History of Christianity in the United States

Christianity was introduced to

Catholicism first came to the territories now forming the United States just before the

French territories

In the French territories, Catholicism was ushered in with the establishment of colonies and forts in

The French colony of Louisiana originally claimed all the land on both sides of the Mississippi River and the lands that drained into it. The following present day states were part of the then vast tract of Louisiana: Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

British colonies

Many of the British North American colonies that eventually formed the United States of America were settled in the 17th century by men and women, who, in the face of European

Virginia

The Church of England was legally established in the Colony of Virginia in 1619, and authorities in England sent 22 Anglican clergyman by 1624. In practice, establishment meant that local taxes were funneled through the local parish to handle the needs of local government, such as roads and relief for the poor, in addition to the salary of the minister. There was no bishop in colonial Virginia, and in practice the local vestry, consisting of laymen, controlled the parish.^[3]

As in England, the parish became a unit of local importance. It was led spiritually by a rector and governed by a vestry – a committee of members who were generally respected in the community. A typical parish contained three or four churches, as the parish churches needed to be close enough for people to travel to worship services, where attendance was expected of everyone. Parishes typically had a church farm (or "glebe") to help support it financially.^[4]

The colonists were typically inattentive, uninterested, and bored during church services, according to the ministers, who complained that the people were sleeping, whispering, ogling the fashionably dressed women, walking about and coming and going, or at best looking out the windows or staring blankly into space.^[5] There were too few ministers for the widely scattered population, so ministers encouraged parishioners to become devout at home, using the Book of Common Prayer for private prayer and devotion (rather than the Bible). This allowed devout Anglicans to lead an active and sincere religious life apart from the unsatisfactory formal church services. The stress on personal piety opened the way for the First Great Awakening, which pulled people away from the established church.^[6]

New England

A group which later became known as the

Delaware was originally settled by Lutherans of New Sweden. When the Dutch of New Netherland conquered the colony, the Swedes and Finns were allowed to retain their religious institutions. Similarly, when the English subsequently took over the Dutch colonial holdings, the religious autonomy of the Dutch, Swedes, and Finns persisted, creating a culture of increased religious tolerance.

The

The efforts of the founding fathers to find a proper role for their support of religion—and the degree to which religion can be supported by public officials without being inconsistent with the revolutionary imperative of freedom of religion for all citizens—is a question that is still debated in the country today.

Maryland

Catholicism was introduced to the English colonies with the founding of the

Russian traders settled in Alaska during the 18th century. In 1740, a Divine Liturgy was celebrated on board a Russian ship off the Alaskan coast. In 1794, the Russian Orthodox Church sent missionaries—among them Herman of Alaska—to establish a formal mission in Alaska. Their missionary endeavors contributed to the conversion of many Alaskan natives to the Orthodox faith. A diocese was established, whose first bishop was Innocent of Alaska.

At

By 1780 the percentage of adult colonists who adhered to a church was between 10% and 30%, not counting slaves or Native Americans. North Carolina had the lowest percentage at about 4%, while New Hampshire and South Carolina were tied for the highest, at about 16%.[10]

Great Awakening

Evangelicalism is difficult to date and to define. Scholars have argued that, as a self-conscious movement, evangelicalism did not arise until the mid-17th century, perhaps not until the Great Awakening itself. The fundamental premise of evangelicalism is the conversion of individuals from a state of sin to a "

The first generation of New England Puritans required that church members undergo a conversion experience that they could describe publicly. Their successors were not as successful in reaping harvests of redeemed souls. The movement began with

The Revolution split some denominations, notably the Church of England, whose ministers were bound by oath to support the king, and the Quakers, who were traditionally pacifists. Religious practice suffered in certain places because of the absence of ministers and the destruction of churches, but in other areas religion flourished.

The American Revolution inflicted deeper wounds on the Church of England in America than on any other denomination because the

After independence, the American states were obliged to write constitutions establishing how each would be governed. For three years, from 1778 to 1780, the political energies of Massachusetts were absorbed in drafting a charter of government that the voters would accept.

One of the most contentious issues was whether the state would support the church financially. Advocating such a policy were the ministers and most members of the Congregational Church, which had been established, and hence had received public financial support, during the colonial period. The Baptists, who had grown strong since the Great Awakening, tenaciously adhered to their ancient conviction that churches should receive no support from the state.

