Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
States & Territories

Missouri

Midwest

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Independence, in Jackson County, holds a central place in Latter day Saint theology as the site Joseph Smith identified for the New Jerusalem, and Mormon settlers who moved there in the 1830s were driven out by violence that culminated in Governor Lilburn Boggs's 1838 extermination order, one of the darkest episodes in American religious persecution. Several Latter day Saint denominations, including the Community of Christ, still maintain headquarters or major temples in the Independence area. St. Louis, founded by French Catholic fur traders, built one of the country's oldest Catholic archdioceses west of the Mississippi.

Facts
Religion
Leading Religious Affiliation
Evangelical Protestant 2
Missouri: Evangelical Protestant is 31% of adults, ahead of Nothing in particular at 20%. Margin of error plus or minus 5.2 points. Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/state/missouri/
Identity
Jurisdiction Status
U.S. state 1
Origins
Origin of the Name
From the Missouria, a Siouan people whose name reached English through a French rendering of an Illinois word often translated as people of the big canoes. 1
Geography
Census Region
Midwest 1
Law and State
Establishment Status
No Establishment 1
Missouri has had no established church since its admission as a state in 1821.
Learn More
A Massacre at a Mill Preceded the Governor's Order

Governor Lilburn Boggs's 1838 order that Missouri's Mormons be treated as enemies and driven from the state or exterminated is usually cited on its own as the low point of the conflict, but it followed rather than preceded the worst single act of violence in what Missourians and Latter day Saints alike called the Mormon War. On October 30, 1838, a Missouri militia company attacked a small Latter day Saint settlement at Haun's Mill on Shoal Creek, killing seventeen people, including children, in an assault that lasted only a few minutes and met almost no organized resistance. News of the massacre reached Boggs within days, and the extermination order he issued shortly afterward gave state sanction to violence that had already happened rather than initiating a new policy, a distinction that mattered enormously to the thousands of Mormons who fled Missouri that winter for Illinois believing the state itself, not merely a mob, now considered their presence a capital offense.

Independence, in Jackson County, held special significance through all of it as the site Joseph Smith had identified for the New Jerusalem, and several Latter day Saint denominations, including the Community of Christ, still maintain headquarters or major temples in the Independence area today. St. Louis, founded earlier by French Catholic fur traders, built one of the country's oldest Catholic archdioceses west of the Mississippi. Evangelical Protestant identification leads Missouri today at thirty one percent of adults, per Pew's 2023-24 study.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Missouri directly: "fourteen congregations, the Kirkwood, Missouri headquarters, current membership and the thirty five district structure."

This source names Missouri directly: "reporting that the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod Board of Directors adopted an operating budget of about 80.6 million dollars for fiscal year 2025 (1 July 2024 through 30 June 2025) at its meeting..."

This source names Missouri directly: "19 to 21 April 2013 in Independence, Missouri, voted by more than the required two-thirds majority "to extend the sacrament of marriage to people in same-gender relationships in states where it's..."

This source names Missouri directly: "Louis, confirming "The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod owns Concordia Publishing House," that it "publishes the Synod's official magazine, The Lutheran Witness and the Synod's hymnals, including..."

Source Concordia Publishing House (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Missouri directly: "Conference Session in St Louis, Missouri, describing his background as the church's executive secretary since 2021 and his advocacy for the Mission Refocus initiative."

This source names Missouri directly: "Conference Session in St Louis, Missouri, noting his transition from General Conference executive secretary and his advocacy for the Mission Refocus initiative."

This source names Missouri directly: "community station KOPN-FM (Columbia, Missouri), in which Bailey discusses Alice Bailey's founding of the Arcane School and recites the Great Invocation."

Jerusalem, Cities

This source names Jerusalem directly: "Joseph Smith identified for the New Jerusalem, and Mormon settlers who moved there in the 1830s were driven out by violence that culminated in Governor Lilburn Boggs's 1838 extermination order, one..."

Source The Oxford Handbook of MormonismTerryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (eds.)

This source names Missouri directly: "successively through Illinois and Missouri under nineteenth century United States removal pressure before groups settled in Kansas, Oklahoma and, following a further migration, in Coahuila, Mexico..."

Source Kenekuk, the Kickapoo Prophet (Herring)Joseph B. Herring

This source names Missouri directly: "The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod (LCMS) is a confessional Lutheran denomination organized on April 26, 1847, in Chicago, when twelve pastors representing fourteen congregations across Illinois..."

This source names Missouri directly: "on the 1847 founding, the Kirkwood, Missouri headquarters and the confessional, closed communion doctrinal position."

This source names Missouri directly: "11-03A, passed at the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod's 67th Regular Convention (20 to 25 July 2019, Tampa, Florida) with 96.8 percent approval."

This source names Missouri directly: "worship hymnal of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, officially approved by the Synod at its own 2004 National Convention in St."

