Talk:Religion in the United States

great article; better graphics svp

can we have a simple summary table without all the sects ? also, IMO, thepie charts don't work - to many colors and to many variable but a simple table, say Christian jewhish moslem etc for the top 10 would be really nice thanks

also, please please less color coding !! if you have to use all these colors, a really bad idea, at least make sure they are consistent thru the entire article !! thanks

Jehovah's Witness, Mormons are not Christians

Someone please edit this document.

Jehovah Witnesses do not believe Jesus is the son of God. They do not believe he is devine and therefore cannot satisfy basic tenants of any denomination of Christianity. Actually, they believe you are blasphemous in even saying that. How can someone who thinks the basics of Christianity to be evil, be a Christian? That makes no sense. Muslims believe Jesus existed, only as a prophet. No one considers Islam a form of Christianity, why would you then consider JW, which has the exact same belief?

Mormons, also are not Christians. They believe that humans have the potential to become a God, just as they believe our current God used to be a human at some time in His past. They believe in Jesus as a prophet; however, they are works based. Mormans still live judged by the Mosaic law. They are basically Judaism, with a new age cult flare.

Many cults have proceeded from the Christian religion. All have a similarity. They all steal the divinity and saving grace from Jesus Christ. This is by no accident. A Jesus that has no saving power does not fulfill the prophecy of the old commandment and this is not Christianity.

The bible dictates what a Christian is. You must believe that God has come to earth as he promised in the old testament. He was nailed to a cross, died and rose again to life, defeating sin. Christians must believe that faith in Christ saves, not adherence to the Mosaic law.

There are many theological differences between Christian groups like Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist to name a few, but the basics must remain. Even if you want to go as far as saying Modern Catholics are Christian (which they aren't, because they do not meet the faith only and Christ only test), Mormans and JW definitely, in no way are close to being Christian. Actually, a Christian would be rejected at one of these institutions, just as much as they would be in an Islam or Judaism temple.

If we are going to be classifying people as religious groups, there must be a basis for what those classifications are. What better for Christianity than scripture itself? You classify race based off skin color, nationality based off of nation, what then religion but based off their Gods word, doctrines, or dogmas?

Mormons and JW would argue that their heretical books are also scripture. One could argue this, but they are not scripture of Christ the King and saviour of the world. They are scripture, but not Christian scripture. We are currently debating Christianity as a definition. There is no argument that these books not only go against what the disciples wrote about in the gospels but also against the red text of Jesus himself. Mormons argue that their prophet had a vision of God who gave them new doctrines, so do muslims. They are scriptures analogous to the Qur'an. They are amendments after the fact that steal Christ's saving grace.

If you have a tortilla with meat in it, you have a taco. If you cover it in sauce and bake it, you now have something totally different, an enchilada. Even more greater is the difference here. Sure they share some of the same ingredients, like the old and new testament, but the changes they made, created something completely new. In this analogy, Mexican food is the religion demographic. Tortillas, and meat are the old and new testament.

Simply adding a man name Jesus to your backstory does not mean your religion is a denomination of Christianity.

Would a Spanish romance novel with a lead character named Jesus be considered Christian scripture just because it has a man named Jesus in it? No! That is obsurd! What makes Jesus special are the characteristics promised to us in the old testament and conveyed in the new. Any other Jesus is not the Jesus in Christianity.

Religions do not follow the post modern way of thinking. Religion is not subject to what ever you want it to be based on your own feelings or traditions. Religion is dictated by God and is unwavering. True religion does not move or flex to someone else's feelings.

Do we doubt what Hinduism is? No debate. Hinduism is listed with one option on this page. Likewise, so is Buddhism. Islam the same. If an atheist started believing in God, could he remain "atheist"? 76.142.113.221 (talk) 20:10, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

No change needed, both Jehovah's Witnesses and Latter Day Saints consider themselves Christian, are derived from Christianity, and are consider by scholars of religion to be Christian. They are, however, outliers within the diversity of denominations within Christianity. Note Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism are also diverse. I can think of one group of Muslims that many other Muslims consider apostates but are still classified as Muslim by scholars. Some modern Hindus go in the other direction and consider groups like Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs to be within the umbrella of Hinduism (see Hindutva); note that Hinduism is a term originated by European scholars to include a wide diversity of practices and beliefs within India. Erp (talk) 23:17, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

This response had little substance other than disagreeing and false facts.

"Both Jehovah's Witnesses and Latter Day Saints consider themselves Christian"

As I said before. We are referring to religion in realism not post-modernism where there is no truth and everything is defined by each person.

