As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary in July 2026, journalists have a rare opportunity to revisit the nation’s story through one of its most dynamic and contested forces — religion.
From before the earliest encounters between Indigenous Peoples and Europeans, to today’s increasingly diverse and “spiritual-but-not-religious” landscape, religion has shaped American identity, politics and culture in profound ways.
The Semiquincentennial is not just a moment to look back but a chance to tell deeper, more human stories about belief, doubt and belonging across 25 decades of American life. The most engaging religion reporting will move past histories and clichés and into the lived realities of Americans whose spiritual lives continue to shape the nation, sometimes in surprising ways.
This guide is designed to help reporters uncover fresh, compelling and nuanced stories in advance of the celebrations and remembrances. It encourages moving beyond institutional histories to critically cover lived religion, overlooked communities and emerging spiritual trends.
At its best, coverage of religion during the Semiquincentennial can illuminate how Americans have wrestled with meaning, belonging and power, what has resulted from these struggles and how those struggles continue to evolve.
A Crash Course on American Religious History
Religion in America predates the nation itself, beginning with the rich and varied spiritual traditions of Indigenous peoples. Scholar of American religion, Thomas Tweed, reflects in his new book Religion in the Lands that Became America:
Most surveys of U.S. religion have presupposed that the story must begin with and focus on the British colonies—as opposed to starting, as I do, with ancient Indigenous practices in the territory now within national borders, and then chronicling the history of those locales, from Florida to Alaska and Maine to Hawai‘i. That presupposition commits narrators to focusing on Anglo-Protestant men who had political and ecclesiastical power in Britain’s Atlantic colonies. In turn, everyone else—Protestant women as well as racial and religious others—appear as supporting actors with bit parts. More recent survey writers have enriched the story. But the plot has not changed; nor have the supporting players’ roles. Everyone who is not an Anglo-Protestant man becomes defined by her or his relation to those with political or ecclesiastical authority during a relatively brief period, 1607–1776, on a strip of land along the North Atlantic coast.
To alter this pattern, Tweed and other historians have expanded “the narrative scope” to include a range of Indigenous traditions — traditions deeply tied to land, community, and cosmology that were profoundly disrupted by European colonization, which introduced Christianity alongside systems of displacement and violence.
In the colonial period, religion proved both motivator and source of conflict. Some European settlers, such as Puritans in New England, sought to build religiously ordered societies, while others came in search of economic opportunity rather than spiritual refuge. Colonies and their relationships to religion varied widely. Some had established churches, while others, like Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, experimented with religious tolerance. There were also small communities of minorities, such as Jews, in major port cities like New Amsterdam (New York), Newport, Philadelphia, Charleston and Savannah. This diversity laid the groundwork for what would become the First Amendment’s protections of religious freedom and non-establishment.
The 18th and early 19th centuries saw waves of revivalism known as the First and Second Great Awakenings, which helped democratize religion and emphasized personal experience over institutional authority. These movements fueled the growth of evangelical forms of Protestantism and inspired reform efforts, including pushes for abolitionism and temperance. At the same time, new religious movements emerged, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and various utopian communities such as the Oneida Community and Shakers. Each sought to establish “heaven on earth” by separating from mainstream society to practice activities like communal ownership and shared labor or adherence to strict religious tenets aimed at perfecting life, both in this world and the next.
From the colonial period through the early 19th century, forcibly enslaved Africans brought diverse religious traditions — including West and Central African spiritual practices as well as Islam — which persisted in adapted forms despite forced conversion and repression. Over time, these influences blended with Christianity in what scholars call the “invisible institution,” a vibrant religious life that emphasized liberation, communal solidarity and spiritual resilience. This evolving tradition became the foundation of Black churches such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) or National Baptist Convention — and later Pentecostalism — which would play a central role in American religious and political life by the 19th and 20th centuries.
Immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries transformed the religious landscape immensely. Catholics, Jews and Eastern Orthodox Christians established institutions and communities across the U.S. — from the St. Photios Greek Orthodox National Shrine in Florida to the Eldridge Street Synagogue in New York City’s Lower East Side — often facing suspicion and discrimination in due course. Meanwhile, the first Buddhist communities emerged on the West Coast, particularly in California, among Chinese and later Japanese immigrants who faced significant discriminatory laws. Religion became further intertwined with questions of American identity, with leaders and laypeople asking themselves and society who belonged, and on what terms.
The 20th century brought both consolidation and immense change. Mainline Protestant denominations wielded significant cultural influence by the mid-century, while Catholicism and Judaism became more integrated into public life, despite ongoing suspicions about European and Mexican Catholics political allegiance. The post–World War II era saw a rise in religious affiliation and the framing of the U.S. as a broadly “Judeo-Christian” nation, especially in contrast to what was framed as “atheistic” communism.
However, the late 20th century also saw increasing polarization and diversification. The Civil Rights Movement drew heavily on Black church traditions, while also exposing tensions within religious communities. The rise of the Religious Right in the 1970s and 1980s linked conservative Christianity to partisan politics in new ways.
Immigration reforms such as the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 opened the door to new forms of religious diversity, bringing growing numbers of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, and changing America’s religious landscape yet again. The rise of Hindu temples in suburban New Jersey, Sikh gurdwaras in California’s Central Valley and expanding Muslim communities in cities like Dearborn, Michigan are only a few examples of this changing landscape.
At the same time, the number of Americans who choose to identify as religiously unaffiliated (or “nones”) has surged, now comprising roughly 28–29% of U.S. adults, up from just 16% in 2007, according to Pew Research Center and Public Religion Research Institute. Among younger adults, the shift is even more pronounced, with close to four in ten identifying as unaffiliated in some surveys. Many within this group still express spiritual beliefs — about a third describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious” — often blending practices such as yoga, meditation, and mindfulness with elements drawn from multiple traditions
Today’s religious landscape is marked by both fragmentation and innovation. Traditional institutions face declining membership, yet new forms of community are emerging. Online congregations, interfaith networks, hyper-nationalist enclaves and activist spiritual movements have become increasingly common, with religion continuing to shape debates over American identity, morality and public life, even as its forms become less predictable.
As the nation marks 250 years, and various parties try to define the nation as a “Christian” one, its religious story is less a single narrative than an increasingly vibrant one told from the perspective of multiple voices and reflects ongoing struggles over freedom, diversity and the potential of American futures in the decades to come.