Religions in the U.S. Offer Plenty to Choose From

Americans are proud of their freedom of religion, and the work of J. Gordon Melton shows they have a whole lot of religions to choose from.

The Roman Catholic Church may be huge, but it’s only one of 116 Catholic denominations. Orthodox Christians have even more, and Protestantism is notoriously splintered; its Pentecostal segment alone counts groups in the hundreds.

There’s a denomination for practically everyone.

If the Episcopal Church won’t do, worshippers can move leftward into the Metaphysical Episcopal Church or Free Episcopal Church, or rightward into dozens of breakaways, such as the Anglican Mission in America.

Does Unitarianism seem too conventional? The denomination offers a subgroup of Unitarian Univeralist Pagans.

Moving further from the mainstream, there’s the Church of God Anonymous, the Nudist Christian Church of the Blessed Virgin Jesus or the Only Fair Religion.

All are among 2,630 U.S. and Canadian faith groups described in the new edition of Melton’s “Encyclopedia of American Religion.”

Melton, 60, a one-time United Methodist pastor, treats each entry with nonpartisan objectivity and -- when necessary -- a straight face.

In 44 years of collecting information on American sects and denominations, he has compiled data on more creeds than anyone knew existed.

He has deposited his trove of 70,000 books and 40 filing cabinets of materials at UC Santa Barbara, where he teaches part time.

The campus is two blocks from his Institute for the Study of American Religion.

Melton’s curiosity originated during his Alabama boyhood, when he attended a family reunion at a rural church.

His mother warned, “Whatever you do, don’t talk about religion” because some relatives were touchy Pentecostalists and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

By late high school, he had given up stamp collecting for sect collecting.

Two points stand out for Melton from all his counting, tracking and compiling.

The United States is the most religiously diverse nation in the world -- especially since immigration laws loosened in 1965 -- though Europe as a whole is comparable.

Christianity is the biggest single element: 70% of Americans belong to “some brand of Christian church.”

What’s more distinct, Melton says, is that America “is certainly the most religious country that has ever existed, in terms of voluntarily taking part in religion.”

The turning point was World War II, when “the majority of the public became church members for the first time.”

He thinks diversity contributes to that.

“The Christian groups know they have to compete. It keeps them alive, growing and adapting, not resting on their laurels, as groups in the majority tend to do,” he says.