Christianity is the most widely practiced religion in the city of Houston, Texas. In 2012, Kate Shellnutt of the Houston Chronicle described Houston as a "heavily Christian city".Shellnutt, Kate. "For Jeremy Lin: Houston church-hunting advice " (). Houston Chronicle. July 19, 2012. Retrieved on May 3, 2014. Multiple Christian denominations originating from various countries are practiced in the city; among its Christian population, the majority are either Catholic, Baptist, or non/interdenominational.

Lakewood Church in Houston is the largest church in the United States. In 2010, it had 44,800 weekly attendees, while in 2000, it had 11,000 weekly attendees. In September 2010, Outreach Magazine published a list of the 100 largest Christian churches in the United States, and inside the list were the following Houston-area churches: Lakewood, Second Baptist Church Houston, Woodlands Church, Church Without Walls and First Baptist Church. According to the list, Houston and Dallas were tied as the second most popular city for megachurches.Shellnutt, Kate. "Megachurches getting bigger; Lakewood quadruples in size since 2000 " (). Houston Chronicle. March 21, 2011. Retrieved on May 3, 2014.

Catholicism

Roman Catholics

The city's Roman Catholic diocese is the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. The chancery of the archdiocese is located in Downtown Houston."Contact Us ." Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston. Retrieved on February 27, 2011. "1700 San Jacinto Houston, TX 77002." The archdiocese's original cathedral church is St. Mary Cathedral Basilica in Galveston with a co-cathedral, the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, located in Downtown Houston.Archdiocese Cathedral History

The first Catholic church in Houston, St. Vincent's Church, opened in 1839.Carroll, Jill. "Family, history tied to church's project" (). Houston Chronicle. May 24, 2012. Retrieved on May 3, 2014. John Odin, a bishop arrived in 1841 to help establish it, and in the fall of 1842 the building, in the Second Ward, was fully built. This church converted into a parish catering to German Americans in 1871 when the larger Annunciation Church opened.McWhorter, Thomas. "From Das Zweiter to El Segundo, A Brief History of Houston’s Second Ward." Houston History Magazine. Volume 8, No. 1, p. 39. Retrieved on April 21, 2019.

The city's first black Catholic church was St. Nicholas, located in the Third Ward.Steptoe, Tyina Leaneice (University of Wisconsin-Madison). Dixie West: Race, Migration, and the Color Lines in Jim Crow Houston (PhD thesis for a history degree). ProQuest, 2008. , 9780549635871. p. 195.

In 1910 there were no Mexican Catholic churches in Houston. Some Mexicans were excluded from attending English-speaking Catholic churches. Mexicans who did attend found themselves discriminated against.Treviño, p. 32. In 1911 the Roman Catholic Diocese of Galveston brought the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a series of priests intended to minister to the Mexican population of Houston.Treviño, p. 9. In 1912 Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church, the first Mexican Catholic church, opened. Due to an increase in demand in Catholic services, oblates established missions in various Mexican-American neighborhoods.Garza, Natalie, p. 17. The Roman Catholic Church established Our Lady of Guadalupe so that white people accustomed to segregation of races would not be offended by the presence of Mexican people in their churches.Garza, Natalie, p. 15. The second Mexican Catholic church, Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church, opened in the 1920s.Esparza, p. 3. It originated as an oblate mission in Magnolia Park, on the second floor of the residence of Emilio Aranda. A permanent two-story building, funded by the community, opened in 1926.

In the 1920s, a group of Louisiana Creole people attended the Hispanic Our Lady of Guadalupe Church because OLG was the closest church to the Frenchtown area of the Fifth Ward. Because the OLG church treated the Creole people in a discriminatory manner, by forcing them to confess and take communion after people of other races did so and after forcing them to take the back pews,Steptoe, Tyina Leaneice (University of Wisconsin-Madison). Dixie West: Race, Migration, and the Color Lines in Jim Crow Houston (PhD thesis for a history degree). ProQuest, 2008. , 9780549635871. p. 195-196. the Creoles opted to build their own church.Steptoe, Tyina Leaneice (University of Wisconsin-Madison). Dixie West: Race, Migration, and the Color Lines in Jim Crow Houston (PhD thesis for a history degree). ProQuest, 2008. , 9780549635871. p. 196. The Our Mother of Mercy Catholic Church in the Fifth Ward, Houston's second black Catholic church, was officially founded in June 1929.Catholic Youth Organization, Diocese of Galveston. Houston District. Centennial: The Story of the Kingdom of God on Earth in that Portion of the Vineyard which for One Hundred Years Has Been the Diocese of Galveston. Catholic Youth Organization, Centennial Book Committee, 1947. p. 76. "Our Mother of Mercy Church, the second Negro parish to be established in Houston, was founded in June, 1929. Bishop Christopher E. Byrne purchased two city blocks, on Sumpter Street, and ground was[...]" ("Negro" is an outdated term for African-American).