Source Lutheran Service Book (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Missouri directly: "in America and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, founded in 1945 by the former National Lutheran Council as US Lutherans responded to the refugee crisis in post-war Europe, sending food, clothing..."

Source Lutheran World Relief (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Missouri directly: "in America and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, a member of the Corus International family of faith-based development organisations."

Source Lutheran World Relief (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Missouri directly: "The Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod's own Department of Archives and History publishes this account of Martin Chemnitz's role, alongside Jacob Andreae, David Chytraeus, Andrew Musculus, Christopher..."

This source names Missouri directly: "Louis, Missouri; its National Council is now headquartered in Maryland Heights, Missouri, and supports roughly 4,000 local Conferences and Councils across the country, whose lay volunteer members..."

Source Society of Saint Vincent de Paul (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Missouri directly: "Vincent de Paul (EIN 13-5562362, Maryland Heights, Missouri)."

Source National Council of the United States Society of St. Vincent de Paul IRS Form 990 (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer)National Council of the United States Society of St. Vincent de Paul (filed with the US Internal Revenue Service, reproduced by ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer)

This source names Missouri directly: "merged into the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod in 1964."

Source National Evangelical Lutheran Church (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Missouri directly: "Louis, Missouri, co-founded the Church of All Worlds with R."

Source Oberon Zell-Ravenheart (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Missouri directly: "Louis, Missouri, co-founded the Church of All Worlds with R."

Source Oberon Zell-Ravenheart (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Missouri directly: "Publishing House in Kansas City, Missouri, running to roughly 530 pages with indexes and printed with full musical notation."

Source Praise and Worship: The Nazarene Hymnal (Internet Archive)Church of the Nazarene (Nazarene Publishing House)

This source names Missouri directly: "Services Center Inc, Kansas City, Missouri, EIN 26-0054325, classified under Human Services (food, clothing, cash assistance)."

This source names Missouri directly: "Louis, Missouri; its National Council is headquartered in Maryland Heights, Missouri."

Source Society of Saint Vincent de Paul (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Missouri directly: "Louis, Missouri, from 6 to 11 June 2022, the church's first hybrid session, held both in person and by remote participation, after the session's originally booked Indianapolis venue became..."

This source names Missouri directly: "and pilgrimage center in Independence, Missouri, dedicated in 1994 and designed by architect Gyo Obata."

Source Community of Christ, "Independence Temple Self-Guided Tour" (west entrance window)Community of Christthe holders' own account

This source names Missouri directly: "fourth General Council in St Louis, Missouri."

Source Assemblies Of God USA (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Missouri directly: "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 Other..."

This source names Missouri directly: "League within the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod."

This source names Missouri directly: "own publishing house, in Hazelwood, Missouri, the same city as UPCI's international headquarters."

Source The Oneness of God, Bibliographic Record (Open Library)Open Library catalog staff

This source names Missouri directly: "Bernard: Word Aflame Press, Hazelwood, Missouri, 1983, 326 pages, Series in Pentecostal Theology Volume 1, Library of Congress classification BT102 .B39 1983, ISBN 9780912315126."

Source The Oneness of God, Bibliographic Record (Open Library)Open Library catalog staff

This source names Missouri directly: "years before the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, organized in Chicago in 1847, also recorded here, the Prussian crown dissolved Lutheranism's separate legal identity within its own territory."

This source names Missouri directly: "At a Uniting Conference in Kansas City, Missouri, running from 26 April to 10 May 1939, the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church South, which had split from it in 1844 over..."

Source United Methodist Church (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Missouri directly: "the year before in Springfield, Missouri, drawing regional representatives from Asia, Eurasia, Latin America, Africa and North America, among them Paul Yonggi Cho of Seoul's Yoido Full Gospel Church..."

This source names Missouri directly: "one years after the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod organized in Chicago in 1847, and twenty nine years before the Lutheran World Federation formed in Lund, Sweden in 1947, both already recorded..."

This source names Missouri directly: "School of Christianity, Kansas City, Missouri named as both creator and publisher, digitised and hosted through the Internet Archive, catalogued to circa 1920; and Hymnary.org, the scholarly hymnody..."

This source names Missouri directly: "a Uniting Conference in Kansas City, Missouri running from 26 April to 10 May, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church South (which had split from it in 1844 over slavery)..."

Source United Methodist Church (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Missouri directly: "School of Christianity, Kansas City, Missouri, the organisation Charles and Myrtle Fillmore founded in 1889 that grew into one of the New Thought movement's largest institutions."

This source names Missouri directly: "Louis, Missouri, the church's first hybrid session with delegates represented from more than two hundred countries, and of the 6 June 2022 vote re-electing Ted N."

This source names Missouri directly: "construction effort at Independence, Missouri."

Source Church of Christ (Temple Lot), Official SiteChurch of Christ (Temple Lot)

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
The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism
Terryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2015View the Source
A Religious History of the American People
Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Yale University Press, 1972View the Source
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