What has historically influenced denominational identity and denominational demographics in the US?
stonespring
Shipmate
This is not a research question, I assure you. I wish I was diligent enough to be back at school!
I have often wondered both what kinds of demographic categories of people (geography, ancestral background in the US and outside the US, class, education, etc) influenced what Protestant denomination people in the US (and the colonies that preceded the US) belonged to before the late 20th century decline of Protestant denominational identity. I know all about Congregationalists in New England, Dutch Reformed in the Hudson Valley, Quakers in Pennsylvania, Lutheran immigrants to the Midwest, etc, the rise of black Methodist and Baptist denominations due to exclusion from white churches, the divisions and sometimes reunions in denominations over slavery, and the stereotypes that Episcopalians are more well to do (not always true) while Pentecostals have tended to be poor, but I’m never been sure when I’ve seen in most US towns that there is at nowadays at least one Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist church (and often one or more Lutheran churches and a UCC church as well), what the characteristics were of the people who were originally part of those congregations. Is it all just a matter of what missionaries went where as Anglo whites continued to settle and/or steal land?
Also, some denominations seem to lack a “heartland” from which they expanded - or at least I don’t know of one. Like what was the original hotbed of American Presbyterianism? If there was no geographic center, what community of people in earlier American history was the one that tended to be Presbyterian? Does it have anything to do with ancestry from Scotland, Northern Ireland, or English Presbyterians?
I also have read that for long stretches of American history, most American Protestants didn’t belong to any church, so when people started going to church in the 18th, 19th, or early 20th century, what influenced what church they joined, especially for those who did not have a clear “ethnic” church that their family belonged to?
I understand more about the history of the RCC and Orthodox churches and their separation historically into communities based on ancestral origin (although outside of places with lots of immigrants that it less true today in the RCC), and I know that the rise of nondenominational churches has made earlier Protestant denominational divisions somewhat irrelevant, but I’ve always been curious about what made some people in the US sort (by birth or by choice) into one denomination or other. Does anyone know more about this or care to discuss? You could compare it to other Anglophone countries or other countries with denominationally diverse Protestant populations too.
I have often wondered both what kinds of demographic categories of people (geography, ancestral background in the US and outside the US, class, education, etc) influenced what Protestant denomination people in the US (and the colonies that preceded the US) belonged to before the late 20th century decline of Protestant denominational identity. I know all about Congregationalists in New England, Dutch Reformed in the Hudson Valley, Quakers in Pennsylvania, Lutheran immigrants to the Midwest, etc, the rise of black Methodist and Baptist denominations due to exclusion from white churches, the divisions and sometimes reunions in denominations over slavery, and the stereotypes that Episcopalians are more well to do (not always true) while Pentecostals have tended to be poor, but I’m never been sure when I’ve seen in most US towns that there is at nowadays at least one Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist church (and often one or more Lutheran churches and a UCC church as well), what the characteristics were of the people who were originally part of those congregations. Is it all just a matter of what missionaries went where as Anglo whites continued to settle and/or steal land?
Also, some denominations seem to lack a “heartland” from which they expanded - or at least I don’t know of one. Like what was the original hotbed of American Presbyterianism? If there was no geographic center, what community of people in earlier American history was the one that tended to be Presbyterian? Does it have anything to do with ancestry from Scotland, Northern Ireland, or English Presbyterians?
I also have read that for long stretches of American history, most American Protestants didn’t belong to any church, so when people started going to church in the 18th, 19th, or early 20th century, what influenced what church they joined, especially for those who did not have a clear “ethnic” church that their family belonged to?
I understand more about the history of the RCC and Orthodox churches and their separation historically into communities based on ancestral origin (although outside of places with lots of immigrants that it less true today in the RCC), and I know that the rise of nondenominational churches has made earlier Protestant denominational divisions somewhat irrelevant, but I’ve always been curious about what made some people in the US sort (by birth or by choice) into one denomination or other. Does anyone know more about this or care to discuss? You could compare it to other Anglophone countries or other countries with denominationally diverse Protestant populations too.
