History of religion in the United States
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: Sections incoherently placed throughout the article. (April 2021) |
This article is part of a series on the | |
Cathedral of San Juan Bautista in San Juan, Puerto Rico . It is the oldest church building and oldest congregation in the United States. | |
---|---|
1981–1991 | |
1991–2008 | |
Post-Cold War Era | 1991–2008 |
2008–present | |
Modern Era | 2008–present |
Though
As Western Europe secularized in the late 20th century, the United States largely resisted the trend, so that, by the 21st century, the US was one of the most strongly Christian of all major Western nations. Religiously-based moral positions on issues such as abortion and homosexuality played a hotly debated role in American politics. However, the United States has dramatically and rapidly secularized in recent years, with around 26% of the population currently declaring themselves “unaffiliated”, either in regard to a religion in general or to an organized religion.[10]
Demographics
The
Finke and Stark conducted a statistical analysis of the official census data after 1850, and Atlas for 1776, to estimate the number of Americans who were adherents to a specific denomination. In 1776 their estimate is 17%. In the late 19th Century, 1850–1890, the rate increased from 34% to 45%. From 1890 –1952, the rate grew from 45% to 59%.[13]
Pew Forum data
According to the Pew Research Center the percentage of Protestants in the United States has decreased from over two-thirds in 1948 to less than half by 2012 with 48% of Americans identifying as Protestant.[14]
Gallup data
The data here comes from
Percentage of Americans by religious affiliation (Gallup)[15] | ||
|
This decline in Protestant immigration has corresponded to the
Religion | 1992 | 1995 | 2000 | 2005 | 2010 | 2011 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Southern Baptist
|
9% | 10% | 8% | 5% | 4% | 4% |
Other Baptist
|
10% | 9% | 10% | 11% | 13% | 9% |
Methodist
|
10% | 9% | 9% | 8% | 7% | 5% |
Presbyterian
|
5% | 4% | 5% | 3% | 3% | 2% |
Episcopalian | 2% | 2% | 3% | 3% | 2% | 1% |
Lutheran
|
7% | 6% | 7% | 5% | 5% | 5% |
Pentecostal
|
1% | 3% | 2% | 2% | 2% | 2% |
Church of Christ | 2% | 2% | 2% | 1% | 2% | |
Other Protestant
|
11% | 9% | 4% | 5% | 4% | 5% |
Non-denominational Protestant | 1% | 3% | 4% | 5% | 5% | 4% |
No opinion | 5% | 1% | 2% | 1% | 2% | 1% |
Over the last 19 years, some of the more traditional Protestant denominations and branches experienced a large decline as a percentage of the total American population. These include Southern Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Other Protestants. The only Protestant category that significantly increased its percentage share over the last 19 years is non-denominational Protestantism.[15]
Before European colonization
Native Americans
Native American religions are the spiritual practices of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Traditional Native American ceremonial ways can vary widely, and are based on the differing histories and beliefs of individual tribes, clans and bands. Early European explorers describe individual Native American tribes and even small bands as each having their own religious practices. Theology may be monotheistic, polytheistic, henotheistic, animistic, or some combination thereof. Traditional beliefs are usually passed down in the forms of oral histories, stories, allegories and principles, and rely on face to face teaching in one's family and community.[16]
From time to time important religious leaders organized revivals. In Indiana in 1805, Tenskwatawa (called the Shanee Prophet by Americans) led a religious revival following a smallpox epidemic and a series of witch-hunts. His beliefs were based on the earlier teachings of the Lenape prophets, Scattamek and Neolin, who predicted a coming apocalypse that would destroy the European-American settlers.[17] Tenskwatawa urged the tribes to reject the ways of the Americans: to give up firearms, liquor, and American-style clothing, to pay traders only half the value of their debts, and to refrain from ceding any more lands to the United States. The revival led to warfare led by his brother Tecumseh against the white settlers.[18]
Native Americans were the target of extensive Christian missionary activity. Catholics launched Jesuit Missions amongst the Huron and the Spanish missions in California) and various Protestant denominations. Numerous Protestant denominations were active. By the late-19th century, most Native Americans integrated into American society generally have become Christians, along with a large portion of those living on reservations.[19][20] The Navajo, the largest and most isolated tribe, resisted missionary overtures until Pentecostal revivalism attracted their support after 1950.[21]
Before the American Revolution
The New England colonies were settled partially by English who faced religious persecution.[22] They were conceived and established "as plantations of religion." Some settlers who arrived in these areas came for secular motives—"to catch fish" as one New Englander put it—but the great majority left Europe to worship in the way they believed to be correct.[23] They supported the efforts of their leaders to create "a City upon a Hill" or a "holy experiment," whose success would prove that God's plan could be successfully realized in the American wilderness.
