The Congregational numbers dropped slightly in New England due to Irish Immigration, primarily around Boston and New York, and the Lutherans again didn’t grow. Baptists dropped significantly in New England while Catholics continued to show dramatic growth.  Baptists at this point could be considered a minor faith in the North. Other major groups held steady or dropped slightly. 

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The total protestant population in the North, excluding the Germanic Lutherans, was no more than 23% of the adult population (including Unitarians/Universalists) between 1860 and 1870.  There were ongoing efforts at reunification generally initiated by the established churches who had performed relatively poorly in terms of expanding their population but, somewhat surprisingly, the Methodists in particular were generally open to this. In a business scenario a competitor who is losing market share but cash rich will often try to buy out or merge with the more agile competitor and, while there are other factors at play, this is more or less what we see here. Cooperative ventures between different denominations were common which included some teaming relationships that would seem very surprising like Baptists and Unitarians working together.

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The Northern churches, apart from the Lutherans and Catholics, had a strong tendency to secularization and politicization which generally went together however, it would be inappropriate to assume that that groups or individuals that opposed theological liberalization didn’t support the progressive political goals which at this time, centered primarily around prohibition, nativism, and, to a far lesser degree, abolitionism. Determining exactly how strong the correlation was is difficult to assess but factional divides in the abolition movement, which will be looked at in more detail in a following section, can provide a hint (2 p. 63) along with the degree to which churches were willing to host and support traveling activists.  The combined factors of theological liberalization and willingness to team with more liberal groups like Congregationalists and Unitarians was the cause of the first major Protestant split in the Presbyterian Church in 1837 (2 p. 8). For Northern Protestants the distinctions between denominations weren’t particularly significant much as they are not today.

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There was at the time and remained for many decades a strong misconception about the numbers of Catholics assuming that anyone arriving in the states from Ireland in particular was automatically a Catholic Church participant or member. This resulted in a dramatic over counting. Quoting from Stark and Fink, “In truth, most of the millions of immigrants from “Catholic” nations who flowed into the United States in the later part of the nineteenth century were at best potential American Catholic parishioners….For the Fact is that the great majority of people in “Catholic” nations are not very good Catholics.”(1 pp. 177-82) Additionally there were a significant number of Irish Protestant immigrants from the north of the Island.  Anti-Catholic rhetoric commonly originated from prominent Protestant Clergy like Congregational Minister Lyman Beecher (he was originally a Presbyterian) as well as prominent laypeople.  Catholics continued to be overwhelmingly aligned with the Democratic Party in the North making them political adversaries of the Northern Protestants who were the core of the new Republican Party.(3)

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The demographic problem posed by the Catholics to the Protestants in the North in general and New England in particular is shown in the previous chart although Catholics, with rare exception, lacked economic and political power (2 pp. 4-6).  Increasingly however Catholic voters held the balance of political power between candidates.

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 There were attempts by Protestants to evangelize Catholics and Catholics to evangelize Protestants as well as organized attempts by both groups to reach unchurched people including Indians.  There were some successes but not enough to alter the deep association of religion with culture in a statistically significant sense. In the case of evangelism of Catholics by Protestants there is a serious question at this point as to whether they were being presented with a religious belief system or an alternative culture that it was too intertwined with it to be separated.

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Denominational differences between Protestant groups were not of major importance in most cases and regional differences were far more important.  Catholics on the other hand were far more consistent and cohesive as a group and regional differences were generally minor. The church hierarchy tended to oppose abolitionism as being supported by the same folk who supported nativism (4 p. 236).

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Culture and Religion remain consistent in the South

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Meanwhile in the southern and border states religious demographics remained far less volatile with long term trends moving in a consistent manner.  Starting with 1850:

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1850 Denominational Adherents as % of Adult Population (Southern and Border States)

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