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Religious affiliations of presidents of the United States

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by UtherSRG (talk | contribs) at 22:06, 6 December 2003 (The UUA isn't a Deist organization, but many adherents are of a Deist mindset.). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This is a list of the religious affiliations of Presidents of the United States. For better or worse, the particular religious affiliations of U.S. Presidents can affect their electability, shape their visions of society and how they want to lead it, and positively or negatively shape their stances on policy matters.

For example, a contributing factor to Alfred E. Smith's defeat in the presidential election of 1928 was his Roman Catholic faith. In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy faced accusations that as a Catholic president he would do as Pope John XXIII would tell him to do.

Some people who were president changed their beliefs during their lives. George Washington, for example, gravitated from conventional Christianity more towards Deism as he aged, while Abraham Lincoln had little religion as a young man and became a devout Christian in his later years.

List of Presidential religious affiliations

  1. George Washington – Washington's own contemporaries did not question his Christianity but were thoroughly convinced of his devout faith—a fact made evident in the first-ever compilation of "The Writings of George Washington", published in the 1830s, which includes his writing "You do well to learn...above all the religion of Jesus Christ". Many sources list him as an Episcopalian. According to his own journals Washington rarely attended church, going to Sunday services a handful of times each year.
  2. John Adams – Unitarian. Several John Adams quotes include:
    • "The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity."
    • Speaking of July 4, 1776 - "I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty."
    • "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion...Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
  3. Thomas Jefferson – No official affiliations, but his beliefs were primarily Deist, and are considered very close to Unitarian. The Famous UUs website says:
    • Like many others of his time (he died just one year after the founding of institutional Unitarianism in America), Jefferson was a Unitarian in theology, though not in church membership. He never joined a Unitarian congregation: there were none near his home in Virginia during his lifetime. He regularly attended Joseph Priestley's Pennsylvania church when he was nearby, and said that Priestley's theology was his own, and there is no doubt Priestley should be identified as Unitarian. Jefferson remained a member of the Episcopal congregation near his home, but removed himself from those available to become godparents, because he was not sufficiently in agreement with the trinitarian theology.
  4. James Madison – Episcopalian
  5. James Monroe – Episcopalian
  6. John Quincy Adams – Unitarian
  7. Andrew Jackson – Presbyterian
  8. Martin Van Buren – Dutch Reformed
  9. William Henry Harrison – Episcopalian
  10. John Tyler – Episcopalian; Deist
  11. James Knox Polk – Presbyterian
  12. Zachary Taylor – Episcopalian
  13. Millard Fillmore – Unitarian
  14. Franklin Pierce – Episcopalian
  15. James Buchanan – Presbyterian
  16. Abraham Lincoln – Christian; see (1)
  17. Andrew Johnson – none
  18. Ulysses S. Grant – Methodist
  19. Rutherford B. Hayes – none
  20. James Garfield – Disciples of Christ
  21. Chester A. Arthur – Episcopalian
  22. Grover Cleveland – Presbyterian
  23. Benjamin Harrison – Presbyterian
  24. Grover Cleveland – Presbyterian
  25. William McKinley – Methodist
  26. Theodore Roosevelt – Dutch Reformed
  27. William Howard Taft – Unitarian
  28. Woodrow Wilson – Presbyterian
  29. Warren G. Harding – Baptist
  30. Calvin Coolidge – Congregationalist
  31. Herbert Hoover – Quaker
  32. Franklin Delano Roosevelt – Episcopalian
  33. Harry S. Truman – Baptist
  34. Dwight D. Eisenhower – Presbyterian
  35. John F. Kennedy – Roman Catholic
  36. Lyndon Johnson – Disciples of Christ
  37. Richard Nixon – raised as a Quaker
  38. Gerald R. Ford – Episcopalian
  39. Jimmy Carter – Baptist
  40. Ronald Reagan – Disciples of Christ
  41. George H. W. Bush – Episcopalian
  42. Bill Clinton – Baptist
  43. George W. Bush – Methodist

The Unitarian Universalism is the religion generally associated today with those whose ideology is Deist.

Further Reading

Steiner, Franklin, The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents: From Washington to F.D.R., Prometheus Books/The Freethought Library, July 1995. ISBN 0879759755

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