The Constitutional Convention chose to support the church and Article Three authorized a general religious tax to be directed to the church of a taxpayers' choice. Despite substantial doubt that Article Three had been approved by the required two thirds of the voters, in 1780 Massachusetts authorities declared it and the rest of the state constitution to have been duly adopted. Such tax laws also took effect in Connecticut and New Hampshire.

In 1788,

The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant movement that began around 1790, and gained momentum by 1800. Membership rose rapidly among Baptist and Methodist congregations whose preachers led the movement. It was past its peak by the 1840s. It was a reaction against skepticism, deism, and rational Christianity, and was especially attractive to young women.^[13] Millions of new members enrolled in existing evangelical denominations and led to the formation of new denominations. Many converts believed that the Awakening heralded a new millennial age. The Second Great Awakening stimulated the establishment of many reform movements designed to remedy the evils of society before the anticipated Second Coming of Jesus Christ.^[14]

While the First Great Awakening was centered on reviving the spirituality of established congregations, the Second focused on the unchurched and sought to instill in them a deep sense of personal salvation as experienced in revival meetings.

The principal innovation produced by the revivals was the camp meeting. When assembled in a field or at the edge of a forest for a prolonged religious meeting, the participants transformed the site into a camp meeting. Singing and preaching was the main activity for several days. The revivals were often intense and created intense emotions. Some fell away but many if not most became permanent church members. The Methodists and Baptists made them one of the evangelical signatures of the denomination.^[15]

During the Second Great Awakening new Protestant denominations emerged such as Adventism, the Restoration Movement, and groups such as Jehovah's Witnesses and (although it did not use revivals) Mormonism.

Restoration Movement

The Restoration Movement (also known as the "Stone-Campbell Movement") generally refers to the "American Restoration Movement," which began on the American frontier during the

They were united, among other things, in the belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, that churches celebrate the Lord's Supper on the first day of each week, and that baptism of adult believers, by immersion in water, is a necessary condition for Salvation.

The Restoration Movement began as two separate threads, each of which initially developed without the knowledge of the other, during the

The Restoration Movement has seen several divisions, resulting in separate groups. Three modern groups claim the Stone Campbell movement as their roots: Churches of Christ, Christian churches and churches of Christ, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Some see divisions in the movement as the result of the tension between the goals of restoration and ecumenism, with the Churches of Christ and Christian churches and churches of Christ resolving the tension by stressing restoration while the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) resolved the tension by stressing ecumenism.^[17]: 383

Latter Day Saints

The

After Smith's death, a

Jehovah's Witnesses

In 1870,

Russell's group split into several rival organisations after his death in 1916. One of those groups retained control of Russell's magazine, Zion's Watch Tower and Herald of Christ's Presence, and his legal corporation, the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society of Pennsylvania, and adopted the name Jehovah's witnesses in 1931.^[23][24] Substantial organizational and doctrinal changes occurred between 1917 and the 1950s. The religion's history has consisted of four distinct phases linked with the successive presidencies of Charles Taze Russell, Joseph Rutherford, Nathan Knorr and Frederick Franz.^[25]

Separation of church and state

In October 1801, members of the Danbury Baptists Associations wrote a letter to the new president-elect Thomas Jefferson. Baptists, being a minority in Connecticut, were still required to pay fees to support the Congregationalist majority. The Baptists found this intolerable. The Baptists, well aware of Jefferson's own unorthodox beliefs, sought him as an ally in making all religious expression a fundamental human right and not a matter of government largesse.

In his January 1, 1802, reply to the Danbury Baptist Association Jefferson summed up the First Amendment's original intent, and used for the first time anywhere a now-familiar phrase in today's political and judicial circles: the amendment established a "wall of separation between church and state". Largely unknown in its day, this phrase has since become a major Constitutional issue. The first time the U.S. Supreme Court cited that phrase from Jefferson was in 1878, 76 years later.

African American churches

The Christianity of the black population was grounded in evangelicalism. The Second Great Awakening has been called the "central and defining event in the development of Afro-Christianity." During these revivals Baptists and Methodists converted large numbers of African Americans. However, many were disappointed at the treatment they received from their fellow believers and at the backsliding in the commitment to abolish slavery that many white Baptists and Methodists had advocated immediately after the American Revolution.

