Illustration by Dan May
Historial overview by Katy Carl
Illustration by Dan May
Rich with sacred ground, filled with relics and icons, steeples and startlingly modern temples, St. Louis gathers its faithful from all the world’s religions. The city began its existence as Catholic—with other religions forbidden. Then Jews and Protestants made their way here, followed by Orthodox Christians, Mormons and Bahá’ís, Muslims and Sufis, pagans and coolly rational ethicists. Today, the numbers are growing for the new arrivals, and, though some mainline congregations are drying and turning brittle, others are sending out fresh shoots. We take a look at St. Louis’ religious history and sacred traditions, as well as the rarer belief systems that are sending their tendrils into the garden. We also explore the high-tech evangelism that is cultivating new members and the missionary tradition that earned the city its nickname “the Rome of the West”—and now reaches all the way to Africa.
“Why St. Louis?” Korean Buddhists asked Bikkhuni Sungak Sunim when she founded a Buddhist monastery here. She smiled and answered quietly, “This place is a spiritual land.”
The history of St. Louis is, in many ways, a history of belief …
Consider this a composite sketch. To paint the full portrait of St. Louis religions and their powerful influence in shaping our city, you’d need several volumes of print. Though not all residents are believers, religion has always rested at the heart of the question “Why is St. Louis the way it is?”
In the Beginning
Roman Catholic priest Father Jacques Marquette, with Catholic laymen Pierre Laclede and Louis Joliet, first explored this stretch of the Mississippi in 1673. At the time, Catholics and Protestants alike sought refuge from European religious conflict. Just as early British colonies gave preference to the Church of England, the French Code Noir stated that only Catholics could settle in the St. Louis river valley.
Even when that law changed after the 1804 Louisiana Purchase, St. Louis’ strong Catholic identity remained. It had produced strong figures—Father Pierre Gibault, for example, the “Patriot Priest” who landed on Britain’s 10-most-wanted list for encouraging his parishioners to feed, shelter and arm American revolutionaries. And Catholicism would soon give us Missouri’s first canonized saint, Sister Philippine Duchesne. A survivor of the French Revolution, this tough nun sailed from the convent just before her 50th birthday. Battling wind, waves, disease and the vagaries of the English language (which she never quite mastered), she founded women’s religious houses and free-admission schools all along the Mississippi.
Early Catholic identity defined much of St. Louis’ later development—and protected St. Louis from the Eastern Seaboard’s extreme social stratification, says Dr. Daniel Schlafly, professor of history at Saint Louis University. “There was a social ‘layer cake,’ with Unitarians in Boston and Episcopalians in New York at the top,” he explains, “and underneath them successive layers” of Catholic, Jewish and other immigrants. “Ethnic and religious groups today are still more clearly differentiated in those places than in St. Louis.”
The original French-Canadian settlers, though they loved elegance, revelry and la vie belle, weren’t particularly class-conscious, and they didn’t identify social or economic rank with nationality or religion. So when Irish, German, Polish, Italian and Hispanic immigrants arrived here, their Catholicism hastened their incorporation into the existing fabric—rather than marking them more clearly as foreign, as it might have elsewhere in America. Even non-Catholic groups could quickly carve out distinctive, well-respected communities, for the same reasons.
Early Exclusion
That’s not to say that assimilation always came easily. Jews had hidden their backgrounds to live here under the Code Noir, Article 1 of which banned them from settling anywhere in what was then the Louisiana Colony. Jews had trouble even after the code was lifted, first in finding each other, then in establishing a community. Some lost or left their faith because of the sheer lack of support. Those who held to their tradition had to deal with anti-Semitism and a lack of accommodations for religious practice. “Sunday laws,” which forbade businesses to open on the Christian holy day, meant that Jews lost two working days instead of one by keeping their own sabbath. There was no synagogue, no rabbi, no ritual bath, not even a kosher slaughterhouse where Jews could obtain meat.
Jewish leaders set about changing all these things. In 1841, when the first synagogue was built, only about 50 St. Louis residents were active Jewish believers. By 1849, Jewish leader Henry Myers could write to a friend: “During the last holy days the Synagogue was crowded almost to suffocation, not less than five to six hundred persons being present.” That seems a tiny gathering compared with the 60,000-or-so Jewish believers in St. Louis today. Still, it planted the seed for what is now one of the world’s strongest Reform Jewish communities, says Rabbi Mark Shook, senior rabbi at Congregation Temple Israel.
“A Reform mind-set makes the St. Louis Jewish community unique,” Shook explains. “When German Jews arrived between the 1850s and 1880s, they already had Reform ideas. Jewish communities in other cities have moved from Orthodox through Conservative to Reform practices. That didn’t happen here.”