If I bowed down to a Hindu God and called myself Christian, with your logic, I would be so. Post-modernism is the virus plaguing our world today that creates no truths.

Simple logic reveals that it doesn't matter how you think of yourself. When we classify based on facts and attributes, those become our norms, not what the person identifies as, which is exactly the argument you are making.

Simple logic aside, the statement is false. in informal discussion with someone from either group, they will refer to themselves separate from Christians especially JW. Both of these groups actually see themselves as superiors to the Christian faith. They believe they possess information and scriptural changes that make them different from larger Christian group. These changes actually move them outside of Christianity. Both of these groups are actually refuted by Paul as being part of the church.

Matthew 7:21-23

21 “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. 22 Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ 23 And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’

This is one of the many versus from Jesus' own mouth that proves what you say is wrong. Claiming to be a Christian doesn't make you one.

Over the last 2023 years, there have been way more false religions claiming to be Christian that have been rebuked by the true Christian church

"Are derived from Christianity"

Urine is derived from the food you ate and drank earlier in the day, would you drink your urine? Simple logic destroys this comment.

The fact that you used the word "derived" infers a change, something different.

If we are considered all religions derived from another, the parent religion, the Christians are Jews. Muslims are Christians and then Jews also. Simple logic proves this line of thinking is false.

So lets ignore all these fallacies and pretend these religions are "derived" from Christianity. How is this so?

JW rewrote scriptures to give them new meanings, different from all accepted scripture ever found. If you rewrite a book so that it has a different story line, is it the same book? And if not, why would this be different?

Mormons wrote new books, and in many cases, these new books override the existing books, is this not the same?

"Are consider by scholars of religion to be Christian"

This is subjective. Who are these scholars? Not scholars of Christianity I presume, as I am one myself.

From the beginning of the christian church, both of these religions were warned against by people who are in the scriptures.

"Scholars" of the Christian faith have on many occasions cast out these religions as being heresy. Universities, Nations and ancient theologians have all counted the ideas of these religions as being heresy.

I am sure if you go to a liberal university, which may be biased against the Christian faith to begin with, you may hear supposed scholars consider these cults as religion.

We can agree that both these religions "derive" from the initials book of the old testament. By using scripture in this book alone, we can refute these religions as not meeting basic qualities needed to be similar.

Actually, the books from which Christianity and these cults derived call these religions blasphemous.

I have been involved in the Christian church for over 40 years on my own and longer than that as a kid. I have the largest Christian history and theology library out of anyone I know.

I have been to Christian churches from many denominations, befriends JW and Mormons; non of them in these years would consider JW or Mormons as being "Christian".

"They are, however, outliers within the diversity of denominations within Christianity."

This is a gross representation of the truth. First of all, an outlier infers that the measurement is on the scale.

For argument sake.... other than the poor argument of "they think they are, so they must be", and the phony expert opinion defense, why are these two religions Christian?

What constitutes a Christian? Please define one. The scriptures that both of these false religions are "derived from" tell us what one is.

In reality, there is no sound argument to defend the JW and Mormons are Christian. Any argument that you make will immediately put many of the most practiced religions in the world all under the parent of Judaism.

Further, any argument would reduce religion down to nothing more than a malleable fantasy that takes the shape of who ever decides to change it.

The fact is, truth exists. Properties, attributes, and other terms for dividing and classifying exist. Each one of these terms can be handled as a variable.

Just as in algebra, x= something. In a multi-linear function, many variable create x.

x = yA + zB + wC + qD

In our function, x equals religion, y z w q are the coefficients of Christianity or attributes of Christianity (there are more coefficients for all religions, but for simplicity, only Christianity's are show).

Since many of these coefficients are binary (TRUE|FALSE), 100% or 0% would be the variable A B C D for each coefficient.

Go-NoGo test: In order to be Christian, y z w q must exist (because they are the attributes) and A B C D can not be zero. Or in other words:

x = y(100%) + z(100%) + w(100%) + q(100%) = Christianity

I have now argued with logic and math. 76.142.113.221 (talk) 01:50, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

With regards to your initial point about JWs, I just checked JW.org, and it seems that Jehovah's Witnesses do believe Jesus was the Son of God and divine in nature (https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/wp20110401/jesus-where-he-came-from/). So, not the "exact same belief" as Muslims. 2600:4040:578B:7300:111F:638D:784:393A (talk) 22:15, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are absolutely Christian.

First off, we believe the Law of Moses was fulfilled in Christ, therefore we don't follow it any more.

