Arts and Entertainment in The United States - Religion

Religion

Among developed countries, the U.S. is one of the most religious in terms of its demographics. According to a 2002 study by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, the U.S. was the only developed nation in the survey where a majority of citizens reported that religion played a "very important" role in their lives, an opinion similar to that found in Latin America. Today, governments at the national, state, and local levels are a secular institution, with what is often called the "separation of church and state". But like federal politics, the topic of religion in the United States can cause an emotionally heated debate over moral, ethical and legal issues affecting Americans of all faiths in everyday life, such as polarizing issues of abortion, gay marriage and obscenity.

Several of the original Thirteen Colonies were established by English and Irish settlers who wished to practice their own religion without discrimination or persecution: Pennsylvania was established by Quakers, Maryland by Roman Catholics and the Massachusetts Bay Colony by Puritans. The first Bible printed in a European language in the Colonies was by German immigrant Christopher Sauer. Nine of the thirteen colonies had official public religions. By the time of the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, the United States became one of the first countries in the world to codify freedom of religion into law, although this originally applied only to the federal government, and not to state governments or their political subdivisions.

Modeling the provisions concerning religion within the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the framers of the United States Constitution rejected any religious test for office, and the First Amendment specifically denied the central government any power to enact any law respecting either an establishment of religion, or prohibiting its free exercise. In following decades, the animating spirit behind the constitution's Establishment Clause led to the disestablishment of the official religions within the member states. The framers were mainly influenced by secular, Enlightenment ideals, but they also considered the pragmatic concerns of minority religious groups who did not want to be under the power or influence of a state religion that did not represent them. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence said: "The priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot."

Read more about this topic:  Arts And Entertainment In The United States

Famous quotes containing the word religion:

    By 1879, seven churches of various denominations were holding services, which led the local Chronicle to comment, “All have but one religion and one God in common; it is the Crucified Carbonate.”
    —Administration in the State of Colo, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    In full view of his television audience, he preached a new religion—or a new form of Christianity—based on faith in financial miracles and in a Heaven here on earth with a water slide and luxury hotels. It was a religion of celebrity and showmanship and fun, which made a mockery of all puritanical standards and all canons of good taste. Its standard was excess, and its doctrines were tolerance and freedom from accountability.
    New Yorker (April 23, 1990)

    The cloister and the observatory saint
    Take comfort in about the same complaint.
    So science and religion really meet.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)