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And the result of that pattern is relevant your first question. Presbyterians tended to be found early on where Scots and Ulster-Scots settled—parts of Pennsylvania and the Carolinas in particular, as well as New Jersey—Princeton University was founded by Presbyterians and Princeton Seminary is still as PC(USA) seminary—Southern New York and elsewhere in mid-Atlantic colonies/states. (The first Presbyterian congregation in what is now the US was in Maryland.)
For many years, the regions around Philadelphia and Princeton (less than 50 miles apart) would likely have been considered the epicenter of American Presbyterianism. Philadelphia is where the (former) Presbyterian Church in the United States of America had its headquarters, and the (PC(USA)) Presbyterian Historical Society is still there. Princeton was long considered the educational center of American Presbyterianism; the first moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (1789) was John Witherspoon, president of the College of New Jersey (as Princeton was then named), as well as a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
As of twenty-five or so years ago, the area of the country with the largest population per capita of Presbyterians was Pittsburgh, followed by Charlotte. I don’t know what the statistics are now, but the historic strength and influence of Presbyterianism in and around Charlotte and Mecklenburg County is still apparent.
The Presbyterian Church in the USA was an outgrowth of the Church of Scotland which came over during the early colonization of New England. After the Revolutionary War, it reformed into the Presbyterian Church. A Dutch Reformed group settled in Pennsylvania and eventually started the Presbyterian Church in America. PCUSA is more ecumenical, the PCA is more conservative. In the lead-up to the Civil War, the Presbyterians broke up over the question of slavery, but eventually those divisions were healed over.
As you know, Methodism is pietistic outgrowth of the Anglican Church. It really thrived in the First and Second Great Awakenings in the 1700s. It also split over the question of slavery in the leadup to our civil war, but those divisions also healed in the 20th Century, The current United Methodist Church is a merger of the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren Church . It is looking like the United Methodist church may be going through another division over the question of human sexuality.
The United Church of Christ, UCC, is a blend of the Congregational Church that formed out of the Pilgrim and Puritan movements and the German Evangeliche Movement which was from the forced merger of Lutheran and Reformed Churches in Germany.
I know I am really skimming the surface here, I will let others fill in the blanks.
As others have indicated, the biggest factor in denominational demographics in the U.S. has traditionally been immigration. Race is a related factor. For example, those Americans whose ancestors immigrated involuntarily in the holds of slave ships were for generations excluded from a lot of churches. (Typically on a by-congregation basis, not a by-denomination basis.) This can lead to a lot of confusion over nomenclature. For example, Martin Luther King, Jr. was geographically a Southerner and theologically a Baptist, but he was not a Southern Baptist.
The minister was very diplomatic when I said that I often conducted communion in my house church, but I could tell he had reservations.
However, he brought his home brews to the Airbnb for us to sample.
Moravian influence can be seen throughout North Carolina, particularly at Christmas—Moravian stars, for example, are a common sight. (Christingles were never part of Moravian culture here.) And the Easter Sunrise Service in Salem, which typically draws well over five thousand people (or at least did pre-Covid) is an incredible experience.
On the subject, I guess Presbyterians spread pretty much everywhere but did they ever have a significant population in the Midwest? A semi-official Stranger Things tie-in book has the Wheeler family as being active members of the Presbyterian church in Hawkins (which in-universe is about 80 miles outside Indianapolis) which was surprising to a lot of fans, especially those who guessed that the Wheelers might be Jewish.
It has to be remembered that in the 18th Century and the first half of the 19th Century, much of Appalachia and the area west of Appalachia remained remote from the centers of population and could be difficult to access. This was a particular problem for Presbyterians and Episcopalians, whose polity not only required a well-educated clergy but also required involvement of presbytery or bishop in placement of clergy. In the case of Presbyterians, this factor led to the formation of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, which was willing to ordain ministers with less education than the PCUSA required. (The majority of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church later reunited with the PCUSA, but a remnant still exists as a separate denomination.)