Secondly, unlike Islam we do believe in Heavenly Father (God) and Jesus Christ his son who is the Redeemer and Savior. A prophet's job is to testify of Christ

It is clear to me you have only heard about us via second-hand knowledge so here's a source:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/christians?lang=eng 2607:F898:4023:9D:5A93:E8C4:C513:5046 (talk) 21:42, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

Inaccuracies of independent polling section

This section is really low quality and I'm not sure it can really be improved without turning half of the article into a meta discussion about the complexity of religious belief, self identification, and data collection.

The first part is a set of general issues with all non-political polling but the information is presented as a set of pretty vague bullet points. Ignoring the first one which is factually incorrect (polls are generally quite good at predicting election outcomes), the other bullet points are virtually meaningless to anyone who isn't fairly well-read on polling and/or religious demographics. Is it considered good editing practice on Wikipedia to insert a generic warning about issues with polling data in any article that uses polling data?

I don't get what useful point is made by the second part. The paper used as a reference is largely an attempt to argue that the "none" category of answers in religious surveys includes a substantial number of people whose beliefs about religion, spirituality and/or supernatural phenomena could be argued as being closer to having some religious belief than having no religious belief. I don't want to get into a big discussion about the quality of the paper itself (although I am willing to - I think it isn't high enough to be used as the sole source for a claim in a Wikipedia article) but it is a fairly recent paper which has not been cited by other papers at all, so I don't see why it should be taken as a reliable source that reflects academic consensus or debate. Reading it (along with a good portion of the accessible references) makes it quite clear that the authors are extremely vigilant in noting every possible flaw with methodology in studies that they don't like, while citing uncritically studies that agree with them.

The third part is ok in content but I think having an entire sub-heading section with one sentence and one source that effectively says "assume the independent polling data contained in this article is inaccurate" is a bad editorial decision. It's especially bad because this section comes before any of the survey data is presented, which I think conveys the message that this caveat about polling methodology is of greater value to a typical reader interested in Religion in the United States than decades of survey data. And while the general content of this part is ok, I think that, on top of being moved to another section, the bulk of this should be a brief overview of idiosyncratic relationships with religion. The existence of these belief systems and the fairly diverse range of belief systems in the USA is a much more relevant topic to cover in this article than methodological issues with polling/surveys or the opaqueness of the "none" answer. Tasqing (talk) 13:49, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Came here to make the same point. Many of the bullet points seem tenuously related at best, and some are outright false. As noted, it seems pretty straightforwardly false that polling "consistently" fails to predict election results. There exists a margin of error, and there have been some high-profile examples of polling "misses," but polls do have quite strong predictive power. Additionally, political polls attempt to model turnout and capture "likely" voters, which introduces complexity and potential for error that is not a problem for simple opinion and demographic polling. It just doesn't seem necessary to have so large a section just to warn that polls may not be perfectly accurate, so I fully cosign Tasqing's comment above. Specific, relevant, notable critiques might be worth keeping, but a broad suggestion that polling in general is unreliable is silly and irrelevant, and should not be kept in this article. DustyConditions (talk) 06:58, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Recent edit - source

Just commenting on the Gallup source that was added in this edit [2]. The Gallup source is not about general religion, but about specific Christian entities. Even the "Americans' Belief in Five Spiritual Entities, by Demographic Subgroup" section only shows Protestants, Catholics, and None. Where are the rest? No Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc. Also the source says "Gallup periodically measures Americans’ belief in God with different question wordings, producing slightly different results." If such is the case, which numbers are right? Indeed, Gallup admits they certainly do get very different numbers on the question of God alone, depending on how it is asked, as seen here [3], so which one is the right one? The source also says "In the current poll, about half of Americans, 51%, believe in all five spiritual entities, while 11% do not believe in any of them."

The nones are an incoherent group and we should be careful in making claims about them. The best sources for them are WP:secondary sources like academic researchers who look at multiple studies to come up with more comprehensive numbers. We should be careful with primary sources like raw survey data. In the Gallup source, numbers for the people who do not affiliate with a religion are different than for the numbers of people who seldom or never attend religious services - so both numbers on the 5 entities differ - which means that none's and those who never attend services are not the same people. Which one is the right number?