When their discontent could not be contained, forceful black leaders followed what was becoming an American habit—they formed new denominations. In 1787,

The first American movement to abolish slavery came in the spring of 1688 when German and Dutch

Evangelical abolitionists founded some colleges, most notably Bates College in Maine and Oberlin College in Ohio. The well-established colleges, such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, generally opposed abolition,^{[citation needed]} although the movement did attract such figures as Yale president Noah Porter and Harvard president Thomas Hill.

The Catholic Church in America had long ties in slaveholding Maryland and Louisiana. Despite a firm stand for the spiritual equality of black people, and the resounding condemnation of slavery by Pope Gregory XVI in his bull In supremo apostolatus issued in 1839, the American church continued in deeds, if not in public discourse, to support slaveholding interests. The Bishop of New York denounced O'Connell's petition as a forgery, and if genuine, an unwarranted foreign interference. The Bishop of Charleston declared that, while Catholic tradition opposed slave trading, it had nothing against slavery. No American bishop supported abolition before the Civil War. While the war went on, they continued to allow slave-owners to take communion.

One historian observed that ritualist churches separated themselves from heretics rather than sinners; he observed that Episcopalians and Lutherans also accommodated themselves to slavery. (Indeed, one southern Episcopal bishop was a Confederate general.) There were more reasons than religious tradition, however, as the Anglican Church had been the established church in the South during the colonial period. It was linked to the traditions of landed gentry and the wealthier and educated planter classes, and the Southern traditions, longer than any other church. In addition, while the Protestant missionaries of the Great Awakening initially opposed slavery in the South, by the early decades of the 19th century, Baptist and Methodist preachers in the South had come to an accommodation with it in order to evangelize farmers and artisans. By the Civil War, the Baptist and Methodist churches split into regional associations because of slavery.^[26]

After O'Connell's failure, the American Repeal Associations broke up; but the Garrisonians rarely relapsed into the "bitter hostility" of American Protestants towards the Roman Church. Some antislavery men joined the

The abolitionist movement was strengthened by the activities of free

, who was the first Orthodox bishop to be consecrated in America.

Liberal Christianity

The "secularization of society" is attributed to the time of the Enlightenment. In the United States, religious observance is much higher than in Europe, and the United States' culture leans conservative in comparison to other western nations, in part due to the Christian element.

Liberal Christianity, exemplified by some theologians, sought to bring to churches new critical approaches to the Bible. Sometimes called liberal theology, liberal Christianity is an umbrella term covering movements and ideas within 19th and 20th century Christianity. New attitudes became evident, and the practice of questioning the nearly universally accepted Christian orthodoxy began to come to the forefront.

In the post–World War I era, Liberalism was the faster-growing sector of the American church. Liberal wings of denominations were on the rise, and a considerable number of seminaries held and taught from a liberal perspective as well. In the post–World War II era, the trend began to swing back towards the conservative camp in America's seminaries and church structures.

Fundamentalism

Christian fundamentalism began as a movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to reject influences of secular humanism and source criticism in modern Christianity. In reaction to liberal Protestant groups that denied doctrines considered fundamental to these conservative groups, they sought to establish tenets necessary to maintaining a Christian identity, the "fundamentals", hence the term fundamentalist.

Especially targeting critical approaches to the interpretation of the Bible, and trying to blockade the inroads made into their churches by secular scientific assumptions, the fundamentalists grew in various denominations as independent movements of resistance to the drift away from historic Christianity.

Over time, the movement divided, with the label Fundamentalist being retained by the smaller and more hard line groups. Evangelical has become the main identifier of the groups holding to the movement's moderate and earliest ideas.

Roman Catholicism

Main article:

History of Roman Catholicism in the United States

See also:

Roman Catholicism in the United States

By 1850 Roman Catholics had become the country's largest single denomination. Between 1860 and 1890 the population of Roman Catholics in the United States tripled through immigration; by the end of the decade it would reach seven million. These immigrant Catholics came from Ireland, Southern Germany, Italy, Poland and Eastern Europe. The influx would eventually bring increased political power for the Roman Catholic Church and a greater cultural presence, which led to a growing fear of the Catholic "menace". As the 19th century wore on, animosity waned; Protestant Americans realized that Roman Catholics were not trying to seize control of the government. Nonetheless, fears continued into the 20th century that there was too much "Catholic influence" on the government.

