Most Practiced Religion in the US

According to Pew Research, 62% of American adults identify as Christian. About 40% claim to be some variation of Protestant and 22% claim Roman Catholic. 29% are religiously unaffiliated. And then you get the mixture of everything else that makes up the remainder of the population.

Identifying as a certain faith doesn’t require much. I often wonder how many of those people that claim a Christian identity actually have any idea of what that means or what the beliefs are. Sometimes I wonder why some people bother to claim a religious identity at all. Do they think they need to claim something? Is it to feel like they are part of a group? Is it something else? I really have no idea of course.

Which leads to a better question. When I asked the question “what is the most practiced religion in the US?” Google gave me information about how Americans identity religiously. Google answered a question I didn’t ask.

Just because someone identifies as a Christian doesn’t mean they actually practice the faith at all. Yes, there are plenty of people who identify and practice Christianity. But there are plenty of people who identify as Christian who do not actually practice the faith. I don’t think that’s a radical statement. It’s more of a range of pretty typical human behavior regardless of whether we are talking about religion or sports or just about anything else. There are people who identify as a runner who never actually run.

I think some of this has to do with aspirations. Many humans are aspirational – meaning having a desire for something. Having a desire doesn’t equal that thing being real and acted on. Aspirations live in the world of our words – the things we say we care about and believe. How we live though declares what it is that we actually believe and put into practice. It’s wonderful when those things match. And there are plenty of examples in life in which the two do not match at all, and may in fact conflict.

Our US history is full of that conflict. Aspirations about people being equal and actual policies and actions that conflict with those aspirations.

So what is the most practiced religion in the US?

I don’t think it’s Christianity.

Yes, there are plenty of people who identify as Christian. There are lots of people who go to worship in a Christian house of worship each week. There are plenty of Christian symbolism and language. There are vestiges of what we consider Christian influence on policies and laws. Christianity gets special treatment when it comes to tax laws, holidays, and more.

And yet…is that what it means to practice Christianity? I don’t think so. That seems to fit more of a definition of Christendom, rather than Christianity.

Maybe definitions are helpful here. Practicing a religion is more than just going to a worship service or having significant influence on a culture or law or language. Practicing is about how we live. And at the core of Christianity is following the teachings of Jesus. And when I consider that metric, I just don’t see Christianity being as wide spread and influential as the numbers purport to be. At least not how I think of Christianity. Of course I don’t want to dismiss the long history of horrible things done in the name of Christianity as well. Those are real.

Which also gets to another issue – what is Christianity and what does it mean to be a practicing Christian? There’s a range of answers for that. Like I said, for me, in a simple sense, practicing Christianity means following the way of Jesus. And what is the way of Jesus? I think it comes down to a few basic foundational tenants. Seeing the Image of God in others and yourself which impacts how you treat others. Seeking peace and wholeness and right relationship with God, yourself, others, and the rest of creation. Care for the marginalized because you see how connected you are to them and care for the marginalized if care for God. Christianity isn’t just an individual endeavor though either. There is a communal aspect to it. It is about how we live in community and care for one another recognizing that the well being of one is the well being of all.

There are certainly elements of these beliefs in our society. And there’s plenty of things that go on that are in conflict with those foundational tenants.

So, back to the question – what is the most practiced religion in the US, in my opinion?

I think it could be described as Americanism.

Americanism isn’t necessarily the worship of a deity in the traditional sense. But it does elevate national identity, history, and stated values to a level of sacred belief. There’s plenty of rhetoric that has been used by a full range of political figures that declares God’s blessing on the US. American Civic Religion, or Americanism has all the trappings of a traditional religion. There are sacred texts (the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution), sacred sites (battlegrounds, Capitol buildings, monuments, etc), sacred holy days (Independence Day, Flag Day, Memorial Day, etc.), sacred symbols (the US flag, the Great Seal, the Bald Eagle), sacred people/saints (The Founding Fathers, war heroes, etc.), sacred creeds and hymns (the Pledge of Allegiance, God Bless America, etc), sacred theological concepts (sacrificing oneself to save the nation, etc), sacred myths (the founding myth, the frontier myth, the good war myth, the lost cause myth, etc.), and more.

Americanism has expectations of how its adherents will live and operate their lives and what they will believe about the US, how history is to be viewed, how the country’s place in the world is to be seen, and more.

Americanism also holds a variety of values that are well practiced in this country and for most part are assumed to be the norm of human history. I would include the following values on that list: Individualism, accumulation of wealth and property, a belief in equality of opportunity, some variation of capitalism, etc.

Americanism likes to use pieces of Christianity to help prop it up. It always has. Then again, the Roman Empire did the same thing. So did a variety of other countries and empires. There’s nothing new about that.

Which is ironic considering Jesus wasn’t interested in creating an earthly political governmental power. He certainly cared about individuals, but also was concerned with the larger community’s well being. He wasn’t for accumulation of wealth. He saw that not everyone had the same opportunity. Capitalism didn’t exist when Jesus walked the earth.

I recently heard someone say that when God wants to change the world, God doesn’t send in the tanks. Instead, God sends in the poor, outcast, and marginalized. That’s because the world’s ideas about power and God’s ideas about power are in conflict with each other. What God is working to accomplish is far different than what any country, including the US, is trying to accomplish.

My only wish is that we’d just be honest about this. Can we just stop claiming Christianity, as in the following of Jesus, being the most practiced religion in the US. Instead, we use Jesus, we claim his name, we select the parts that are useful for us, we have Jesus bless our use of violence, and we either ignore or explain away the parts that conflict with our practiced religion of Americanism. Again, none of this new. And it isn’t even specific to the US. This is a human problem that has been going on for a long, long time. It existed before the US existed and it will go on well after the US is gone. The name will change, but the way this is done won’t.