Clearer sources are needed to make claims on the heterogeneous groups like the "nones". Academic secondary sources help in ironing out such discrepancies from surveys, so those are preferred. Ramos1990 (talk) 02:01, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Intro section is clearly biased

Just compare the intro section to the respective articles on other countries. It is clearly whoever wrote this doesn't like the idea of the USA undergoing secularization, the text fights the idea at every line, and even when it concedes the idea of nones growing, it still claims the they are much more religious and therefone not "none" at all. This intro was clearly written by a conservative christian who doesn't like the idea of the USA becoming more secular. 2804:388:A035:5C20:5B1B:5B72:8841:DE00 (talk) 15:29, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

It's true that there's been massive secularization in the US over the last decade, more so than other Western countries (probably because they've already secularized many decades ago). You should provide some sources, which are easy to find.[4]

Another thing I noticed is that virtually nothing is said about the massive decline in Protestants. The article goes on and on about early history and gives readers the impression that little has changed, when in fact Gallup, cited in the article, shows a massive decline in Protestant adherents: from about 69% in the 1940s down to ~30% of the population today. The Catholic numbers have held at ~22%, although that was likely maintained via Hispanic immigration. Overall, the data shows a consistent decline in American Protestants (and religious adherents generally) and a trajectory that's likely to continue with more secularization.

Another flaw in a lot of American articles is that, while they acknowledge the country as 'diverse,' they tend to speak about cultural factors in homogenizing tones. The lead in this article is a typical example of a piece that starts by acknowledging the country's diverse religious culture but then spends almost the entire section on Protestants, with one measly line about Catholic immigration in the 19th Century. There isn't actually a single "national culture" in the US and religious culture is no different: while American Evangelicalism is dominant in the Bible Belt and Midwest, Catholicism is strong in the Northeast and outnumbers Protestantism in at least 4 critical states, including the NY City area, the largest metropolitan region in the world. The US is perhaps the only developed country that fetishizes its hinterlands and tries to minimize its major metro centers, where in other Western countries it's quite the opposite. Jonathan f1 (talk) 00:33, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

"~30% of the population today" Protestantism is still so influential in the United States? I wonder why. In Europe, Protestantism no longer has much impact. Per the article on Protestantism by country, "Protestants constituted nearly one fifth (or 17.8%) of the continent's Christian population in 2010." Dimadick (talk) 06:14, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

It's true that Protestantism has always been a minority 'religion' (or whatever it is) in Christian Europe and that's still the case. And I don't doubt that the US has the largest population of Protestants of any country, although this is not exactly surprising. It's more interesting that American Protestants were over 2/3rds of the population ~80 years ago and now approaching 1 in 3. The Catholic numbers have barely budged over that same timeframe. At least 4 US states have more Catholics than Protestants -NY, NJ, Rhode Island and Massachusetts -and there seems to be some debate about Connecticut elsewhere on this page.

Of course, when we talk about 'Protestants' we are often grouping denominations that have little in common with each other, but I realize that many reliable sources do this for whatever reason. Roman Catholicism is the largest single denomination/church in the US and has been for some time. There's actually an enormous subset of the US population that has some direct contact with the Catholic Church beyond the number of religious adherents: millions of Americans have been educated at Catholic primary or secondary schools and/or universities, receive healthcare through the Church (as far as I'm aware, the CC is the largest non-profit healthcare provider in the US), treatment at Catholic hospitals or are involved in Catholic charities in some way. I'd say that counts as a lot of 'influence'. Jonathan f1 (talk) 19:20, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, as I raised this same issue on the talk page back in October 2023. These conversations indicate no consensus for removing the paragraphs about secularization and yet there have been repeated attempts to do so. I note that the account that did this most recently was previously banned for edit warring but seems to still be engaging in the same type of behavior. TempDog123 (talk) 06:12, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 April 2024

Please change Mormonism to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

There is no Mormon Church, he was a great man, but we are the church of Jesus Christ 24.149.24.16 (talk) 17:01, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

 Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template. This is probably related to the push by the LDS church to distance itself from the "Mormon" label, as mentioned in Name of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints#Informal and abbreviated names. Liu1126 (talk) 18:56, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Should race be a factor when discussing income/education?

There's some ambiguous language and, depending on how it's interpreted, potentially misleading. In one of the sections on income it reads:

"though the overall percentage of Catholics in high income brackets is far lower than the percentage of any Mainline Protestant group in high income brackets, and the percentage of Catholics in high income brackets is comparable to the percentage of Americans in general in high income brackets."

What does "of any Mainline Protestant group" mean? Individual churches, or mainline Protestants as a whole?

Also, when Pew breaks down religious stats, it sometimes differentiates race or ethnicity which sadly affects the way these groups are ranked. For example, there's a higher percentage of white Catholics earning >$100k than white mainline Protestants, although Asian mainline Protestants rank higher than white Catholics. Hispanic Catholics, on the other hand, are at the bottom, which may have something to do with why Catholics appear to be at the population average when grouped together.[5]. In terms of advanced educations, white mainline Protestants and white Catholics are about even (see previous link for income/education data). Jonathan f1 (talk) 23:57, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I removed this paragraph because graphs don't work, and added it here for archival reasons.

