Presbyterians constitute approximately 2 percent of the American population. The Presbyterian denomination of the Protestant Church traces its roots to the sixteenth century when John Calvin in Geneva and John Knox in Scotland shaped its basic theology and governance. The Westminster Confession of Faith, the creed of Presbyterianism for more than 300 years, was drafted in the mid-seventeenth century in England.

Scottish immigrants who espoused the Presbyterian way came to the Americas in the seventeenth century. They started churches in the Middle Colonies, and in 1706 the first presbytery was organized. A presbytery is a representative body formed of lay leaders, or elders, and pastors. Collectively they govern the church in a given area. Throughout the rest of the century and into the next, Presbyterians played significant roles in the Evangelical Awakening in Colonial America, in the Revolutionary War and in the beginning of the world missionary movement that grew out of the second Evangelical Awakening at the turn of the nineteenth century.

The 1967 Confession of Faith and the 1990 Brief Statement of Faith affirm the continuity of the Reformed Confessional tradition and are found in the Book of Confessions.

Presbyterians have historically taken their faith so seriously that disagreements over theology or the application of faith in society have led to church splits in each of the last three centuries. Equally Presbyterians have been committed so strongly to the basic unity of the church universal that they have worked for reunification within the Presbyterian family on the one hand, and they have been at the forefront of such ecumenical movements as the World Council of Churches and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, on the other.

Currently there are nine Presbyterian denominations in the United States with an aggregate membership of 3.2 million. The largest body is the Presbyterian Church (USA), with slightly less than 2.6 million members. It was formed in 1983 as a merger of the United Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Presbyterian Church (US), two bodies that had been separate since the American Civil War.

Other significant Presbyterian denominations include the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the mostly African American Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America.

The former, with about 90,000 members, arose in the early 1800s out of disagreements over the doctrines of election and reprobation as taught in the Westminster Confession of Faith. The latter, with about 15,000 members, was established by African Americans to give themselves a place for leadership in Presbyterian churches.

The Presbyterian Church in America, founded in 1973 as a split-off movement from the Presbyterian Church (US), was joined in 1982 by the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod. The church’s membership today is approximately 300,000. The Evangelical Presbyterian Church formed out of churches dissatisfied with the United Presbyterian Church (USA) in 1978. Its membership is about 60,000.

While most Presbyterians in the United States are white, increasing numbers of Korean immigrants are changing the face of the various Presbyterian denominations. Having received the gospel from (mostly Presbyterian) missionaries, Koreans are doing mission work of their own in the United States. The Presbyterian Church (USA), for example, has over 300 Korean American congregations, and a separate Korean Presbyterian Church in America has several hundred congregations.