History Of Religion In The United States
The religious history of the United States before the colonial period was dominated by Native American religions. These religions exhibit much diversity and are often characterized by animism or panentheism. While there are many different Native American religious practices, most address the following areas of supernatural concern: an omnipresent, invisible universal force, pertaining to the "three 'life crises' of birth, puberty, and death", spirits, visions, the shaman and communal ceremony.
After European settlement, religious history began more than a century before the British colonies became the United States of America in 1776. Some of the original settlers were men and women of deep religious convictions. The religious intensity of the original settlers diminished to some extent over time but new waves of 18th-century immigrants brought their own religious fervor across the Atlantic. In addition, the nation's first major religious revival in the middle of the 18th century injected new vigor into American religion.
Wave after wave of ethnic groups from Europe (as well as other parts of the globe) brought along their traditional churches—some, especially the English and the German Americans brought along multiple Protestant denominations, as well as Catholicism. Several colonies had an "established" church, which meant that local tax money went to the established denomination. In general, the colonial governments were little involved in religion, and many denominations and sects flourished. Freedom of religion became a basic American principle, and numerous new movements emerged, many of which became established denominations in their own right. The heavy influx of immigration in the 19th and 20th century reinvigorated religion; in many cases, the immigrants became much more religious than they had been in the old country in order to assert their new complex identity. As Europe secularized in the 20th century, the Americans largely resisted the trend, so that by the 21st century it had become perhaps the most religious of all major nations, with religiously based moral issues (such as abortion) occupying a major role in American politics.
Read more about History Of Religion In The United States: North America As A Religious Refuge: 17th Century, Eighteenth Century, American Revolution, Great Awakenings, Emergence of African American Churches, Church of Christ, Scientist, Restorationism, Benevolent Societies, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Judaism, Denominations and Sects Founded in The U.S.
Famous quotes containing the words united states, history of, history, religion, united and/or states:
“It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay here. How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad citizen, probably a rebel, there,—certainly if he were already a rebel at home.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“It must appear impossible, that theism could, from reasoning, have been the primary religion of human race, and have afterwards, by its corruption, given birth to polytheism and to all the various superstitions of the heathen world. Reason, when obvious, prevents these corruptions: When abstruse, it keeps the principles entirely from the knowledge of the vulgar, who are alone liable to corrupt any principle or opinion.
”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“If the Union is now dissolved it does not prove that the experiment of popular government is a failure.... But the experiment of uniting free states and slaveholding states in one nation is, perhaps, a failure.... There probably is an “irrepressible conflict” between freedom and slavery. It may as well be admitted, and our new relations may as be formed with that as an admitted fact.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)