The number of Black Catholics in Houston increased after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 affected rural areas in the Southern United States.Pruitt, p. 114. Most of them moved to the Fifth Ward.Pruitt, p. 114-115. Due to a perception of the Catholic Church being more favorable than Protestant churches to African-Americans, the Catholic Church in Houston increased in popularity with African-Americans in the 1930s.Pruitt, p. 116. St. Anne de Beaupre in Sunset Heights, - JPG - Church location indicated. the third black Catholic church, named after the Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré in Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Quebec, Canada, opened in 1938.Steptoe, Tyina L. Houston Bound: Culture and Color in a Jim Crow City (Volume 41 of American Crossroads). University of California Press, November 3, 2015. , 9780520958531. p. 117. By 2012 the church held Swahili masses due to it gaining African immigrant parishioners. In particular St. Nicholas has a group of Cameroonians in the congregation served by the Assumption Cameroonian Catholic Community, so it has services each month tailored to that group.

In 1972 the Catholic church leaders and lay Hispanics in Houston participated in the Encuentro Hispano de Pastoral ("Pastoral Congress for the Spanish-speaking"). Robert R. Treviño, author of The Church in the Barrio: Mexican American Ethno-Catholicism in Houston, said that the event "stands as a watershed in the religious history of Mexican American Catholics in Houston". Treviño also said that Mexican-American Catholics "competed for cultural space not only with the Anglo majority, which included various groups of white Catholics, but also with a large black population and a Mexican protestant presence as well."Treviño, p. 10. St. Faustina Catholic Church, popular with Greater Katy's Venezuelan population, is in proximity to Cinco Ranch. It previously held its services at Joe Hubenak Elementary School, but in 2017 it moved into its own 1,600-seat building. It has worship services in Spanish.

The first wave of Vietnamese immigrants to Houston, occurring after the end of the Vietnam War, was mostly Catholic.Klineberg, Stephen L. and Jie Wu. "DIVERSITY AND TRANSFORMATION AMONG ASIANS IN HOUSTON: Findings from the Kinder Institute’s Houston Area Asian Survey (1995, 2002, 2011) " (). Kinder Institute for Urban Research, Rice University. February 2013. - Cited: p. 39. In 1999 the Houston area had about 40,000 Filipino Catholics, about 30,000 ethnic Vietnamese Catholics, 350 Chinese Catholic families, over 1,000 Korean Catholics, and about 500 Indian Catholics.Vara, Richard. "Area Asian Catholics to come together in celebration." Houston Chronicle. August 21, 1999. Religion p. 1. NewsBank Record: 3159522. Available from the Houston Chronicle website's newspaper databases, accessible with a library card and PIN. Vietnamese Catholic churches in the Houston area as of 2008 include Christ Incarnate Word Parish (), Holy Rosary Parish, Our Lady of Lavang (Giáo Xứ Đức Mẹ Lavang), Our Lady of Lourdes, and Vietnamese Martyrs (Giáo Xứ Các Thánh Tử Đạo Việt Nam).Latson, Jennifer. "Mass honors those lost in Sherman bus crash" (). Houston Chronicle. September 8, 2008. Retrieved on May 5, 2014. In 1999 there were four Vietnamese Catholic churches and five other churches with large numbers of Vietnamese people. In 1988 the Chinese Catholic church, Ascension Chinese Mission (美華天主堂), opened. The Korean Catholic church, St. Andrew Kim Catholic Church (), named after Andrew Kim Taegon, is in Spring Branch. There were no particular Filipino and Indian Catholic churches. On August 8, 2008, a bus with Vietnamese Catholics from the Houston area was traveling to a Missouri festival to honor the Virgin Mary and crashed near Sherman in North Texas. 17 people died.

The city has a Polish American church, Our Lady of Czestochowa Roman Catholic Parish in Spring Branch, established in the 1980s. At the time Polish immigrants who resisted Communist rule in that country arrived in Houston.

Maronite Catholics

As of 2008 Our Lady of the Cedars Maronite Catholic Church has been Houston's only Maronite Church. That year, Christine Dow, a spokesperson for the church, stated that there were about 500 families who were members, and that the community, since the 1990s, had increased.Murphy, Bill. "Maronite cardinal tells of threat to Lebanon" (). Houston Chronicle. May 20, 2008. Retrieved on May 3, 2014. Richard Vara of the Houston Chronicle wrote that in 1991 there had "only a handful of registered families" in the Houston Maronite church.Vara, Richard. "Maronite cardinal visits Houston" (). Houston Chronicle. May 23, 2008. Retrieved on May 3, 2014.

Protestantism Anglicans and Episcopalians

The Anglican-Episcopalian tradition is served by a multitude of communities affiliated with the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, and the Anglican Church in North America. Among them, the Episcopal Diocese of Texas within the Episcopal Church is the oldest Anglican or Episcopalian jurisdiction for the area. Within the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), several parish churches of Greater Houston are part of the Anglican Diocese of the Western Gulf Coast.

Anglicans within the Anglican Diocese of the Western Gulf Coast of the Anglican Church in North America includes a number of parishes in metropolitan Houston. While The Episcopal Diocese of Texas is part of the world-wide Anglican Communion, the Anglican Church in North America is not.

Baptists

Baptists are spread throughout numerous denominations for Greater Houston. Numbering 926,554 adherents as of 2020, the largest Baptist denominations operating in the city and metropolitan area are the Southern Baptist Convention through its Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and Baptist General Convention of Texas; the American Baptist Association, American Baptist Churches USA, Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship; National Baptist Convention USA and National Baptist Convention of America; and the National Missionary Baptist Convention.