But perhaps more notably, Baptists and Methodists in the early 19th Century were willing to ordain ministers with little training, and the congregational polity of Baptists and the circuit-riding arrangement of the Methodists made it much easier for Baptists and Methodists to organize and support churches in remote areas like much of Appalachia. So while there were Presbyterians, the Baptists and the Methodists, and new groups like the Churches of Christ, had a distinct advantage and drew from populations that might otherwise have been predisposed to Presbyterianism.
As for the Midwest, I would expect the Presbyterian presence there to be like much of the US—established and noticeable, but not unusually strong compared to most of the rest of the US. The one region of the continental US where Presbyterians had relatively little presence was New England.
It’s not at all unusual to think that a family in Indiana would be Presbyterian. (To continue the TV references, in the first episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mary Richards says that she’s Presbyterian.) FWIW, there 2 Presbyterian colleges in Ohio, 1 in Indiana, 5 in Illinois, 1 in Minnesota and 1 in Michigan. Compare that to 8 Presbyterian colleges in North Carolina.
Does this help?
Very off topic, but does the First Church of Springfield in the Simpsons, part of the Western Branch of American Reform Presbylutheranism, seem based on any particular denomination?
I find it remarkable that Episcopal and Presbyterian churches seem to be everywhere - usually right near the most important intersection of any town, even if in most places Episcopalians and Presbyterians were never anywhere near being a majority of Protestants. Is this because they tend to be the denominations of the "establishment" (especially outside of New England where the establishment was Congregationalist and the Hudson Valley where it was Dutch Reformed - and a few places like parts of Louisiana that had a Roman Catholic establishment)? These denominations could afford to have lots of small churches with few members in every town to reflect their members' status as leaders and benefactors of their community? But when I look at the old photos in these churches, their pews and Sunday schools look packed, and seemed to have a significant number of less-well-off congregants. So I'm still not so sure why there seemed to be a healthy congregation of these two denominations just about anywhere outside New England and a few other places. @Nick Tamen has done a good job explaining the history of Presbyterianism in the US, so I can understand its areas of strength (less so why it became so widespread), but I don't understand why the Episcopal church managed to have its red doors and signs directing you to the nearest church just about everywhere.
That’s definitely part of it. Episcopalians and Presbyterians in the US have historically tended to draw from what might be called “the establishment”—higher average income, educated, business people. This is maybe illustrated by the fact that of the 46 US presidents, at least 18 or 20 were either Episcopalians or Presbyterians (either members or affiliated/aligned in some way). As far as the Episcopalians go, there’s even a book on the subject: The Power Of Their Glory: America's Ruling Class, The Episcopalians, by Kit Konolige and Frederica Konolige.
Some might argue that in some part, the growth of the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches in the US was linked to upward mobility trends. But expansion was also emphasized by both groups at various points in their history. Immigration patterns explain the early places of denominational strength, but once people started moving around, other factors come into play.
As as @Crœsos points out, there are yet other factors at work in the historically African American denominations.
FWIW, where I am, red doors were traditionally associated with Lutheran, not Episcopal, churches. There are some Episcopal churches around here that have them, but most don’t. (And my Presbyterian church also has a red door.)
That is a good question. I can tell you that at least on the diocese level for Lutherans, we authorize planting of new congregations in underserved areas. But even established congregations need to emphasize their own evangelism efforts. Twenty years ago, our congregational evangelism committee consisted of two people who would spend their own money on a project. I expressed the concern that it should be a part of the congregational budget. We have expanded the committee to eight people who meet monthly to approve projects. We have expanded our internet presence, we advertise via radio, and we participate in many community events. That raises the awareness of the congregation among the community, but the most effective form of evangelism is one person inviting someone to worship. We see that among our kids, inviting their peers to come, and other adults have a tendency to invite people. Whenever I see a new person I do not know, it is my habit to introduce myself. If the person is actually a first time visitor, I will also introduce them to two or three others. 80% of all new visitors come at the invitation of someone, it seems.