Evangelists Arrive
During the early 1800s, Protestant Christians arrived in waves. Intrepid Baptist and Presbyterian missionaries came first, as evangelists, and Anglicans, Methodists and members of other denominations weren’t far behind. (St. Louis also served as a sanctuary for persecuted Mormons who, passing through on their way to Utah, received help from kind city dwellers and settled here.) Most Protestants made arduous journeys to come here—what would take us two hours by plane or two days by car took them two months by covered wagon. (For perspective, two seconds now brings you 1.5 million Google results for “St. Louis Protestant.”)
Around 1834, the St. Louis Unitarian church seems to have sprung full-grown from the head of preacher William Greenleaf Eliot, T.S. Eliot’s grandfather. He built schools and churches and involved himself in charitable work all over the city, yet as the first chancellor of Washington University, he took pride in making it a secular institution focused on learning rather than evangelism.
Immigrant Lutherans came next, in the same wave of Germans that fortified the Jewish community. Because of the educational and religious establishments they built, says the Rev. Martin Noland of the Concordia Historical Institute, Missouri Synod Lutherans still look to St. Louis as a “flagship city.” The Missouri Synod’s publishing house, central offices and archives, as well as one of its two major seminaries, are all located here.
In the middle and late 19th centuries, Eastern European Jews arrived. The German Jews had been very Westernized, with more formal education; this group was more traditional and rural. They arrived alongside Eastern Orthodox Christians, whose tradition had evolved over hundreds of years in Eastern Europe and who had finally broken with Rome in the 1054 Great Schism. Each of the Eastern Orthodox communities—Greek, Russian, Serbian, Romanian, Macedonian, Armenian, Bulgarian—retains a rich liturgy, preserving its own ethnic flavor.
The Ties That Bind
Each faith tradition that arrived in St. Louis brought a different way of thinking and speaking about the sacred; different rituals, prayers and practices; different values, hopes and fears. What they all shared was a sense that something mattered more than their private lives and worldly successes—and a consequent emphasis on compassion and service. The word “religion” is said to come from religare, to bind fast—and as religious groups knit together their own communities, they created a larger sense of community, citywide.
At times, faith has needed to be stubborn—and has shone in delightfully unusual ways. Take, for example, the Garrison Avenue Baptist “Church on Wheels.” In April of 1879, the group lost its lease and was forced to move its chapel. The next Sunday morning, the parishioners hoisted the whole building onto a wagon, hitched it to horses and held services inside—congregation, preacher and all—while rolling down the road to their new location.
A thousand such stories give the city’s religious history its rich lore, and religious groups have formed the city’s cultural, educational and social atmosphere. Without them, half of the answers to “What high school did you go to?” would be gone. Streets, squares, buildings and whole city districts would have different names. Contributions to the arts—a favored form of philanthropy for early Jewish residents and still for some today—would vanish, leaving our robust collections and cultural life anemic. There would be no Saint Louis, Webster, Lindenwood, Maryville or Fontbonne University (and probably no Washington University, although Chancellor Eliot proudly insisted that it have a secular identity from the start). Hospitals and medical centers, schools, charities, clinics, funds and foundations too numerous to count would simply disappear.
What shaped our past continues to shape our present, and recently arrived believers definitely plan to join in shaping St. Louis’ future. The Hindu community here now includes about 3,000 families. The Bahá’ís established a community here in the 1940s; today 75 percent of St. Louis Bahá’ís are American-born converts. There are Tibetan, Thai, Lao, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese Buddhist temples and meditation groups, as well as the Missouri Zen Center in Webster Groves and a Mahayana Buddhist group in Florissant.
Ethical systems such as Confucianism, which aren’t religions, strictly speaking, are well represented, too. “Everyone in China is brought up in the Confucianist code,” says Dr. Tzy Peng. “It’s compatible with any religion. Anyone who reads the philosophy and tries to do what it says is a Confucianist.”
Insha’allah
Unfortunately, many St. Louisans haven’t a clue about the Islamic and Eastern faiths practiced by many of their neighbors. “Misinformation about Islam is our community’s single biggest challenge right now,” says Dr. Ghazala Hayat, president of the Interfaith Partnership of Metropolitan St. Louis.
Islamic leaders estimate that 40,000 Muslims now call St. Louis home; most have immigrated within the past 35 years from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Afghanistan, Somalia or Bosnia. Some have fled violence in their countries of origin. And some give the classic American answer: We came for the opportunities.