Anti-Catholicism

Main article: Anti-Catholicism

Anti-Catholic animus in the United States reached a peak in the 19th century when the Protestant population became alarmed by the influx of Catholic immigrants. Fearing the end of times, some American Protestants who believed they were God's chosen people, went so far as to claim that the Catholic Church was the Whore of Babylon in the Book of Revelation.^[27]

The resulting "nativist" movement, which achieved prominence in the 1840s, was whipped into a frenzy of anti-Catholicism that led to mob violence, the burning of Catholic property, and the killing of Catholics.^[28]

This violence was fed by claims that Catholics were destroying the culture of the United States. Irish Catholic immigrants were blamed for raising the taxes of the country^{[citation needed]} as well as for spreading violence and disease.

The nativist movement found expression in a national political movement called the

Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s, which (unsuccessfully) ran former president Millard Fillmore

as its presidential candidate in 1856.

The Catholic parochial school system developed in the early-to-mid-19th century partly in response to what was seen as anti-Catholic bias in American public schools.^[citation needed] The recent wave of newly established Protestant schools is sometimes similarly attributed to the teaching of evolution (as opposed to creationism) in public schools.

Most states passed a constitutional amendment, called "

United States Supreme Court partially vitiated these amendments, in theory, when they ruled that vouchers were constitutional if tax dollars followed a child to a school, even if it were religious. However, no state school system had, by 2009, changed its laws to allow this.^[29]

Labor union movement

Further information: Knights of Labor

The Catholic Church exercised a prominent role in shaping America's labor movement. From the onset of significant immigration in the 1840s, the Church in the United States was predominantly urban, with both its leaders and congregants usually of the laboring classes. Over the course of the second half of the 19th century, nativism, anti-Catholicism, and anti-unionism coalesced in Republican politics, and Catholics gravitated toward unions and the Democratic Party.

The

Terence Powderly

, its president from 1881 onward).

In Rerum novarum (1891), Pope Leo XIII criticized the concentration of wealth and power, spoke out against the abuses that workers faced, and demanded that workers should be granted certain rights and safety regulations. He upheld the right of voluntary association, specifically commending labor unions. At the same time, he reiterated the Church's defense of private property, condemned socialism, and emphasized the need for Catholics to form and join unions that were not compromised by secular and revolutionary ideologies.^[30]

Rerum novarum provided new impetus for Catholics to become active in the labor movement, even if its exhortation to form specifically Catholic labor unions was widely interpreted as irrelevant to the pluralist context of the United States. While atheism underpinned many European unions and stimulated Catholic unionists to form separate labor federations, the religious neutrality of unions in the U.S. provided no such impetus. American Catholics seldom dominated unions, but they exerted influence across organized labor. Catholic union members and leaders played important roles in steering American unions away from socialism.

Youth programs

While children and youth in the colonial era were treated as small adults, awareness of their special status and needs grew in the nineteenth century, denominations large and small began special programs for their young people. Protestant theologian Horace Bushnell in Christian Nurture (1847) emphasized the necessity of identifying and supporting the religiosity of children and young adults. Beginning in the 1790s the Protestant denominations set up Sunday school programs. They provided a major source of new members.^[31] Urban Protestant churchmen set up the interdenominational YMCA (and later the YWCA) programs in cities from the 1850s.^[32] Methodists looked on their youth as potential political activists, providing them with opportunities to engage in social justice movements such as prohibition. Black Protestants, especially after they could form their own separate churches, integrated their young people directly into the larger religious community. Their youth played a major role in the leadership of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and the 1960s. White evangelicals in the twentieth century set up Bible clubs for teenagers, and experimented with the use of music to attract young people. The Catholics started a network of parochial schools, and by the late nineteenth century probably more than half of their young members were attending elementary schools run by local parishes.^[33] Some Missouri Synod German Lutherans and Dutch Reformed churches also started parochial schools. In the twentieth century, all the denominations sponsored programs such as the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.^[34]

20th century

Social Gospel

Main article: Social Gospel

The

Progressive Movement and most were theologically liberal, although they were typically conservative when it came to their views on social issues. Important leaders include Richard T. Ely, Josiah Strong, Washington Gladden, and Walter Rauschenbusch.^[38]

The Social Gospel movement peaked in the early 20th century. Some scholars argue that the horrors caused by World War I left many disillusioned with the Social Gospel's ideals and promise of a glorious future for mankind.

Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. "Social Gospel" principles continue to inspire newer movements such as Christians Against Poverty.^[42]

Scopes Monkey Trial

The

creation-evolution controversy.^[44]

After the passage of the Butler Act, the

John Scopes intentionally violated the Act. The highly publicized trial pitted two of the pre-eminent lawyers of the time against one another; three-time Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan headed up the prosecution and famous defense attorney Clarence Darrow spoke for Scopes. Scopes was convicted but the charges were dropped on a technicality. The result was a setback for years in the Fundamentalist effort to halt the teaching of evolution.^[45]

Evangelicalism

In the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, there has been a marked rise in the

Protestant

denominations, especially those that were more exclusively evangelical, and a corresponding decline in the mainstream liberal churches.

The 1950s saw a boom in the Evangelical church in America. The post–World War II prosperity experienced in the U.S. also had its effects on the church. Church buildings were erected in large numbers, and the Evangelical church's activities grew along with this expansive physical growth. In the southern U.S., the Evangelicals, represented by leaders such as Billy Graham, experienced a notable surge displacing the caricature of the pulpit-pounding country preachers of fundamentalism. The stereotypes gradually shifted.

Evangelicals are as diverse as the names that appear:

Chuck Colson, J. Vernon McGee, or Jimmy Carter—or even Evangelical institutions such as Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (Boston) or Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

(Chicago). Although there exists a diversity in the Evangelical community worldwide, the ties that bind all Evangelicals include: a "high view" of Scripture, belief in the deity of Christ, the Trinity, salvation by grace through faith, and the bodily resurrection of Christ, and others.

Pentecostalism

Los Angeles, California

The

speaking in tongues, dramatic worship services, and inter-racial mingling. It was the primary catalyst for the rise of Pentecostalism

spread by those who experienced what they believed to be miraculous interventions of God.

Many Pentecostals embrace the term

Oneness.^[46]

Pentecostalism would later birth the Charismatic movement within already established denominations; some Pentecostals use the two terms interchangeably. Pentecostalism claims more than 250 million adherents worldwide.^[47] When Charismatics are added with Pentecostals the number nearly doubles to a quarter of the world's 2 billion Christians.^[48]

Roman Catholicism

By the beginning of the 20th century, approximately one-sixth of the population of the United States was Roman Catholic. Modern Roman Catholic immigrants come to the United States from the Philippines, Poland, and Latin America, especially from Mexico. This multiculturalism and diversity impacted Catholicism in the United States. For example, many dioceses have Mass in both Spanish and English.

Eastern Orthodoxy

Emigration from Greece and the Near East in the last hundred years has increased the Orthodox diaspora in the United States and elsewhere. Virtually all the Orthodox nationalities—Greek, Arab, Russian, Serbian, Albanian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Bulgarian—are represented in the United States.

Many of the Orthodox church movements in the West are fragmented under jurisdictionalism. This is where the groups are divided by ethnicity as the unifying character to each movement. As the older ethnic laity die off, more of the churches are opening to new converts. Early on these converts would have faced a daunting task in having to learn the language and culture of the respective Orthodox group in order to properly convert to Orthodoxy. Now many of the churches perform their services in English or Spanish or Portuguese (depending on the Metropolitan or district).

Russian Orthodoxy

In 1920

Patriarch Tikhon issued an ukase

(decree) that dioceses of the Church of Russia that were cut off from the governance of the highest Church authority (i.e. the Holy Synod and the Patriarch) should be managed independently until such time as normal relations with the highest Church authority could be resumed. On this basis, the North American diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church (known as the "Metropolia") continued to exist in a de facto autonomous mode of self-governance. The financial hardship that beset the North American diocese as the result of the Russian Revolution resulted in a degree of administrative chaos, with the result that other national Orthodox communities in North America turned to the churches in their respective homelands for pastoral care and governance.

