page_title: Christianity in the United States
section_title: Eastern Orthodox Christianity
hierarchical_section_title: Christianity in the United States / Major denominational families / Eastern Orthodox Christianity
caption_attribution_description: English: St. Nicholas Cathedral (Washington, D.C.)
context_page_description: Christianity is the most adhered to religion in the United States, with 65% of polled American adults identifying themselves as Christian in 2019, down from 75% in 2015, 78% in 2012, 81.6% in 2001, and 85% in 1990. About 62% of those polled claim to be members of a church congregation. The United States has the largest Christian population in the world, with nearly 205 million Christians, although other countries have higher percentages of Christians among their populations. The modern official motto of the United States of America, as established in a 1956 law signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, is "In God We Trust". The phrase first appeared on U.S. coins in 1864.
  All Protestant denominations accounted for 48.5%, while the Catholic Church by itself, at 22.7%, was the largest individual denomination. The nation's second-largest church and the single largest Protestant denomination is the Southern Baptist Convention. Among Eastern Christian denominations, there are several Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, with just below 1 million adherents in the US, or 0.4% of the total population.
context_section_description: Groups of immigrants from several different regions, mainly Eastern Europe and the Middle East, brought Eastern Orthodoxy to the United States. This traditional branch of Eastern Christianity has since spread beyond the boundaries of ethnic immigrant communities and now include multi-ethnic membership and parishes. There are several Eastern Orthodox ecclesiastical jurisdictions in the US, organized within the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America. Statistically, Eastern Orthodox Christians are among the wealthiest Christian denominations in the United States, and they also tend to be better educated than most other religious groups in America, in the sense that they have a high number of graduate (68%) and post-graduate degrees (28%) per capita.
caption: St. Nicholas Cathedral in Washington, D.C., is the primary cathedral of the Orthodox Church in America.
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