Historical trends

• Sources: Based on Pew Center Research, especially editions 2007-2014 and 2019, CID-Gallup Center since 1948, Public Religion Research Institute, Christianity Today 1900-1950:Religious Trends in the United States, The Database of Religious History, and Historical information sources.

References

Change in religious identification, 1950–2020

Percentage of Americans by religious identification (1950 – 2020)

  Protestantism

  Christian (nonspecified)

  Catholicism

  Mormonism

  Jewish

  Other

  Unaffiliated

  No Answer

JohnAdams1800 (talk) 22:54, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

I like the idea of moving graphs to the talk page for archival in case graphs in the form they're in ever come back. Otherwise, if an alternative is created, they could be converted manually or maybe automatically. _Dial^mayo 18:08, 24 May 2024 (UTC)

References

Metaphysically unaffiliated are separate from atheists and agnostics

Wikipedia and the US statistics bureau are confused because they biasedly deem religion (= belief in standardized supernaturalism = teleological causality violations) the hypernym of all metaphysical worldviews.

Rename the article: Metaphysical worldviews in the United States

Not all metaphysical worldviews include the supernatural to be religious or religions.

Hypernyms mustn't be hyponym-based and biased. 2.84.217.128 (talk) 00:53, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 July 2024

Add Oxford comma 64.189.18.51 (talk) 11:09, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Charliehdb (talk) 13:51, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Rewording of line on Judaism & Wealth in section titled "Protestant Denominations"

In the section titled Protestant Denominations, there is the following line:

"Episcopalians and Presbyterians tend to be considerably wealthier and better educated than most other religious groups, and numbers of the most wealthy and affluent American families as the Vanderbilts and Astors, Rockefeller, Du Pont,Roosevelt, Forbes, Fords, Whitneys, Morgans and Harrimans are Mainline Protestant families, though those affiliated with Judaism are the wealthiest religious group in the United States..."

The sources for the part of the sentence highlighted in bold are "WASP—From Sociological Concept to Epithet" and "America's Changing Religious Landscape". The problems with this line and its sources are:

1. The first source, "WASP—From Sociological Concept to Epithet" was published in 1975 and so is almost 50 years old. To put it mildly, the statistics contained in it are out of date. It is thus not a relevant source to site when considering modern demographic statistics, and should not be cited in this article.

2. The second source, "America's Changing Religious Landscape" is a Pew study that is very relevant to this article, but it doesn't quite say that Jews are the wealthiest religious group in the US. What it does say is that Jews and Hindus are significantly more likely to report having incomes over $100,000 per year, as of 2014. However, saying that Jews are more likely to make over $100,000 is not quite the same as saying that Jews are the wealthiest religious group in the US.

Given the points above, I suggest the following:

1. That we remove "WASP—From Sociological Concept to Epithet" from this article given how out of date it is.

2. That we change the wording of this sentence to more accurately match the information contained in "America's Changing Religious Landscape". My suggested wording is:

"Episcopalians and Presbyterians tend to be considerably wealthier and better educated than most other religious groups, and numbers of the most wealthy and affluent American families as the Vanderbilts and Astors, Rockefeller, Du Pont,Roosevelt, Forbes, Fords, Whitneys, Morgans and Harrimans are Mainline Protestant families, though those affiliated with Judaism and Hinduism are significantly more likely to report household incomes of $100,000 or more than other religious denominations, with 44% of Jewish households and 36% of Hindu households reporting incomes over $100,000, compared to an average of 17% for Protestant households and 19% for American households more generally..." sfgfan10 (talk) 21:48, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

Have attempted to cleanup this paragraph here, although only partly in the way described above. --Louis P. Boog (talk) 21:47, 21 August 2024 (UTC)

2023 PRRI Survey For Pie Chart

More recent and more specific than the Gallup data since it shows that 40% of America is Protestant.

https://www.prri.org/research/census-2023-american-religion/ 164.119.5.58 (talk) 15:08, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Any explanations of why there are so many Protestants in the United States? Dimadick (talk) 12:58, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

2024 Pew survey for pie chart

41% Protestant 20% Catholic

https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/fact-sheet/national-public-opinion-reference-survey-npors/ 166.181.84.117 (talk) 18:29, 30 October 2024 (UTC)