page_title: Fort Wayne, Indiana
section_title: Religion
hierarchical_section_title: Fort Wayne, Indiana / Demographics / Religion
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Erected in 1860, the Roman Catholic cathedral is Fort Wayne's oldest church. Physical description: 1 photograph&#160;: digital, tiff file, color. Notes: Purchase; Carol M. Highsmith Photography, Inc.; 2016; (DLC/PP-2016:103-1).; Forms part of: Carol M. Highsmith Archive.; Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.; Title, date and keywords based on information provided by the photographer.
context_page_description: Fort Wayne is a city in the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Allen County, United States. Located in northeastern Indiana, the city is 18 miles west of the Ohio border and 50 miles south of the Michigan border. With a population of 253,691 in the 2010 census, it is the second-most populous city in Indiana after Indianapolis, and the 75th-most populous city in the United States. It is the principal city of the Fort Wayne metropolitan area, consisting of Allen, Wells, and Whitley counties, a combined population of 419,453 as of 2011. Fort Wayne is the cultural and economic center of northeastern Indiana. In addition to the three core counties, the combined statistical area includes Adams, DeKalb, Huntington, Noble, and Steuben counties, with an estimated population of 615,077.
  Fort Wayne was built in 1794 by the United States Army under the direction of American Revolutionary War general Anthony Wayne, the last in a series of forts built near the Miami village of Kekionga. Named in Wayne's honor, the European-American settlement developed at the confluence of the St. Joseph, St. Marys, and Maumee rivers as a trading post for pioneers.
context_section_description: Fort Wayne is sometimes referred to as the "City of Churches," an unofficial moniker dating to the late-19th century when the city was the regional hub of Catholic, Lutheran, and Episcopal faiths. Today, there are 360 churches in the city. 54 percent of Fort Wayne residents identify as religious, where 16 percent are Catholic, 9 percent are Lutheran, 6.5 percent are Baptist, 5 percent are Methodist, and 0.14 percent are Jewish, with 16.5 percent adhering to other Christian faiths. An increasing religious minority is found among the city's immigrant communities, including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam.
  Major churches include the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Saint Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church and Trinity Episcopal Church. Fort Wayne's Reform Judaism population is served by Congregation Achduth Vesholom, the oldest Jewish congregation in Indiana, founded in 1848. In 2013, construction began on the first Burmese Muslim mosque to be built worldwide since the mid-1970s.
  As of December 2012, four national Christian denominations were headquartered in the city: the American Association of Lutheran Churches, the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship Association, the Missionary Church and the Fellowship of Evangelical Churches. Fort Wayne is the seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne–South Bend, covering 14 counties in Northern Indiana, and the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod Indiana District, encompassing all of Indiana and north central Kentucky.
caption: Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, co-cathedral of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend.
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