Puritans
Puritanism was not a religion of its own, but rather was a movement, started in England, to reform Protestantism.[24] The first Puritans in America who were called such, however, came to America between 1629 and 1640 and settled New England, specifically the Massachusetts Bay area. These did not consider themselves completely separated from the English Church, however, and originally believed that they would one day return to purify England.[25]
Puritans are often confused with a distinct, but similar sect of Protestants, called Separatists, who also believed that the Church of England was corrupt. However, Separatists believed that nothing more could be done to purify England itself. Separatists were persecuted, and their religion was outlawed in England, so they resolved to form a pure church of their own. One group of these, the Pilgrims, left England for America in 1620, originally settling in Plymouth, Massachusetts.[26] These are the settlers who founded the tradition of Thanksgiving in America.[27] They are also the group that many people attempt to pay homage to by dressing in dull colors and buckled hats. However, the Pilgrims did not actually dress as such.[28]
Together, the Pilgrims and the Puritans helped to form the Massachusetts Bay Colony.[24] While it is difficult to define a distinct time that Puritanism ended or a reason why it ended, one of the reasons most cited is that they became less committed to their religion.[29] Also, while there is some disagreement on an exact end point, most sources agree that puritanism had declined by the beginning of the 18th century.[30]
Puritans valued, among other things, soberness, diligence, education, and responsibility. They believed in predestination and were intolerant of all that they considered impure, including, but not limited to, Catholicism. While they intended to purify England, they nevertheless chose their ministers and members independently.[31]
Puritan values may have had some influence on American ideals, such as individualism. For example, the puritan concept of justification-by-faith emphasized the personal values of the individual. Moreover, their physical break from the Church of England (although they did not consider themselves fully separate) proves their independence.[31] The Pilgrims may have had an influence as well. In fact, upon their first arrival in America, the Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact, a document which set up a government independent of England's control (albeit, a temporary government) which could be thought of as a predecessor to the non-temporary Declaration of Independence.[31]
Establishment in the colonial era
Early
There were also opponents to the support of any established church even at the state level. In 1773, Isaac Backus, a prominent Baptist minister in New England, observed that when "church and state are separate, the effects are happy, and they do not at all interfere with each other: but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued." Thomas Jefferson's influential Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was enacted in 1786, five years before the Bill of Rights.
Most Anglican ministers, and many Anglicans outside the South, were Loyalists. The Anglican Church was disestablished during the Revolution, and following the separation from Britain was reorganized as the independent Episcopal Church.
Persecution in America
Although they were victims of religious persecution in Europe, the Puritans supported the theory that sanctioned it: the need for uniformity of religion in the state.
Once in control in New England, they sought to break "the very neck of Schism and vile opinions." The "business" of the first settlers, a Puritan minister recalled in 1681, "was not Toleration, but [they] were professed enemies of it."[33] Puritans expelled dissenters from their colonies, a fate that in 1636 befell Roger Williams and in 1638 Anne Hutchinson, America's first major female religious leader.[34][35]
Those who defied the Puritans by persistently returning to their jurisdictions risked
Puritans also began the Salem Witch trials, named after the city that they were held in, Salem, Massachusetts. Starting with seizures of the local reverend's daughter as well as her subsequent accusations, more than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft, and 20 were executed. The colony eventually realized that the trials were a mistake and tried to help the families of the convicted members.[37]
Founding of Rhode Island
In the winter of 1636, former Puritan leader Roger Williams was expelled from Massachusetts. He argued for freedom of religion, writing "God requireth not an uniformity of Religion to be inacted and enforced in any civill state."[38] Williams later founded Rhode Island on the principle of religious freedom. He welcomed people of religious belief, even some he regarded as dangerously misguided, because he believed that "forced worship stinks in God's nostrils."[39]
Jewish refuge in America
The first record of Jews in America cites their origin as passengers aboard the Dutch ship, St. Catrina. These records were kept by Jan Pietersz Ketel who was a skipper aboard the Peereboom, which was an Amsterdam ship that arrived near the same time as the St. Catrina. According to Jan Pietersz Ketel, 23 Jewish refugees, fleeing persecution in Dutch Brazil, arrived in New Amsterdam (soon to become New York City) in 1654.[40] By the next year, this small community had established religious services in the city. Around 1677, a group of Sephardim had arrived in Newport, Rhode Island, also seeking religious liberty and, by 1678, they had purchased land in Newport.[41] Small numbers of Jews continued to come to the British North American colonies, settling mainly in the seaport towns. By the late 18th century, Jewish settlers had established several synagogues.
