Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles's 1,043 Parishes: The Most Denominationally Varied Grid in the American West

Fifteen Protestant and Catholic traditions each hold at least 25 parishes inside the city limits.

April 20, 2026 4 minute read Churches List editorial desk

Illustration of Angelus Temple with its large dome in the foreground and smaller church steeples receding into the Los Angeles haze, with palm tree silhouettes, in stipple ink with warm sepia wash.

Los Angeles holds 1,043 parishes inside the city limits and more than 15 distinct traditions each hold at least 25 parishes, making LA the most denominationally varied grid in any American city west of Chicago.

Los Angeles holds 1,043 parishes inside the city limits, the largest parish count of any city west of Chicago and the most denominationally varied parish grid in the American West. No single tradition holds more than 20% of the count. The top denominations by parish count are Non-Denominational (roughly 180), Catholic (156), Baptist (148), Church of God in Christ (76), Pentecostal (72), Foursquare (54), Seventh Day Adventist (48), Lutheran (42), and Methodist (38). Fifteen separate traditions each hold at least 25 parishes inside the city. No American city east of Denver matches that breadth.

1,043Parishes inside Los Angeles city limits

15+Traditions each holding 25 or more parishes

No pluralityLargest tradition holds less than 20% of the city's total

Angelus Temple and the 1923 founding of the Foursquare movement

Angelus Temple at 1100 Glendale Boulevard in Echo Park is the founding parish of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, the Pentecostal-Holiness denomination that Aimee Semple McPherson organized in 1923. Angelus Temple seated 5,000 at its 1923 opening, one of the largest religious buildings in Los Angeles and the largest Protestant-Evangelical auditorium in the United States at the time. McPherson built a radio station (KFSG), a Bible college, and the first large-scale Pentecostal publishing operation from the Temple complex. The Foursquare tradition now holds about 1,900 US congregations and another 90,000 worldwide.

West Angeles Church of God in Christ: the Crenshaw Black Pentecostal anchor

West Angeles Church of God in Christ at 3045 Crenshaw Boulevard is the largest Church of God in Christ parish on the West Coast, with roughly 25,000 members, and served as the Los Angeles anchor of Bishop Charles E. Blake's five-decade leadership (Blake retired as Presiding Bishop of the denomination in 2021). The parish's twin-tower cathedral sits near the Baldwin Hills / Crenshaw intersection and anchors a four-block religious-cultural district that includes West Angeles University, a Christian school, and a community development corporation.

Grace Community Church and the Reformed evangelical strand

Grace Community Church at 13248 Roscoe Boulevard in Sun Valley, led by John MacArthur since 1969, represents the Reformed evangelical strand of Los Angeles Protestantism. Grace Community holds roughly 8,500 weekly attendees and runs The Master's Seminary, The Master's University, and a large publishing operation (Grace to You). The parish is doctrinally cessationist (holding that charismatic gifts ended with the apostolic age), which distinguishes it from the Foursquare and COGIC parishes a few miles south.

Saint Thomas the Apostle and the Hispanic Catholic parish map

Saint Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church at 2727 West 15th Street serves the Koreatown and Pico-Union Catholic community, predominantly Mexican and Central American. The parish is one of roughly 110 Spanish-language Catholic parishes in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which is the largest Catholic archdiocese in the United States by Catholic population (5.1 million) and one of the largest by parish count (287). Within the city of Los Angeles, 156 of the archdiocese's parishes sit on streets from San Pedro to Sylmar.

Immanuel Presbyterian: the mainline Protestant anchor on Wilshire

Immanuel Presbyterian Church at 3300 Wilshire Boulevard is the largest Presbyterian Church USA parish on the West Coast by building size. The 1928 Gothic Revival structure seats 1,700 and stands on the Wilshire Corridor a half-mile from the Korean consulate. Immanuel's current parish is small relative to the 1950s peak (roughly 500 active members, down from 3,000) but the building remains an architectural landmark and the parish hosts the Presbytery of the Pacific's central services.

Immaculate Conception on Green Avenue: the city's oldest Catholic parish

Immaculate Conception Catholic Church at 786 East Green Street, Pasadena (adjacent to but outside the city of Los Angeles proper), is representative of the San Gabriel Valley Catholic grid. Inside LA city limits, the oldest Catholic parish is Saint Vibiana Cathedral's predecessor buildings, now the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels (dedicated 2002 after the 1994 earthquake condemned old St. Vibiana).

First Congregational and the Church of the Nazarene legacy

First Congregational Church of Los Angeles at 540 South Commonwealth Avenue is the oldest Protestant congregation in Los Angeles, founded 1867. The parish is now affiliated with the Church of the Nazarene (the Holiness tradition that grew out of a 1908 Los Angeles merger of several regional Holiness bodies). First Congregational's 1931 Gothic Revival sanctuary holds the largest pipe organ in Los Angeles (4,250 pipes) and hosts regular organ recitals open to the public.

Why the city's denominational variety is unmatched

Los Angeles's denominational variety reflects the city's twentieth-century migration pattern. Each wave — Midwestern Protestant migration in the 1910s–1930s, Southern African-American migration in the 1940s–1960s, Mexican Catholic migration from the 1960s onward, Central American evangelical migration from the 1980s, Korean Presbyterian migration from the 1970s, Filipino Catholic and Iglesia ni Cristo presence from the 1980s, Armenian Apostolic presence since 1915 — left a parish network inside the city rather than in a single enclave. By 2020 every major American religious tradition and many smaller ones had an LA parish network, and most had more than one.

Los Angeles is the only American city where you can reach 15 different Protestant and Catholic parish traditions, each with more than 25 congregations, without leaving the city limits. The next most varied American metro is Chicago, with 10 traditions at that density.