City Profiles

San Diego, a sprawling southern California city with seventy miles of coastline and a well known “surf and turf” culture, has a long history of religious diversity. The city was founded in 1769 as the first Catholic mission in California, Mission Basilica...

“This is the right place,” Brigham Young said in 1847 when he and a small band of Mormon pioneers arrived at the edge of the Great Salt Lake. After three failed attempts to establish a religious community, the Latter Day Saints founded Salt Lake City as a...

In Richmond, history is a source of pride. In 1786, the state legislature of Virginia passed the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, an act commemorated nearly two hundred years later with the founding of the First Freedom Center. The Center’s mission...

The Hohokam Indians were the earliest inhabitants of the area where the vast city of Phoenix now stretches across the southwestern desert. Nineteenth century settlers rebuilt the ancient canals abandoned by the Hohokam and optimistically gave the city its...

Philadelphia’s long-standing encouragement of religious freedom is rooted in the religious commitment of William Penn, Pennsylvania’s founder. In 1681 Penn, a Quaker, founded Pennsylvania as a haven for religious diversity in the colonies. “The king of...

Omaha is a small city in the center of the Great Plains, the largest metropolitan area in the state of Nebraska. A city of 419,000 in a state of less than two million, Omaha is notable not only for its size but also for its diversity. While African...

New York City is perhaps the only city in the world where one can find a kosher Indian vegetarian restaurant run by Hindus and a halal Chinese restaurant run by Buddhists. The religious and ethnic diversity of the city’s five boroughs is a far cry from...

Milwaukee, Wisconsin is a city marked by the flourishing of diversity and by the challenge of persistent segregation. From a French trading post beginning in the 1670s to the city’s founding in the 1830s, Milwaukee’s early decades were dominated by German...

When heavyweight boxing champion and Louisville native Muhammad Ali became a Muslim in 1964 there was not a single mosque in his hometown. Located at the northern cusp of the Bible Belt, the city is known for Louisville Slugger baseball bats and its large...

Los Angeles is truly a cosmopolis—a world city. Its many ethnic and religious communities are so large that each one has a vibrant life of its own. Sprawling today over nearly five hundred square miles, Los Angeles got its start in 1771 as a small Spanish...