Quakers
The
Recently, church historians have debated whether Quakers may be regarded as radical Puritans since the Quakers carry to extremes many Puritan convictions.[42][43][44][45][46] Historians in support of the Puritan classification of Quakers argue that Quakers stretch the sober deportment of the Puritans into a glorification of "plainness."[47] Theologically, they expanded the Puritan concept of a church of individuals regenerated by the Holy Spirit to the idea of the indwelling of the Spirit or the "Light of Christ" in every person.
Such teaching struck many of the Quakers' contemporaries as dangerous heresy. Quakers were severely persecuted in England for daring to deviate so far from orthodox Christianity. By 1680, 10,000 Quakers had been imprisoned in England and 243 had died of torture and mistreatment in jail.
This persecution impelled Friends to seek refuge in Rhode Island in the 1670s, where they soon became well entrenched. In 1681, when Quaker leader William Penn parlayed a debt owed by Charles II to his father into a charter for the province of Pennsylvania, many more Quakers were prepared to grasp the opportunity to live in a land where they might worship freely. By 1685, as many as 8,000 Quakers had come to Pennsylvania from England, Wales, and Ireland.[citation needed] Although the Quakers may have resembled the Puritans in some religious beliefs and practices, they differed with them over the necessity of compelling religious uniformity in society.
Pennsylvania Germans
During the main years of German emigration to Pennsylvania in the mid-18th century, most of the emigrants were Lutherans, Reformed, or members of small sects—
The colony was owned by William Penn, a leading Quaker, and his agents encouraged German emigration to Pennsylvania by circulating promotional literature touting the economic advantages of Pennsylvania as well as the religious liberty available there. The appearance in Pennsylvania of so many religious groups made the province resemble "an asylum for banished sects."
Roman Catholics in Maryland
For their political opposition, Catholics were harassed and had largely been stripped of their civil rights since the reign of
Catholic fortunes fluctuated in Maryland during the rest of the 17th century, as they became an increasingly smaller minority of the population. After the
Virginia and the Church of England
Virginia was the largest, most populous and arguably most important colony. The Church of England was legally established; the bishop of London who had oversight of Anglican in the colonies made it a favorite missionary target and sent in 22 clergymen (in priestly orders) 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 poor relief, in addition to the salary of the minister. There was never a bishop in colonial Virginia, and in practice the local vestry consisted of laymen who controlled the parish and handled local taxes, roads and poor relief.[54]
When the elected assembly, the House of Burgesses, was established in 1619, it enacted religious laws that made Virginia highly favor Anglicanism. It passed a law in 1632 requiring that there be a "uniformitie throughout this colony both in substance and circumstance to the cannons and constitution of the Church of England."[55]
The colonists were typically uninterested during church services according to the ministers, who complained that the people were not paying attention.[56] The lack of towns meant the church had to serve scattered settlements, while the acute shortage of trained ministers meant that piety was hard to practice outside the home. Some ministers solved their problems by encouraging 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. However, the stress on private devotion weakened the need for a bishop or a large institutional church of the sort Blair wanted. The stress on personal piety opened the way for the First Great Awakening, which pulled people away from the established church.[57]
The Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and other evangelicals challenged behavior they saw as immoral and created a male leadership role that followed principles they saw as Christian and became dominant in the 19th century.
Growth of Christianity in the eighteenth century
Against a prevailing view that 18th century Americans had not perpetuated the first settlers' passionate commitment to their faith, scholars now identify a high level of religious energy in colonies after 1700. According to one expert, Judeo-Christian faith was in the "ascension rather than the declension"; another sees a "rising vitality in religious life" from 1700 onward; a third finds religion in many parts of the colonies in a state of "feverish growth."[60] Figures on church attendance and church formation support these opinions. Between 1700 and 1740, an estimated 75–80% of the population attended churches, which were being built at a headlong pace.[60]
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%.[61]
Church buildings in 18th-century America varied greatly, from the plain, modest buildings in newly settled rural areas to elegant edifices in the prosperous cities on the eastern seaboard. Churches reflected the customs and traditions as well as the wealth and social status of the denominations that built them. German churches contained features unknown in English ones.[citation needed]
Deism
Deism is a philosophical and religious position that posits that God does not interfere directly with the world. These views gained some adherents in America in the late 18th century. Deism of that era "accepted the existence of a creator on the basis of reason but rejected belief in a supernatural deity who interacts with humankind."[62] A form of deism, Christian deism, stressed morality and rejected the orthodox Christian view of the divinity of Christ, often viewing him as a sublime, but entirely human, teacher of morality.[60] The most prominent Deist was Thomas Paine, but many other founders reflected Deist language in their writings.