Any particular denomination? It's based on all American mainline Protestantism, with the exception of the Episcopalians.
Here are some facts:
The United Methodist Church is the result of the merger of the Methodist Church (USA) (itself the merger of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, with the Methodist Protestant Church) and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, which represented various German-speaking Arminians.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is the result of the merger of the Lutheran Church in America (itself a merger of German, Danish, Finnish, and Swedish Lutheran bodies), with the American Lutheran Church (itself also a merger of different German and Scandinavian Luthern bodies), and so on and so forth.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) is a merger of — wait for it — Presbyterian Church in the United States and the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, which were distinguished geographically.
And, oh boy!, the United Church of Christ is a merger of the (Calvinist) Reformed Church in the United States, the (Lutheran) Evangelical Synod of North America, and various Congregationalist bodies.
Remember that these are the largest bodies, not accounting for the innumerable smaller operations.
The joke about the Western Branch of American Reform Presbylutheranism all but wrote itself.
The geographic division between the PCUSA/UPCUSA and the PCUS dated to the Civil War, when the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America split from the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. The PCCSA renamed itself the Presbyterian Church in the United States after the Civil War ended, and was often referred to as “the Southern [Presbyterian] church,” while the PCUSA/UPCUSA was “the Northern church.” The Northern church did have congregations in the South, many of which were predominantly African American.
*The PC(USA) doesn’t refer to this as a “merger,” but rather as “reunion,” since it reunited the bodies that split at the Civil War.
Close, but no cigar. The United Church of Christ is a merger of the Reformed Church in the United States, the Evangelical Synod of North America and the Congregational Christian Church. The Congregational Christian Church had its origins coming out of the Puritan Movement back in the 1600s. The Evangelical Synod of North America came out of the Prussian Union under Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1817. That was a mandated union of Reformed and Lutheran bodies in Prussia. To be more precise, the Evangelical Synod of North America joined The Reformed Church in the United States in 1934 to become the Evangelical and Reformed Church. Then in 1957 the Evangelical and Reformed Church joined with the Congregational Christian Church to become the United Church of Christ as we now know it. Along the way it also picked up a few Baptist churches too. However, I do admit it has been quite a ride for them.
Yes. But the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is not the same as the Evangelical Synod of North America. Two different fish.
(If anyone is interested, here’s a diagram of Presbyterian Family Connections, 1706–present. 1706 is when the first American presbytery, the Presbytery of Philadelphia, was formed.)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Churches_of_Scotland_timeline.svg/1280px-Churches_of_Scotland_timeline.svg.png
Of course, Scottish Presbyterians had a 150-year head start on us.
From what I understand, the Apostolic Pentecostal Church came out of the Welsh Revival in the early 1900s.
The Pentecostal movement comes out of the Holiness Movement which has its roots in Methodism. Unlike Methodists, though, you must be "born again" to be baptized.
As we can gather by replies, the answer to the OP is not automatic, but is in a bunch of regional and denominational realities. We sometimes forget the degree to which US society was state-focussed until WWII; and a good bit of my paltry knowledge of US history comes from a youhtful period of unemployment reading through the bicentennial state history series and working from there. Travelling one finds an astonishing degree of local history knowledge in local museums and historical sites. For about 20 years I drove my mother back and forth to her winter golfing grounds in Florida, and we hit about two sites a day on the drive (as well as set up a small event to commmeorate my late grandfather's WWI posting in Greenville SC to train US troops in gas protection)-- in the past 10 years there has been a sharp movement to acknowledge and explore the less agreeable parts of local history. Plantation guides will now show you where lines were kept, and discuss the work of house servants and plantation hands, as well as family links to the owning families.
