Religion in the US in 1790

[King of Kensington]

Is there any data for the religious denominations including by state?

[RINO Tom]

I would also love to see this!  I know there is a site with the religious affiliation of every signer of the Declaration of Independence, which is not what you’re looking for but at least an interesting look into that century RE: religion.  IIRC, Methodists and (especially) Baptists - two denominations that would come to be a bit of “Everyman” groups - hadn’t really caught on yet, and your big three would be Episcopalian/Anglican, Congregationalist (especially New England) and Presbyterian.

Per Wikipedia, in 1776 the Colonies were about 21% Congregationalist and 1% Catholic, FWIW.

[Skill and Chance]

And the general population was less engaged.  By some accounts, late 1700's church attendance was lower than today!

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

They call people witches and warlocks back then there wasn't any anesthesia so your wounds had the bone haled by herbs, that's why Jesus and Pharasies healed the sick

[RINO Tom]

They call people witches and warlocks back then there wasn't any anesthesia so your wounds had the bone haled by herbs, that's why Jesus and Pharasies healed the sick

I disagree!

[RI]

Data for 1776 is in this paper.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Data for 1776 is in this paper.

     Which supports Skill and Chance's post saying that church attendance was extremely low back then. I remember when I was an atheist believing in the narrative that everyone historically was deeply religious and lack of engagement with faith was a new phenomenon; as it turns out there is nothing new under the Sun.

[LabourJersey]

Data for 1776 is in this paper.

     Which supports Skill and Chance's post saying that church attendance was extremely low back then. I remember when I was an atheist believing in the narrative that everyone historically was deeply religious and lack of engagement with faith was a new phenomenon; as it turns out there is nothing new under the Sun.

I remember reading a biography of Washington (I think Ellis' biography) was struck not just by how Washington was barely religious (he served on the church vestry in Alexandria for political/civic reasons), but how little people seemed to care about that.

[RINO Tom]

Data for 1776 is in this paper.

     Which supports Skill and Chance's post saying that church attendance was extremely low back then. I remember when I was an atheist believing in the narrative that everyone historically was deeply religious and lack of engagement with faith was a new phenomenon; as it turns out there is nothing new under the Sun.

I remember reading a biography of Washington (I think Ellis' biography) was struck not just by how Washington was barely religious (he served on the church vestry in Alexandria for political/civic reasons), but how little people seemed to care about that.

I don't think we are using the term "barely religious" in a productive way here, though.  While Washington would seem a lot less religious (however we are defining that) than today's Religious Right and even the supporters of the Second Great Awakening after he was gone, he is infinitely less secular than the people who represent the modern "secular" bloc of American society.  He very clearly believed in God, belonged to a church and quoted Scripture multiple times.

When being some type of Christian is SUCH a default for society like it was in the late 1700s (even people like Adams and, especially, Jefferson who denied fundamental aspects of Nicene Christianity felt a very clear need to somehow identify with Christianity in a way that a modern "Religious None" obviously does not), I think you will get more people like Washington, Monroe, Madison, etc. who just don't really feel a need to speak that much on the issue.  It seems a bit like the "argument from slience."

[LabourJersey]

Data for 1776 is in this paper.

     Which supports Skill and Chance's post saying that church attendance was extremely low back then. I remember when I was an atheist believing in the narrative that everyone historically was deeply religious and lack of engagement with faith was a new phenomenon; as it turns out there is nothing new under the Sun.

I remember reading a biography of Washington (I think Ellis' biography) was struck not just by how Washington was barely religious (he served on the church vestry in Alexandria for political/civic reasons), but how little people seemed to care about that.

I don't think we are using the term "barely religious" in a productive way here, though.  While Washington would seem a lot less religious (however we are defining that) than today's Religious Right and even the supporters of the Second Great Awakening after he was gone, he is infinitely less secular than the people who represent the modern "secular" bloc of American society.  He very clearly believed in God, belonged to a church and quoted Scripture multiple times.

When being some type of Christian is SUCH a default for society like it was in the late 1700s (even people like Adams and, especially, Jefferson who denied fundamental aspects of Nicene Christianity felt a very clear need to somehow identify with Christianity in a way that a modern "Religious None" obviously does not), I think you will get more people like Washington, Monroe, Madison, etc. who just don't really feel a need to speak that much on the issue.  It seems a bit like the "argument from slience."

That's a completely valid point - Washington seemed less religious than I certainly expected him to be, but of course he was very much a self-identified Christian and almost certainly would not have thought of himself as a Deist or agnostic if you could somehow have asked him if he was one of those labels.

Still interesting in the sense of how much religiousity and secular-ness have changed in the course of American history.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Data for 1776 is in this paper.

     Which supports Skill and Chance's post saying that church attendance was extremely low back then. I remember when I was an atheist believing in the narrative that everyone historically was deeply religious and lack of engagement with faith was a new phenomenon; as it turns out there is nothing new under the Sun.

I remember reading a biography of Washington (I think Ellis' biography) was struck not just by how Washington was barely religious (he served on the church vestry in Alexandria for political/civic reasons), but how little people seemed to care about that.

I don't think we are using the term "barely religious" in a productive way here, though.  While Washington would seem a lot less religious (however we are defining that) than today's Religious Right and even the supporters of the Second Great Awakening after he was gone, he is infinitely less secular than the people who represent the modern "secular" bloc of American society.  He very clearly believed in God, belonged to a church and quoted Scripture multiple times.

When being some type of Christian is SUCH a default for society like it was in the late 1700s (even people like Adams and, especially, Jefferson who denied fundamental aspects of Nicene Christianity felt a very clear need to somehow identify with Christianity in a way that a modern "Religious None" obviously does not), I think you will get more people like Washington, Monroe, Madison, etc. who just don't really feel a need to speak that much on the issue.  It seems a bit like the "argument from slience."

     It's like when I talk to Latinos about religion; even those who lead sinful lives and never go to church usually have an inner sense that they should change and try to follow Christ. Or when my priest was on a bus in Moscow and everyone turned and crossed themselves as they passed a monastery. We are tempted to try to break religiosity down to a statistic of church attendance or affiliation, but there is a lot more that goes into it on both a societal and a personal level.

[RINO Tom]

It's not 1790, but this site has statistics for 1890!  It shows only about a third of Americans being counted, so I instead chose to post these percentages as a portion of the total counted in the study ... I really think that's a better picture of "religious preference" among the population rather than just counting church members. 

I also did this really fast and skipped some lines, so these percentages actually represent the MINIMUM percentage for each denomination, as there might be a few lines that were, say, Methodist but I didn't recognize the church name and didn't take the time to research it (yet).

Protestant: 63.0%
Catholic: 30.2%

Protestants Only
22.2% Methodist
18.0% Baptist
6.1% Presbyterian
6.0% Lutheran
3.1% Restorationist
2.6% Episcopalian
2.5% Congregationalist
1.5% Continental Reformed
0.6% Anabaptist
0.3% Adventist
0.1% Holiness
0.1% Moravian

Really surprised that Presbyterians were already such a low percentage, but I feel like I saw somewhere once that they were especially hit hard by the rise of the Baptists, as there is obviously a large population of Scottish heritage in the South (i.e., where Baptists became the most popular).  You can also already see the effects of German immigration that Lutherans are already three times larger than Episcopalians and Congregationalists and the effect of immigration in general that Catholics already outnumber any one individual Protestant group.