First Great Awakening: emergence of evangelicalism
In the American colonies the First Great Awakening was a wave of religious enthusiasm among Protestants that swept the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American Christianity. It resulted from preaching that deeply affected listeners (already church members) with a sense of personal guilt and salvation by Christ. Pulling away from ritual and ceremony, the Great Awakening made relationship with God intensely personal to the average person. Historian Sydney E. Ahlstrom sees it as part of a "great international Protestant upheaval" that also created Pietism in Germany, the Evangelical Revival and Methodism in England.[63] It brought Christianity to enslaved people and was an apocalyptic event in New England that challenged established church authority. It resulted in division between the new revivalists and the old traditionalists who insisted on ritual and doctrine. The new style of sermons and the way people practiced their faith changed Christian faith in America. People became passionately and emotionally involved in their relationship with God, rather than passively listening to intellectual discourse. Ministers who used this new style of preaching were generally called "new lights", while preachers who did not were called "old lights". People began to study the
The fundamental premise of evangelicalism is the conversion of individuals from a state of sin to a "
During the first decades of the 18th century, in the
In mass open-air revivals, preachers like
The supporters of the Awakening and its evangelical thrust—
Unlike the Second Great Awakening that began about 1800 and which reached out to the unchurched, the First Great Awakening focused on people who were already church members. It changed their rituals, their piety, and their self-awareness.[64]
Evangelicals in the South
The South had originally been settled and controlled by Anglicans, who dominated the ranks of rich planters but whose ritualistic high church established religion had little appeal to ordinary men and women, both white and black.[66][67]
Baptists
Energized by numerous itinerant
Many historians have debated the implications of the religious rivalries for the coming of the American Revolution of 1765–1783.[70] The Baptist farmers did introduce a new egalitarian ethic that largely displaced the semi-aristocratic ethic of the Anglican planters. However, both groups supported the Revolution. There was a sharp contrast between the austerity of the plain-living Baptists and the opulence of the Anglican planters, who controlled local government. Baptist church discipline, mistaken by the gentry for radicalism, served to ameliorate disorder. The struggle for religious toleration erupted and played out during the American Revolution, as the Baptists worked to disestablish the Anglican church.[71]
Baptists,
Methodists
Methodist missionaries were also active in the late colonial period. From 1776 to 1815 Methodist Bishop Francis Asbury made 42 trips into the western United States to visit Methodist congregations. In the 1780s itinerant Methodist preachers carried copies of an anti-slavery petition in their saddlebags throughout the state, calling for an end to slavery. At the same time, counter-petitions were circulated. The petitions were presented to the Assembly; they were debated, but no legislative action was taken, and after 1800 there was less and less religious opposition to slavery.[72]
American Revolution
The Revolution split some denominations, notably the Church of England, whose clergy (priests often referred to as 'ministers') were bound by oath to support the king, and the Quakers, who were traditionally pacifists. Religious practice was reduced in certain places because of the absence of ministers and the destruction of churches.
Church of England
The American Revolution inflicted deeper wounds on the
The Book of Common Prayer offered prayers for the monarch, beseeching God "to be his defender and keeper, giving him victory over all his enemies," who in 1776 were American soldiers as well as friends and neighbors of American parishioners of the Church of England. Loyalty to the church and to its head could be construed as treason to the American cause.
Patriotic American members of the Church of England, loathing to discard so fundamental a component of their faith as The Book of Common Prayer, revised it to conform to the political realities. After the
American Revolution- Civil War
Historians in recent decades have debated the nature of American religiosity in the early 19th century, focusing on issues of secularism, deism, traditional religious practices, and newly emerging evangelical forms based on the Great Awakening.[73][74]
Constitution
The Constitution ratified in 1788 makes no mention of religion except in
Establishment Clause
The
This is not only the subject of a sociological discussion, but can also be an issue for atheists in America. There are allegations of discrimination against atheists in the United States.
Jefferson, Madison, and the "wall of separation"
The phrase a "hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world" was first used by Baptist theologian
Jefferson's and Madison's conceptions of separation have long been debated. Jefferson refused to issue Proclamations of Thanksgiving sent to him by Congress during his presidency, though he did issue a Thanksgiving and Prayer proclamation as Governor of Virginia and vetoed two bills on the grounds they violated the first amendment.
After retiring from the presidency, Madison argued in his Detached Memoranda[80] for a stronger separation of church and state, opposing the very presidential issuing of religious proclamations he himself had done, and also opposing the appointment of chaplains to Congress.