My own knowledge is anecdotal and regional, and I only know in depth upstate NY and central Floria. To address the final lines of @stonespring's post, I have enquired about the small but visible (and often cut-stone) Gothic churches of upstate NY, and local history buffs told me that they are usually due to a few wealthy families-- frequently the best-educated in the settlement-- and were often memorials. I would think that the presence of non-élite types in the old phots would have to do with the likelihood that there is less social stratification in smaller and newer settlements. Snooty noses take time to develop and train!
The post-civil war diaspora was perhaps related to the dispersal of former military men with contacts and resources to make the best of their situation, obtaining political office and commercial connections. It was a period where many local dynasties had their beginning and for many years they were the organizational and funding element for these churches and local libraries.
The strict dress code, which they place under the category of “modesty,”and other restrictions on behavior (no dancing, no theater, etc.) come from the Holiness emphasis that is shared by many, but not all, Pentecostal churches. I can’t say why the Oneness Pentecostals have taken their emphasis on modesty further than other Pentecostals seem to have done.
As to when and where the 'oneness' ones split from anyone else I don't know, but do they disbelieve in the Trinity or do they merely baptise using what the rest of us regard as the wrong formula because of a particular take on scriptural authority? If they actually don't believe in the Trinity, are they Arians or are they something else?
At one time, there was a 'oneness' congregation in Chard in Somerset (UK), but I don't know whether they are still there. Does anyone else?
Yes, as I said above, they officially deny the Trinity; they refer to Trinitarianism as a form of polytheism. I believe that their position falls under the classification of Modal Monarchianism—that God is one eternal and indivisible being who acts through different modes, the “Father” being one mode, Jesus being another mode, the Holy Spirit being yet another.
I wonder in the Episcopalians case whether the reuniting was helped by Bishop Leonidas Polk of Louisiana being killed in battle on the Confederate side (he was a major general). Also they were one denomination that split after the war started and the stated reason by the Confederate bishops were that they were now in a different country. Admittedly they were also staunchly anti-abolition (several of them were major slave holders).
@Pomona and @Enoch , although Pentecostalism in the US did draw from movements Wesleyansism, Methodism, and Holiness churches, many of which (not all) were white, the Azusa Street Revival of 1906 in Los Angeles, which was foundational in the development of US pentecostalism, had white participants but began among blacks, was black-led and gave rise to the Church of God in Christ, the most important black Pentecostal church historically here. Pentecostalism was poor and to a certain extent racially integrated - with significant female leadership - at its beginning here but except for a few celebrity pastors (like he first radio televangelists) that came a couple of decades later, very socially conservative, so long skirts would make sense, along with no dancing outside of whatever you might do when taken by the spirit in church. Of course this IS the US, so most Pentecostal churches did become de facto racially segregated in time. But there has always been a very large and strong movement of Black pentecostalism - and it was very socially conservative, at least in the first half of the twentieth century. And aside from the big churches of celebrity pastors, most local churches, black or white, were decidedly working class in membership and culture. Healing and miracles were what many people were expecting rather than wealth per se, although an undercurrent of prosperity gospel did exist (do I need to repeat myself with the exception of the celebrity pastors?), but in the latter half of the 20th century the prosperity gospel became much more mainstream.
That is my uneducated impression. Maybe someone with more knowledge can correct me. The Pentecostal churches of Latin America and Africa became hugely influential in the latter half of the twentieth century, I believe, so they might have more of the flashier elements also seen in US Pentecostalism in that period, but with much more of of an emphasis on the supernatural typical of early US Pentecostalism (and a much stricter shunning of anything deemed worldly or satanic, such as the RCC, Freemasonry, anything vaguely new age or occult, indigenous and syncretic spiritual traditions (unless the church has adopted some of them itself), anything even tangentially associated with LGBT rights, more liberationist forms of feminism, etc.)