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Indiana
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New Harmony, on the Wabash River, was built first by the German Pietist Harmony Society under George Rapp beginning in 1814 and sold in 1825 to the Welsh industrialist Robert Owen, who turned it into a secular utopian experiment, making the same small town home to two of the country's most ambitious communal religious and social projects within a decade. Richmond, in eastern Indiana, became a center of American Quakerism, home to Earlham College, a Quaker foundation. The state also saw a large Ku Klux Klan revival in the 1920s that drew heavily on Protestant nativist rhetoric.
Facts
Religion
Leading Religious AffiliationIndiana: Evangelical Protestant is 32% of adults. Margin of error plus or minus 5.0 points. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/state/indiana/ Geography
Census Region Law and State
Establishment StatusIndiana has had no established church since its admission as a state in 1816. Identity
Jurisdiction Status Origins
Origin of the NameCoined to mean land of the Indians, marking the territory's status as land opened to American settlement from Native nations. 1 Learn More
A Celibate Vow That Emptied the Society by 1905
George Rapp's Harmony Society, a German Pietist communal sect that held all property in common, built New Harmony on the Wabash River beginning in 1814 to await what its members believed was an imminent Second Coming. Two years into the settlement the Society formally adopted celibacy, a commitment members had begun observing informally even earlier, and that decision quietly determined the community's long term fate more than anything Rapp preached about the millennium. Rapp sold New Harmony to the Welsh industrialist Robert Owen in 1825 and led the Society back to Pennsylvania, where they built Economy, but a celibate religious community has no next generation of its own, and by the early twentieth century Economy's membership had dwindled to a handful of aging believers. The Harmony Society formally dissolved in 1905, on the exact hundredth anniversary of its founding, its remaining assets distributed among its last members rather than any religious body inheriting them.
New Harmony itself changed character entirely once Owen took it over, becoming a secular utopian social experiment rather than a religious one, so the same small Indiana town hosted two of the country's most ambitious communal projects within a single decade under two completely different founding logics. Richmond's Quaker community, centered on Earlham College, and a large 1920s Ku Klux Klan revival drawing on Protestant nativist rhetoric round out a state where Evangelical Protestant identification runs to thirty two percent of adults per Pew's 2023-24 study.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Indiana directly: "Park Place Church of God in Anderson, Indiana."
This source names Indiana directly: "The Church of God (Anderson, Indiana)'s own ministry site, confirming the Christian Brotherhood Hour and its successor Christians Broadcasting Hope as the denomination's continuing radio ministry."
This source names Indiana directly: "by the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana)'s own Gospel Trumpet Company press and there credited only as "Arr."
This source names Indiana directly: "Gospel Trumpet Company of Anderson, Indiana, crediting the song only as "Arr."
This source names Indiana directly: "academic monograph published in Indiana University Press's Blacks in the Diaspora series, and it remains a standard scholarly account of how specific orisha came to be identified with specific..."
This source names Indiana directly: "congregations across Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin signed a constitution founding the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States."
This source names Indiana directly: "Street Mennonite Church in Elkhart, Indiana, to bring famine relief to Mennonites in southern Russia, present-day Ukraine."
This source names Indiana directly: "Street Mennonite Church in Elkhart, Indiana on 27 to 28 July 1920 to form a provisional committee to bring famine relief to Mennonites in southern Russia (present-day Ukraine), holding its first..."
This source names Indiana directly: "World Congress held that year in Indianapolis, Indiana, and elected Mikhail P."
This source names Indiana directly: "fourteen congregations from Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Michigan, New York and Ohio met in Chicago and signed a constitution founding the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and..."
This source names Indiana directly: "Wars, published by James Currey and Indiana University Press in 2003."
This source names Indiana directly: "Professor of Philanthropic Studies at Indiana University, published 2025-02-17, on Ismaili Muslim beliefs and the Aga Khan's work, stating an estimated 15 million Nizari Ismaili Muslims live in 35..."
Principal Tradition Of
Plurality religious identification among the state's adults per the source's survey.
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