Jefferson's opponents said his position meant the rejection of Christianity, but this was a caricature. In setting up the University of Virginia, Jefferson encouraged all the separate sects to have preachers of their own, though there was a constitutional ban on the State supporting a Professorship of Divinity, arising from his own Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom[81]
The treaty of Tripoli
The Treaty of Tripoli was a treaty concluded between the US and Tripolitania submitted to the Senate by President John Adams, receiving ratification unanimously from the US Senate on June 7, 1797, and signed by Adams, taking effect as the law of the land on June 10, 1797. The treaty was a routine diplomatic agreement but has attracted later attention because the English version included a clause about religion in the United States.
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
Frank Lambert, Professor of History at Purdue University, says of the treaty: "By their actions, the Founding Fathers made clear that their primary concern was religious freedom… Ten years after the Constitutional Convention ended its work, the country assured the world that the United States was a secular state"[82]
Notwithstanding the clear separation of government and religion, the predominant cultural and social nature of the nation did become strongly Christian. In an 1892 employment case Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States the US Supreme Court stated, "These, and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation."
Great Awakenings and evangelicalism
The "Great Awakenings" were large-scale revivals that came in spurts, and moved large numbers of people from unchurched to churched. The Methodists and Baptists were the most active at sponsoring revivals. The number of Methodist church members grew from 58,000 in 1790 to 258,000 in 1820 and 1,661,000 in 1860. Over 70 years Methodist membership grew by a factor of 28.6 times when the total national population grew by a factor of eight times.[84]
It made evangelicalism one of the dominant forces in American religion. Balmer explains that:
- "Evangelicalism itself, I believe, is quintessentially North American phenomenon, deriving as it did from the confluence of Pietism, Presbyterianism, and the vestiges of Puritanism. Evangelicalism picked up the peculiar characteristics from each strain – warmhearted spirituality from the Pietists (for instance), doctrinal precisionism from the Presbyterians, and individualistic introspection from the Puritans – even as the North American context itself has profoundly shaped the various manifestations of evangelicalism.: fundamentalism, neo-evangelicalism, the holiness movement, Pentecostalism, the charismatic movement, and various forms of African-American and Hispanic evangelicalism."[85]
Second Great Awakening
This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (August 2021) |
In 1800, major revivals began that spread across the nation: the
The revivals at first were organized by Presbyterian ministers who modeled them after the extended outdoor
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. The religious revivals that swept the Kentucky camp meetings were so intense and created such gusts of emotion that their original sponsors, the Presbyterians, as well the Baptists, soon repudiated them. The Methodists, however, adopted and eventually domesticated camp meetings and introduced them into the eastern states, where for decades they were one of the evangelical signatures of the denomination.
The Second Great Awakening (1800–1830s), unlike the first, focused on the unchurched and sought to instill in them a sense of personal salvation as experienced in revival meetings. This revival quickly spread throughout Kentucky, Tennessee and southern Ohio. Each denomination had assets that allowed it to thrive on the frontier. For example, the Methodists had an efficient organization that depended on ministers known as circuit riders, who sought out people in remote frontier locations. The circuit riders came from among the common people, which helped them establish rapport with the frontier families they hoped to convert.
The Second Great Awakening exercised a profound impact on American religious history. By 1859 evangelicalism emerged as a kind of national church or national religion and was the grand absorbing theme of American religious life. The greatest gains were made by the very well organized Methodists.
Third Great Awakening
The Third Great Awakening was a period of religious activism in American history from the late 1850s to the 20th century. It affected pietistic Protestant denominations and had a strong sense of social activism. It gathered strength from the
The Protestant mainline churches were growing rapidly in numbers, wealth and educational levels, throwing off their frontier beginnings and become centered in towns and cities. Intellectuals and writers such as Josiah Strong advocated a muscular Christianity with systematic outreach to the unchurched in America and around the globe. Others built colleges and universities to train the next generation. Each denomination supported active missionary societies, and made the role of missionary one of high prestige. The great majority of pietistic mainline Protestants (in the North) supported the Republican Party, and urged it to endorse prohibition and social reforms.[87][88] See Third Party System
The awakening in numerous cities in 1858 was interrupted by the
Across the nation drys crusaded in the name of religion for the prohibition of alcohol. The Woman's Christian Temperance Union mobilized Protestant women for social crusades against liquor, pornography and prostitution, and sparked the demand for woman suffrage.[91]
The
All the major denominations sponsored growing missionary activities inside the United States and around the world.[92][93]
Colleges associated with churches rapidly expanded in number, size and quality of curriculum. The promotion of "muscular Christianity" became popular among young men on campus and in urban
Benevolent and missionary societies
