Formal Affiliation
Most presidents have been formal members of a particular church or religious body, and a specific affiliation can be assigned to every president from Garfield on. For many earlier presidents, however, formal church membership was forestalled until they left office; and in several cases a president never joined any church. Conversely, though every president from Washington to John Quincy Adams can be definitely assigned membership in an Anglican or Unitarian body, the significance of these affiliations is often downplayed as unrepresentative of their true beliefs.
The pattern of religious adherence has changed dramatically over the course of United States history, so that the pattern of presidential affiliations is quite unrepresentative of modern membership numbers. For example, Episcopalians are extraordinarily well represented among the presidents, compared to a current membership of about 2% of the population; this is partly because the Episcopal Church had been the Church of England before the American Revolution and was the state religion in some states (such as New York and Virginia). The first seven presidents listed as Episcopalians were all from Virginia. Unitarians and Quakers are also overrepresented, reflecting the importance of those colonial churches. Conversely, Baptists are underrepresented, a reflection of their quite recent expansion in numbers; there has been only one Roman Catholic president, although they are currently the largest single denomination, and there have been no Lutheran, Pentecostal, or Latter Day Saint presidents.
While many presidents did not formally join a church until quite late in life, there is a genre of tales of deathbed conversions. Biographers usually doubt these, though the baptism of Polk is well documented.
Read more about this topic: Religious Affiliations Of Presidents Of The United States
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