A group of bishops who had left Russia in the wake of the Russian Civil War gathered in Sremski-Karlovci, Yugoslavia, and adopted a pro-monarchist stand. The group further claimed to speak as a synod for the entire "free" Russian church. This group, which to this day includes a sizable portion of the Russian emigration, was formally dissolved in 1922 by Patriarch Tikhon, who then appointed metropolitans Platon and Evlogy as ruling bishops in America and Europe, respectively. Both metropolitans continued to entertain relations intermittently with the synod in Karlovci.

Between the World Wars the Metropolia coexisted and at times cooperated with an independent

Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia

(ROCOR), sometimes also called the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. The two groups eventually went separate ways. ROCOR, which moved its headquarters to North America after the Second World War, claimed but failed to establish jurisdiction over all parishes of Russian origin in North America. The Metropolia, as a former diocese of the Russian Church, looked to the latter as its highest church authority, albeit one from which it was temporarily cut off under the conditions of the communist regime in Russia.

After World War II the Patriarchate of Moscow made unsuccessful attempts to regain control over these groups. After resuming communication with Moscow in the early 1960s, and being granted

ROCOR.^{[citation needed]} The Patriarchate of Moscow thereby renounced its former canonical claims in the United States and Canada.^{[citation needed}

]

National associations

The Federal Council of Churches, founded in 1908, marked the first major expression of a growing modern ecumenical movement among Christians in the United States. It was active in pressing for reform of public and private policies, particularly as they impacted the lives of those living in poverty, and developed a comprehensive and widely debated Social Creed which served as a humanitarian "bill of rights" for those seeking improvements in American life.

In 1950, the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (usually identified as National Council of Churches, or NCC) represented a substantial expansion in the development of ecumenical cooperation. It was a merger of the Federal Council of Churches, the International Council of Religious Education, and several other interchurch ministries. In 2012, the NCC is a joint venture of 35 Christian denominations in the United States with 100,000 local congregations and 40,000,000 adherents.^[50] Its member communions include Mainline Protestant, Orthodox, African-American, Evangelical and historic Peace churches. The NCC took a prominent role in the Civil Rights Movement, and fostered the publication of the widely used Revised Standard Version of the Bible, followed by an updated and sex-neutral New Revised Standard Version, the first translation to benefit from the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The organization is headquartered in Washington, DC. The NCC is related fraternally to hundreds of local and regional councils of churches, to other national councils across the globe, and to the World Council of Churches. All of these bodies are independently governed.

Carl McIntire led in organizing the

fundamentalist

organization set up in opposition to what became the National Council of Churches. The organization is headquartered in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The ACCC is related fraternally to the International Council of Christian Churches. McIntire invited the Evangelicals for United Action to join with them, but those who met in St. Louis declined the offer.

A national conference for United Action Among

World Evangelical Fellowship

.

Oregon Compulsory Education Act

Main article: Oregon Compulsory Education Act

After World War I, some states concerned about the influence of immigrants and "foreign" values looked to public schools for help. The states drafted laws designed to use schools to promote a common American culture.

In 1922, the

Supreme Court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925) before it went into effect.^[51]

The law caused outraged Catholics to organize locally and nationally for the right to send their children to Catholic schools. In Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the United States Supreme Court declared the Oregon's Compulsory Education Act unconstitutional in a ruling that has been called "the Magna Carta of the parochial school system."

Civil Rights Movement

As the center of community life,

Civil Rights Movement

. Their history as a focal point for the Black community and as a link between the Black and White worlds made them natural for this purpose.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was one of many notable Black ministers involved in the movement. He helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1957), serving as its first president. In 1964, King received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end segregation and racial discrimination through non-violent civil disobedience. King was assassinated in 1968.

C.T. Vivian and Jesse Jackson are among the many notable minister-activists.^[52]

They were especially important during the later years of the movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

See also

• Catholic social activism in the United States
• Christianity in the United States
• History of religion in the United States
• History of Roman Catholicism in the United States
• Religion in the United States

Notes

1. ^ In 1634, even Maryland, the colony with the most Catholics, had less than 3,000 Catholics out of a population of 34,000. By 1785, when the population of the 13 Colonies was nearly four million, there were fewer than 25,000 Catholics.