The evangelical establishment used this powerful network of voluntary, ecumenical benevolent societies to Christianize the nation. The earliest and most important of these organizations focused their efforts on the conversion of nonbelievers or to the creation of conditions (such as sobriety sought by
Most denominations operated missions abroad (and some to Native Americans and Asians in the US). Hutchinson argues that the American desire to reform the secular world was greatly stimulated by the zeal of evangelical Christians.[96] Grimshaw argues that women missionaries were enthusiastic proponents of the missionary endeavor, contributing, "substantially to the religious conversion and reorientation of Hawaiian culture in the first half of the 19th century."[97]
Emergence of African American churches
Scholars disagree about the extent of the native African content of Black Christianity as it emerged in 18th-century America, but there is no dispute that the Christianity of the Black population was grounded in evangelicalism.[98][99]
The Second Great Awakening has been called the "central and defining event in the development of Afro-Christianity."[100] During these revivals Baptists and Methodists converted large numbers of Blacks. 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, some black leaders formed new denominations. In 1787,
Civil War
Union
The Protestant religion was quite strong in the North in the 1860s. The Protestant denominations took a variety of positions. In general, the pietistic or evangelical denominations such as the Methodists, Northern Baptists and Congregationalists strongly supported the war effort. More liturgical groups such as the Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans and conservative Presbyterians generally avoided any discussion of the war, so it would not bitterly divide their membership. Some clergymen who supported the Confederacy were denounced as Copperheads, especially in the border regions.[103][104]
The churches made an effort to support their soldiers in the field and especially their families back home. Much of the political rhetoric of the era had a distinct religious tone.[105] The interdenominational Protestant United States Christian Commission sent agents into the Army camps to provide psychological support as well as books, newspapers, food and clothing. Through prayer, sermons and welfare operations, the agents ministered to soldiers' spiritual as well as temporal needs as they sought to bring the men to a Christian way of life.[106]
No denomination was more active in supporting the Union than the Methodist Episcopal Church. Historian Richard Carwardine argues that many Methodists felt that the victory of Lincoln in 1860 heralded the arrival of the kingdom of God in America. They were moved into action by a vision of freedom for slaves, freedom from the persecutions of godly abolitionists, release from the Slave Power's evil grip on the American government and the promise of a new direction for the Union.[107] Methodists gave strong support to the Radical Republicans with their hard line toward the white South. Dissident Methodists left the church.[108] During Reconstruction the Methodists took the lead in helping form Methodist churches for Freedmen and moving into Southern cities even to the point of taking control, with Army help, of buildings that had belonged to the southern branch of the church.[109][110] The Methodist family magazine Ladies' Repository promoted Christian family activism. Its articles provided moral uplift to women and children. It portrayed the Civil War as a great moral crusade against a decadent Southern civilization corrupted by slavery. It recommended activities that family members could perform in order to aid the Union cause.[111]
Confederacy
The CSA was overwhelmingly Protestant, and revivals were common during the war, especially in Army camps.
The slavery issue had split the evangelical denominations by 1860. During the war the Presbyterians and Episcopalians also split. The Catholics did not split. Baptists and Methodists together formed majorities of both the free and enslaved populations.
Since the Civil War
Increasingly the nation encountered new minority religions. According to historian R. Laurence Moore, Christian Scientists, Pentecostals, Jehovah Witnesses and Catholics responded to hostile comments by sensing themselves as persecuted Americans on the margins of society, which made them cling tightly to their status as full citizens.[122]
African-Americans in Baptism
After the Civil War, Black Baptists desiring to practice Christianity away from racial discrimination rapidly set up several separate state Baptist conventions. In 1866, Black Baptists of the South and West combined to form the Consolidated American Baptist Convention. This Convention eventually collapsed but three national conventions formed in response. In 1895 the three conventions merged to create the National Baptist Convention. It is now the largest African-American religious organization in the United States.[123] The predominantly white denominations operated numerous missions to Blacks, especially in the South. Already before the Civil War Catholics had set up churches for Blacks in Louisiana, Maryland and Kentucky.[124]
The South
Historian
- Religious faith and language appeared everywhere in the New South. It permeated public speech as well as private emotion. For many people, religion provided the measure of politics, the power behind law and reform, the reason to reach out to the poor and exploited, a pressure to cross racial boundaries. People viewed everything from courtship to child-rearing to their own deaths in religious terms. Even those filled with doubt or disdain could not escape the images, the assumptions, the power of faith.[125]
