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.
Table of contents |
2 List of Presidential religious affiliations (by religion) 3 External links 4 Further Reading |
List of Presidential religious affiliations (by President)
List of Presidential religious affiliations (by religion)
Baptist
- George Washington
- James Madison
- James Monroe
- William Henry Harrison
- John Tyler
- Zachary Taylor
- Franklin Pierce
- Chester Arthur
- Franklin Roosevelt
- Gerald Ford
- George H. W. Bush
- James Polk (originally Presbyterian)
- Ulysses Grant
- William McKinley
- George W. Bush
- Andrew Jackson
- James Polk (later Methodist)
- James Buchanan
- Rutherford Hayes (also attended Episcopal and Methodist services)
- Grover Cleveland
- Benjamin Harrison
- Woodrow Wilson
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (originally Jehovah's Witnesses)
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (later Presbyterian)
External links
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