References

1. ^ Engelhardt, Zephyrin, O.F.M. San Juan Capistrano Mission, p. 258, Standard Printing Co., Los Angeles 1922.
2. ^ Norman, The Roman Catholic Church an Illustrated History (2007), pp. 111–2
3. ISBN 978-0-945015-28-4
4. ^ Philip Alexander, Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century: An Inquiry into the Religious, Moral, Educational, Legal, Military, and Political Condition of the People, Based on Original and Contemporaneous Records (1910) pp. 55–177
5. ^ Jacob M. Blosser, "Irreverent Empire: Anglican Inattention in an Atlantic World," Church History, Sept 2008, Vol. 77 Issue 3, pp. 596–628
6. ^ Edward L. Bond, "Anglican theology and devotion in James Blair's Virginia, 1685–1743," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 1996, Vol. 104 Issue 3, pp. 313–40
7. JSTOR 1974310
   .
8. OCLC 8224468
   .
9. ^ Ellis, John Tracy (1956). American Catholicism.
10. ISBN 0-8050-4927-4
    .
11. ^ "The First Great Awakening". ushistory.org. Retrieved February 18, 2022.
12. ISSN 0160-8460. Archived from the original
    on 2008-03-27.
13. Nancy Cott
    , "Young Women in the Great Awakening in New England," Feminist Studies 3, no. 1/2 (Autumn 1975): 15.
14. ^ Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (1957)
15. ^ Dickson D., Bruce, Jr., And They All Sang Hallelujah: Plain Folk Camp-Meeting Religion, 1800–1845 (1974)
16. ISBN 978-0-8272-1703-4
17. ^
    ISBN 978-0-89900-909-4
    , 573 pages
18. ^ Jehovah's Witnesses-Proclaimers of God's Kingdom, chap. 15 p. 204 Development of the Organization Structure
19. ^ ^{a b} Holden, A. (2002). Jehovah's Witnesses: Portrait of a Contemporary Religious Movement. Routledge. p. 18.
20. ^ The Watch Tower from 1879–1916 available online by issue and by article from the seven-volume Watch Tower Reprints, published by the Watch Tower Society in 1920
21. ^ "Prospectus". Zion's Watch Tower. 1 July 1879.
22. ^ Jehovah's Witnesses: Proclaimers of God's Kingdom. Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society. 1993. p. 576.
23. ISBN 0-09-455940-6
    .
24. ^ "Walking in the Path of Increasing Light". The Watchtower: 27. 15 February 2006. the resolution stated: "... we desire to be known as and called by the name, to wit, Jehovah's witnesses."
25. ISBN 0-8020-6545-7
    .
26. ^ Dooley 11–15; McKivigan 27 (ritualism), pp. 30, 51, 191, Osofsky; ANB Leonidas Polk
27. ISBN 0-8386-3227-0
    .
28. ^ Jimmy Akin (2001-03-01). "The History of Anti-Catholicism". This Rock. Catholic Answers. Archived from the original on 2008-09-07. Retrieved 2008-11-10.
29. ^ Bush, Jeb (March 4, 2009). NO: Choice forces educators to improve. The Atlanta Constitution-Journal.
30. ^ "Rerum Novarum (May 15, 1891) | LEO XIII". www.vatican.va. Retrieved 2023-05-13.
31. ^ Anne M. Boylan, Sunday School: The Formation of an American Institution, 1790–1880 (1990)
32. ^ David Macleod, Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners, 1870–1920 (2004)
33. ^ Timothy Walch, Parish School: A History of American Catholic Parochial Education from Colonial Times to the Present (1995)
34. ^ Thomas E. Burgler, The Juvenilization of American Christianity (2012)
35. ^ Cecelia Tichi, Civic passions: seven who launched progressive America (and what they teach us) (2009) p. 221
36. social evils
    .
37. ISBN 9780875804439
    .
38. ^ Ronald C. White, Jr., Liberty and Justice for All: Racial Reform and the Social Gospel (1877–1925) (1990).
39. ^ White (1990)
40. ^ Willem A. Visser 't Hooft, The Background of the Social Gospel in America (1928).
41. ^ Ahlstrom (1974)
42. ^ Christopher H. Evans, The social gospel today (2001) p. 149
43. ^ Full text of the Butler Act and the bill that repealed it Archived 2009-05-20 at the Wayback Machine
44. JSTOR 2674729
    .
45. ^ Michael Lienesch, In the Beginning: Fundamentalism, the Scopes Trial, and the Making of the Antievolution Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2007)
46. ISBN 978-0-7391-2102-3
    .
47. ^ BBC – Religion & Ethics (2007-06-20). "Pentecostalism". Retrieved 2009-02-10.
48. ^ Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (5 October 2006). "Pentecostalism". Retrieved 2008-09-24.
49. ^ "A History and Introduction of the Orthodox Church in America". www.oca.org. Retrieved 2023-05-13.
50. ISBN 978-1-4267-4666-6
    .
51. ^ Howard, J. Paul. "Cross-Border Reflections, Parents' Right to Direct Their Children's Education Under the U.S. and Canadian Constitutions" Archived 2008-10-29 at the Wayback Machine, Education Canada, v41 n2 p36-37 Sum 2001.
52. ^ "We Shall Overcome: The Players". Retrieved 2007-05-29.

