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North Carolina

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Moravian settlers built Old Salem in 1766 as a planned religious community, and its restored historic district, along with the Moravian Church's continued presence in Winston Salem, preserves one of the most complete colonial religious settlements in the country. Baptist congregations, both white Southern Baptist and historically Black denominations, are the state's dominant tradition. The Eastern Band of Cherokee, on the Qualla Boundary in the western mountains, maintains ceremonial traditions distinct from the surrounding Christian majority.

Facts
Identity
Jurisdiction Status
U.S. state 1
Religion
Leading Religious Affiliation
Evangelical Protestant 2
North Carolina: Evangelical Protestant is 35% of adults, ahead of Nothing in particular at 17%. Margin of error plus or minus 4.1 points. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/state/north-carolina/
Law and State
Establishment Status
Disestablished 1
The Church of England held nominal establishment in colonial North Carolina; the 1776 constitution's Declaration of Rights ended public support for any church, though a religious test for officeholders remained until 1835.
Geography
Census Region
South 1
Origins
Origin of the Name
Named for King Charles I of England, from the Latin Carolus. 1
Learn More
The Choir System That Organized an Entire Moravian Town

The Moravian Church, the Unitas Fratrum tradition tracing back to pre Reformation Bohemia, purchased a nearly one hundred thousand acre tract called Wachovia in the North Carolina piedmont in 1753 and planned its settlements there with an unusual degree of religious control over daily life. Bethabara came first as a temporary base, and Salem, founded in 1766, became Wachovia's permanent central town, laid out around what Moravians called the choir system, dividing every resident not by family but by age, sex and marital status into groups, single brothers, single sisters, married couples, widows, each choir living, working and often worshipping together in its own dedicated building. Craft guilds organized production communally within that same structure, and worship itself was frequent and central enough to daily life that Old Salem's restored historic district today preserves one of the most complete and legible colonial religious settlements anywhere in the country, the choir houses still standing as physical evidence of a social order built entirely around congregational membership.

Baptist congregations, both white Southern Baptist and historically Black denominations, are the state's dominant tradition today, and the Eastern Band of Cherokee, on the Qualla Boundary in the western mountains, maintains ceremonial traditions distinct from that surrounding Christian majority. Evangelical Protestant identification leads North Carolina at thirty five percent of adults, per Pew's 2023-24 study.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names North Carolina directly: "Watts Street Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina on 9 August 1964, the first woman ordained by a Southern Baptist congregation, made possible by Baptist congregational polity leaving ordination..."

This source names North Carolina directly: "in 1860, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, with approximately 293 congregations and 25,600 members in the United States as of 2006."

Source Advent Christian Church (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names North Carolina directly: "Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, under the theme Ever Transforming, Ever Renewing, the Moravian Church's Southern Province in America elected Andrea Williams as president of its..."

Baptist, Denominations

This source names Baptist directly: "religious settlements in the country. Baptist congregations, both white Southern Baptist and historically Black denominations, are the state's dominant tradition."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names North Carolina directly: "on November 7, 1918, in Charlotte, North Carolina, and died February 21, 2018, was an ordained Southern Baptist minister who became the most widely heard Christian evangelist of the twentieth century."

This source names North Carolina directly: "It moved its headquarters from Minneapolis to Charlotte, North Carolina in 2003 and continues operating today under Graham family leadership."

This source names North Carolina directly: "of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, gathering and comparing the named published estimates of Iran-Iraq War deaths, including the Battle Deaths Dataset, the Correlates of..."

Source Death Tolls of the Iran-Iraq War (Kurzman)Charles Kurzman

This source names North Carolina directly: "for Rhine Research Center Inc, Durham, North Carolina, EIN 27-1240690, tax-exempt since March 2010, classified under Behavioral Science Research Institutes."

This source names North Carolina directly: "Headquartered in Boone, North Carolina, Samaritan's Purse provides emergency shelter, medical care, water and sanitation, and disaster relief worldwide, describing this work as a direct expression..."

Source Samaritan's Purse (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names North Carolina directly: "California, relocated to Boone, North Carolina after Franklin Graham became president in 1979."

Source Samaritan's Purse (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names North Carolina directly: "Purse (EIN 58-1437002, Boone, North Carolina)."

Source Samaritan's Purse IRS Form 990 (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer)Samaritan's Purse (filed with the US Internal Revenue Service, reproduced by ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer)

This source names North Carolina directly: "Of Mercy Urgent Care Inc, Asheville, North Carolina, EIN 56-1463611, tax-exempt since October 1986, operating an urgent care facility."

This source names North Carolina directly: "Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, naming Andrea Williams's election as Provincial Elders' Conference president as the first woman and first lay person to hold that office in the..."

This source names North Carolina directly: "General Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, voted 692 to 51 to repeal the denomination's prohibition, in place since 1984, on ordaining or appointing as a minister anyone the Book of Discipline..."

This source names North Carolina directly: "today, quarterly, from Seven Springs, North Carolina and Dorchester, Massachusetts, and describes itself as "The Oldest Continuously Published Liberal Religious Periodical in North..."

Source The Universalist Herald (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names North Carolina directly: "held together: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Music Library's Don Yoder Collection of American Hymnody, cataloguing "Unity Song Selections" (local call number Yoder S 3107, OCLC..."

This source names North Carolina directly: "General Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, voted 692 to 51 on 1 May 2024 to strike the denomination's 1984 rule barring the ordination of any self-avowed practicing homosexual, as part of a..."

This source names North Carolina directly: "2024 vote of 692 to 51 in Charlotte, North Carolina, to overturn the denomination's 1984 prohibition on ordaining LGBTQ clergy, passed as part of a bundled consent calendar."

Source United Methodists Strike Their Ban on LGBTQ Clergy (Christianity Today)Yonat Shimron (Religion News Service)

This source names North Carolina directly: "A copy is catalogued in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Music Library's Don Yoder Collection of American Hymnody to circa 1920; an independently catalogued listing of the same title..."

This source names North Carolina directly: "of about 750 members at the Spindale, North Carolina congregation and almost 2,000 more across affiliated churches abroad."

Source Word of Faith Fellowship (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Principal Tradition Of

Evangelicalism, Denominations

Plurality religious identification among the state's adults per the source's survey.

Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
2. Pew Research Center: 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study
Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2025View the Source
History of the Moravian Church: The Renewed Unitas Fratrum 1722-1957
J. Taylor Hamilton and Kenneth G. Hamilton, Interprovincial Board of Christian Education, Moravian Church in America, 1967
A Religious History of the American People
Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Yale University Press, 1972View the Source
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