“The Muslim population in St. Louis is a lot more professionally diverse than it was even 15 years ago,” Hayat says, noting that Muslim immigrants now come seeking an array of job choices—physician or small-business owner, auto mechanic or accountant.
What makes St. Louis attractive, despite the lack of information (and often, the uninformed suspicion) about Islam? The same quality that invited diverse Judeo-Christian traditions over the past two centuries. “People here understand faith,” Hayat explains. “Even when it’s not their own faith, it’s presented in a positive light.”
Understanding helps when so many groups are new to the area—and different from each other. The recently arrived Bantu refugees brought their own exuberant form of Islam. We have Iranian refugees who are Bahá’í or Christian, and soon, according to Ann Rynearson of the International Institute, we will welcome Karen Burmese refugees: “The tribal group was evangelized, so it’s anyone’s guess whether the newcomers will be animist or Christian.”
Welcome can’t always be counted on, though. Iraqi Shiites have run an obstacle course trying to find a place of their own to worship, because they do not feel comfortable at the big city mosque, which is predominantly Sunni. Somali Muslim refugees have been hounded since the London train bombings in 2005. Ethiopian Orthodox Christians saved for years to build Debre Nazreth St. Mary and St. Gabriel Church—then wound up suing the Protestant minister who persuaded them to buy an unfinished church and promised to act as contractor.
Overall, though, when it comes to religious coexistence, St. Louis has been blessedly peaceful. Only two serious periods of interfaith tension have ruffled our history, both in the 19th century, both political in origin (sparked by the Know-Nothings, then the American Protective Association). More recent, isolated incidents of persecution and political bids for dominance—some legislators in the state House recently tried to make Christianity Missouri’s official “majority” religion—may be worrisome, but are far tamer than the violent persecutions too well known in other parts of the world.
Yet St. Louis isn’t exempt from the global homogenization that is making every place more like every other place—and allowing wildly different traditions to bump against one another, even as longtime mainstream believers fall away from their own traditions. Some fear that welcoming new faces endangers the city’s old identity, making us a mushy amalgam that pays lip service to every tradition and does justice to none. Others worry that diversity will invite the fractiousness so familiar in so many other locales.
One reason to hope not: the Interfaith Partnership. Spokeswoman Reena Hajat explains its mission this way: “In order to build communities where we respect one another, we have to learn about one another and share our traditions.” The partnership facilitates respect with educational dialogues and continues the philanthropic tradition of St. Louis religion through shared service projects. All are welcome, Hajat says: “However you want to plug into a faith community here, we have a way.”
As for the city’s young people, many are as religious as their great-grandparents were. Colleen Carroll Campbell, a fellow at the national Ethics and Public Policy Center, did research here and in other cities for her book The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy. She characterizes young St. Louis Christians this way: “They are integrating their faith with their secular work, political activism, civic-renewal efforts and service to the poor and needy. For them, faith is not another loyalty among many—like their high-school affiliation or allegiance to the Cardinals—it is the defining characteristic of their lives.”
Shook sees a similar loyalty to both faith and city among young Jewish adults: “They’re born and raised in St. Louis, go to school elsewhere but come back here to settle down.” Most Muslims in the city are young to middle-aged adults, says Hayat, and those with families are raising their children “to integrate into America but not to give up anything essential to their faith.”
Just like their forerunners, these diverse believers will help shape the future of St. Louis together. Different views of the cosmos will surely lead to different ideas about the direction of that future. One thing’s for sure: They’ve got quite a 300-year example to live up to.
Religious Affiliations in St. Louis City and County
Catholic 371,622
Southern Baptist Convention 67,838
Jewish (as estimated in 2000) 51,700
Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod 48,249
United Methodist Church 28,643
United Church of Christ 20,848
Presbyterian Church USA 18,950
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 11,415
Muslim (as estimated in 2000, has probably quadrupled) 10,915
Episcopal 10,739
American Baptist 8,082
Christian Churches and Churches of Christ (evangelical) 6,036
Presbyterian Church in America 5,976
Disciples of Christ 5,580
Independent Charismatic 5,308
Churches of Christ 5,248
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints 5,066
Salvation Army 4,526
Church of the Nazarene 4,190
Evangelical Presbyterian Church 3,631
Greek Orthodox 3,594
Seventh-Day Adventist 3,446
Independent Non-Charismatic 2,799
Evangelical Free Church of America 1,950
Church of God (of Cleveland, Tenn.) 1,782
Assemblies of God 1,619
Unitarian Universalist 1,424
Church of God (of Anderson, Ind.) 1,366
Source: Association of Religion Data Archives, 2000 data
