The religious affiliations of presidents of the United States can affect their electability, shape their stances on policy matters and their visions of society and also how they want to lead it. Speculation of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and William Howard Taft being atheists was reported during election campaigns, while others, such as Jimmy Carter, used faith as a defining aspect of their campaigns and tenure to hold the office.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is a Christian denomination based in the United States. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination, and the largest Protestant and second-largest Christian denomination in the United States. The word Southern in "Southern Baptist Convention" stems from its having been organized in 1845 in Augusta, Georgia, by white supremacist Baptists in the Southern United States who were supportive of enslaving Americans of African descent and split from the northern Baptists. During the 19th and most of the 20th century, the organization played a central role in the culture and ethics of the South, supporting racial segregation and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy; it denounced interracial marriage as an "abomination", citing the Bible. In 1995, the organization apologized for its initial history. Since the 1940s, the SBC has spread across the states, having member churches across the country and 41 affiliated state conventions, while keeping its original name.
Reformed Baptists are Baptists that hold to a Calvinist soteriology (salvation). The first Calvinist Baptist church was formed in the 1630s. The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith was written along Calvinist Baptist lines. The name “Reformed Baptist” dates from the latter part of the 20th Century to denote Baptists who have adopted elements of Reformed theology, but retained Baptist ecclesiology.
Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York (UTS) is a private ecumenical Christian liberal seminary in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, New York City, New York, affiliated with neighboring Columbia University. Since 1928, the seminary has served as Columbia's constituent faculty of theology. In 1964, UTS also established an affiliation with the neighboring Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
Richard Duane Warren is an American Southern Baptist evangelical Christian pastor and author. He is the founder of Saddleback Church, an evangelical megachurch affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention in Lake Forest, California.
Dr. Vernon Johns was an American minister based in the South and a pioneer in the civil rights movement. He is best known as the pastor (1947–52) of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He was succeeded there by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Talbot School of Theology is an evangelical Christian theological seminary located near Los Angeles. Talbot is one of the nine schools that comprise Biola University, located in La Mirada, California. Talbot is nondenominational and known for its conservative theological positions, particularly its historical adherence to biblical inerrancy.
United Theological Seminary is a United Methodist seminary in Trotwood, Ohio. Founded in 1871 by Milton Wright, it was originally sponsored by the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. In 1946, members of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ merged with the Evangelical Church to form the Evangelical United Brethren Church, with which the seminary then became affiliated. When that denomination merged with The Methodist Church in 1968, United Theological Seminary became one of the thirteen seminaries affiliated with the new United Methodist Church (UMC).
Jeremiah Alvesta Wright Jr. is a pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, a congregation he led for 36 years, during which its membership grew to over 8,000 parishioners. Following retirement, his beliefs and preaching were scrutinized when segments of his sermons about terrorist attacks on the United States and government dishonesty were publicized in connection with the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama.
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) is a Baptist theological institute in Louisville, Kentucky. It is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. The seminary was founded in 1859 in Greenville, South Carolina, where it was at first housed on the campus of Furman University. The seminary has been an innovator in theological education, establishing one of the first Ph.D. programs in religion in the year 1892. After being closed during the Civil War, it moved in 1877 to a newly built campus in downtown Louisville and moved to its current location in 1926 in the Crescent Hill neighborhood. In 1953, Southern became one of the few seminaries to offer a full, accredited degree course in church music. For more than fifty years Southern has been one of the world's largest theological seminaries, with an FTE enrollment of over 3,300 students in 2015.
Dwight Nathaniel Hopkins is an American theologian and ordained Baptist minister who serves as a professor of theology at the University of Chicago.
The Jeremiah Wright controversy gained national attention in the United States, in March 2008 after ABC News investigated the sermons of Jeremiah Wright who was, at that time, the pastor of then U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama. Excerpted parts of the sermons were found to pertain to terrorist attacks on the United States and government dishonesty and were subject to intense media scrutiny. Wright is a retired senior pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and former pastor of Obama.
Since 1937, the United States presidential inauguration has included one or more prayers given by members of the clergy. Since 1933 an associated prayer service either public or private attended by the president-elect has often taken place on the morning of the day. At times a major public or broadcast prayer service takes place after the main ceremony most recently on the next day.
The United States ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom is the ambassador-at-large who heads the Office of International Religious Freedom in the U.S. Department of State.
Julie Pennington-Russell is a prominent Baptist minister in the United States of America. She currently serves as senior pastor at the First Baptist Church of the City of Washington, D. C. Her ministry has provoked controversy due to disagreements concerning women in church leadership.
Melissa Rogers is an American church-state lawyer and non-resident senior fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. She previously served as special assistant to President Barack Obama and executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. On February 14, 2021, President Joe Biden designated Rogers as executive director of the reestablished Office under his administration.
Clinton Caldwell Boone was an African-American Baptist minister, physician, dentist, and medical missionary who served in the Congo Free State and Liberia. The son of Rev. Lemuel Washington Boone and Charlotte (Chavis) Boone of Hertford County, North Carolina, he played an important role in Africa as a missionary for the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention and the American Baptist Missionary Union, now American Baptist International Ministries.
Alice L. Thompson Waytes aka "Miss A.L.T. Waytes of Boston" was an African American educator and public speaker who campaigned for Black women's suffrage and the Progressive Party under Theodore Roosevelt.
Angelique Walker-Smith is an American Baptist minister and ecumenical leader. In September 2022, she was elected as president of the World Council of Churches, representing the North America region. She is ordained in the National Baptist Convention, USA. Since 2014, she has been on the national staff of Bread for the World. Before that, she was the executive director of the Church Federation of Greater Indianapolis for nineteen years.