The Baptists formed the largest grouping, for both Blacks and whites, with its loose networks of numerous small rural churches. In second place for both races came the Methodists, with a hierarchical structure at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Baptists. Smaller fundamentalist groups that grew very large in the 20th century were starting to appear. Clusters of Roman Catholics appeared in the region's few cities, as well as southern Louisiana. Elite white Southerners, for the most part, were Episcopalians or Presbyterians. Across the region, ministers held high prestige positions, especially in the black community where they were typically political leaders as well. When the great majority of Blacks were disenfranchised after 1890, the black preachers were still allowed to vote. Revivals were regular occurrences, attracting large crowds. It was usually the already converted who attended, so the number of new converts was relatively small but new or old, they all enjoyed the preaching and the socializing.[126][127] Of course no liquor was served, for the major social reform promoted by the Southerners was prohibition; It was also the major political outlet for women activists, for the suffrage movement was weak.[128]
Missions to reservations
Starting in the colonial era, most of the Protestant denominations operated missions to Native Americans. After the Civil War, the programs were expanded and the major Western reservations were put under the control of religious denominations, largely to avoid the financial scandals and ugly relationships that had previously prevailed.[129] In 1869, Congress created the Board of Indian Commissioners and President Ulysses Grant appointed volunteer members who were "eminent for their intelligence and philanthropy." The Grant Board was given extensive power to supervise the Bureau of Indian Affairs and "civilize" Native Americans. Grant was determined to divide Native American post appointments "up among the religious churches"; by 1872, 73 Indian agencies were divided among religious denominations.[130] A core policy was to put the western reservations under the control of religious denominations. In 1872, of the 73 agencies assigned, the Methodists received 14 reservations; the Orthodox Quakers ten; the Presbyterians nine; the Episcopalians eight; the Catholics seven; the Hicksite Quakers six; the Baptists five; the Dutch Reformed five; the Congregationalists three; the Disciples two; Unitarians two; American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions one; and Lutherans one. The selection criteria were vague and critics saw the Peace Policy as violating Native American freedom of religion. Catholics wanted a bigger role and set up the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions in 1874. The Peace Policy remained in force until 1881.[131] Historian Cary Collins says Grant's Peace Policy failed in the Pacific Northwest chiefly because of sectarian competition and the priority placed on proselytizing by the religious denominations.[132]
Catholic Church in the late 19th century
The main source of Catholics in the United States was the huge numbers of European immigrants of the 19th and 20th centuries, especially from Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Poland. Recently, most Catholic immigrants come from Latin America, especially from Mexico.[133]
The
In the latter half of the 19th century, the first attempt at standardizing discipline in the church occurred with the convocation of the
In the 1960s the church went through dramatic changes, especially in the liturgy and the use of the language of the people instead of Latin. The number of priests and nuns declined sharply as few entered and many left their vocations. Since 1990 scandals involving the coverup by bishops of priests who sexually abused young men has led to massive financial payments across the country, and in Europe and the world as well.
1880s–1920s in benevolent and missionary societies
By 1890, American Protestant churches were supporting about 1000 overseas missionaries and their wives. Women's organizations based in local churches were especially active in motivating volunteers and raising funds. Inspired by the
Mott promoted the YMCA across the United States and across the world. Its educational and sports programs proved highly attractive everywhere, but the response to religious proselytizing was tepid. Mott argued about China in 1910:
- It is Western education that the Chinese are clamoring for, and will have. If the Church can give it to them, plus Christianity, they will take it; otherwise they will get it elsewhere, without Christianity—and that speedily. If in addition to direct evangelistic and philanthropic work in China, the Church can in the next decade trained several thousands of Christian teachers, it will be in a position to meet this unparalleled opportunity.[140]
With wide attention focused on the anti-Western Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901), American Protestants made missions to China a high priority. They supported 500 missionaries in 1890, more than 2000 in 1914, and 8300 in 1920. By 1927 they opened 16 universities in China, six medical schools, and four theology schools, together with 265 middle schools and a large number of elementary schools. The number of converts was not large, but the educational influence was dramatic and long-lasting.[141]
Laymen's Report of 1932
The First World War reduced the enthusiasm for missions. Mission leaders had strongly endorsed the war; the younger generation was dismayed amid growing doubts about the wisdom of cultural imperialism in dealing with foreign peoples.[142][143] In 1930–1932, Harvard Professor William Ernest Hocking led the Commission of Appraisal, which produced the Laymen's Inquiry which recommended a shift on Christian missionary activities from evangelism to education and welfare.[144]
Social Gospel
A powerful influence in mainline northern Protestant denominations was the
Resurgence and retreat of fundamentalism
In the 1920s, these "strident fundamentalists" devoted themselves to fighting against the
Webb (1991) traces the political and legal struggles between strict creationists and Darwinists to influence the extent to which evolution would be taught as science in Arizona and California schools. After Scopes was convicted, creationists throughout the United States sought to pass similar antievolution laws in their states. They sought to ban the study of the theory of evolution, or at the very least, they sought to relegate evolution to the status of an unproven theory which could probably be taught along with the biblical version of creation. Educators, scientists, and other distinguished laymen believed in the theory of evolution. Later, this struggle occurred in the Southwest more frequently than it occurred in other areas of the US, and it persisted through the Sputnik era.[151]
