The religious affiliations of Presidents of the United States can affect their electability, shape their visions of society and also how they want to lead it, and shape their stances on policy matters. Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, William Howard Taft and Barack Obama were accused of being atheists during election campaigns, while others to hold the office used faith as a defining aspect of their campaigns and tenure.
Throughout much of American history, the religion of past American presidents has been the subject of contentious debate. Some devout Christian Americans have been disinclined to believe that there may have been non-religious (or even non-Christian) presidents, especially amongst the Founding Fathers of the United States. As a result, apocryphal stories of a religious nature have appeared over the years about particularly beloved presidents such as Washington and Lincoln.
Almost all of the presidents can be characterized as Christian, at least by formal membership. Some were Unitarian or unaffiliated with a specific religious body. Some are thought to have been deists, or irreligious. No president thus far has been an atheist, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Sikh or an adherent of any specifically non-Christian religion.
Read more about Religious Affiliations Of Presidents Of The United States: Formal Affiliation, Personal Beliefs, Civic Religion, Studies of Presidential Religion, List of Presidential Religious Affiliations (by President), List of Presidential Religious Affiliations (by Religion)
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“In the United States, it is now possible for a person eighteen years of age, female as well as male, to graduate from high school, college, or university without ever having cared for, or even held, a baby; without ever having comforted or assisted another human being who really needed help. . . . No society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, motivations, and skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“Each religious sect has its own physiognomy. The Methodists have acquired a face; the Quakers, a face; the nuns, a face. An Englishman will pick out a dissenter by his manners.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“All Presidents start out to run a crusade but after a couple of years they find they are running something less heroic and much more intractable: namely the presidency. The people are well cured by then of election fever, during which they think they are choosing Moses. In the third year, they look on the man as a sinner and a bumbler and begin to poke around for rumours of another Messiah.”
—Alistair Cooke (b. 1908)
“I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother’s side was not an Indian chief.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“The moment a mere numerical superiority by either states or voters in this country proceeds to ignore the needs and desires of the minority, and for their own selfish purpose or advancement, hamper or oppress that minority, or debar them in any way from equal privileges and equal rights—that moment will mark the failure of our constitutional system.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)