohio, was the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints from 1831 to 1838, and the Kirtland Temple built there in 1836 was the first temple the Mormon..."

Source The Oxford Handbook of MormonismTerryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (eds.)
The Gnadenhutten Massacre (Ohio Memory, Ohio History Connection), Sources

This source names Ohio directly: "The Ohio History Connection, the state of Ohio's own historical society and archive, maintains this Ohio Memory record of the Gnadenhutten massacre, documenting the killing of ninety six Christian..."

Source The Gnadenhutten Massacre (Ohio Memory, Ohio History Connection)
The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, Organizes in Chicago, Spread Events

This source names Ohio directly: "Missouri, Michigan, New York and Ohio met in Chicago and signed a constitution founding the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States, the body that later took the name..."

Source About The LCMS (LCMS.org)
The Progressive Baptist Hymnal (1976), Musical Works

This source names Ohio directly: "had organized in 1961 in Cincinnati, Ohio, in part over disagreements about civil rights strategy and leadership succession within the older National Baptist Convention, USA; Martin Luther King Jr."

Source The Progressive Baptist Hymnal (Seeking the Old Paths, list of Baptist hymn books and hymnals)"Seeking the Old Paths" (Ministry and Music blog)
The Watch Tower Society Adopts the Name Jehovah's Witnesses, Spread Events

This source names Ohio directly: "Students Association in Columbus, Ohio, Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society president Joseph F."

Source Ninety Years Embracing the Name Jehovah's Witnesses (jw.org)
The Way International (Encyclopedia.com), Sources

This source names Ohio directly: "1957 headquartering in New Knoxville, Ohio, to incorporation as The Way International in 1974."

Source The Way International (Encyclopedia.com)David G. Bromley

Regions Where This Is Principal

Evangelicalism, Denominations

Plurality religious identification among the state's adults per the source's survey.

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
The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism
Terryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2015View the Source
The Shaker Experience in America: A History of the United Society of Believers
Stephen J. Stein, Yale University Press, 1992View the Source
A Religious History of the American People
Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Yale University Press, 1972View the Source
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