Further reading

Main article: History of religion in the United States § Bibliography

• Ahlstrom, Sydney E. A Religious History of the American People (1972) the standard history excerpt and text search
• Albright, Raymond W. A history of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1964)
• Balmer, Randall. Protestantism in America (2005)
• Brekus, Catherine A. Strangers & Pilgrims: Female Preaching in America, 1740-1845 U of North Carolina Press, 1998 online edition
• Bonomi, Patricia U. Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America Oxford University Press, 1988 online edition
• Butler, Jon. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. 1990.
• Butler, Jon, et al. Religion in American Life: A Short History (2011)
• Dolan, Jay P. The American Catholic Experience (1992)
• Hatch, Nathan O. The Democratization of American Christianity (1989). excerpt and text search
• Johnson, Paul, ed. African-American Christianity: Essays in History, (1994) complete text online free
• Keller, Rosemary Skinner, and Rosemary Radford Ruether, eds. Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America (3 vol 2006)
• McLoughlin, William G. Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607-1977 (1978) excerpt and text search.
• Mouw, Richard J., and Mark A. Noll. Wonderful Words of Life: Hymns in American Protestant History and Theology, (2004) excerpt and text search
• Noll, Mark A. American Evangelical Christianity: An Introduction (2000) excerpt and text search
• Rodriguez, Juan. "Teacher of the year." (2000)
• Tweed, Thomas, ed. Retelling U.S. Religious History, (1997) complete text online free
• Wigger, John H.. and Nathan O. Hatch. Methodism and the Shaping of American Culture. (2001) excerpt and text search

Since 1900

• Allitt, Patrick. Religion in America Since 1945: A History (2004), very good overview
• Balmer, Randall. The Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism (2002) excerpt and text search
• Carpenter, Joel A. Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (1999), good coverage of Fundamentalism since 1930
• Curtis, Susan. A Consuming Faith: The Social Gospel and Modern American Culture. (1991).
• Hein, David. Noble Powell and the Episcopal Establishment in the Twentieth Century. (2001, 2007.)
• Marty, Martin E. Modern American Religion, Vol. 1: The Irony of It All, 1893-1919 (1986); Modern American Religion. Vol. 2: The Noise of Conflict, 1919-1941 (1991); Modern American Religion, Volume 3: Under God, Indivisible, 1941-1960 (1999), standard scholarly history
• Marsden, George M. Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870-1925 (1980). very important history online edition
• Meyer, Donald. The Protestant Search for Political Realism, 1919-1941, (1988) in ACLS e-books
• Morris, Charles. American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church (2011), popular history
• Richey, Russell E. et al. eds. United Methodism and American Culture. Vol. 1, Ecclesiology, Mission and Identity (1997); Vol. 2. The People(s) Called Methodist: Forms and Reforms of Their Life (1998); Vol. 3. Doctrines and Discipline (1999); Vol. 4, Questions for the Twenty-First Century Church. (1999), historical essays by scholars; focus on 20th century