Decline in religiosity both before and during the Great Depression
Robert T. Handy identifies a religious depression in the United States starting around 1925 that only grew worse during the economic depression which began in 1929. The identification of Protestantism with American culture undermined religious messages. The fundamentalist churches over-expanded and were financially troubled. The mainstream churches were well enough financed in the late 1920s, but lost their self-confidence in terms of whether their social gospel was needed in an age of prosperity, especially since the great reform of prohibition was a failure. In terms of their network of international missions, the mainstream churches realized that the missions were a success in terms of opening modern schools and hospitals but a failure in terms of conversions. The leading theorist Daniel Fleming proclaimed that the continents for Christian outreach and Christian conquest were no longer Africa and Asia, but rather, materialism, racial injustice, war and poverty. The number of missionaries from mainstream denominations began a steep decline. By contrast, the evangelical and fundamentalist churches—never wedded to the social gospel—escalated their efforts worldwide with a focus on conversion.[152][153] At home the mainstream churches were forced to expand their charitable roles in 1929–31, but collapsed financially with the overwhelming magnitude of the economic disaster for ordinary Americans. Suddenly in 1932–33, the mainline churches lost one of their historic functions in distributing alms to the poor, and the national government took over that role without any religious dimension. Handy argues that the deep self-doubt the religious revivals customary in times of economic depression was absent in the 1930s. He concludes that Great Depression marked the end of the dominance of Protestantism in American life.[154][155][156][157]
World War II
In the 1930s, pacifism was a very strong force in most of the Protestant churches. Only a minority of religious leaders, typified by
School Prayer and the Supreme Court since 1947
The phrase "separation of church and state" became a definitive part of Establishment Clause jurisprudence in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947), a case that dealt with a state law that allowed government funds for transportation to religious schools. While the ruling upheld the state law allowing taxpayer funding of transportation to religious schools as constitutional, Everson was also the first case to hold the Establishment Clause applicable to the state legislatures as well as Congress, based upon the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.[162]
In 1949 Bible reading was a part of routine in the public schools of at least thirty-seven states. In twelve of these states, Bible reading was legally required by state laws; 11 states passed these laws after 1913. In 1960, 42 percent of school districts nationwide tolerated or required Bible reading, and 50 percent reported some form of homeroom daily devotional exercise.[163]
Since 1962, the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that prayers organized by public school officials schools are unconstitutional. Students are allowed to pray privately, and to join religious clubs after school hours. Colleges, universities, and private schools are not affected by the Supreme Court rulings. Reactions to Engel and Abington were widely negative, with over 150 constitutional amendments submitted to reverse the policy. None passed Congress.[164] The Supreme Court has also ruled that so-called "voluntary" school prayers are also unconstitutional, because they force some students to be outsiders to the main group, and because they subject dissenters to intense peer group pressure. In Lee v. Weisman The Supreme Court held in 1992:
- the State may not place the student dissenter in the dilemma of participating or protesting. Since adolescents are often susceptible to peer pressure, especially in matters of social convention, the State may no more use social pressure to enforce orthodoxy than it may use direct means. The embarrassment and intrusion of the religious exercise cannot be refuted by arguing that the prayers are of a de minimis character, since that is an affront to ...those for whom the prayers have meaning, and since any intrusion was both real and a violation of the objectors' rights.[165][166]
In 1962, the Supreme Court extended this analysis to the issue of prayer in public schools. In Engel v. Vitale 370 U.S. 421 (1962), the Court determined it unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and require its recitation in public schools, even when it is non-denominational and students may excuse themselves from participation. As such, any teacher, faculty, or student can pray in school, in accordance with their own religion. However, they may not lead such prayers in class, or in other "official" school settings such as assemblies or programs.
Currently, the Supreme Court applies a three-pronged test to determine whether legislation comports with the Establishment Clause, known as the "
Debate over America as a "Christian nation"
Since the late 19th century, some right-wing Christians have argued that the United States of America is essentially Christian in origin. They preach American exceptionalism, oppose liberal scholars, and emphasize the Christian identity of many Founding Fathers. Critics argue that many of these Christian founders actually supported the separation of church and state and would not support the notion that they were trying to found a Christian nation.[167][168][169]
In
Denominations and sects founded in the US
Restorationism
Restorationism refers to the belief that a purer form of Christianity should be restored using the
Latter Day Saint movement
The origins of another distinctive religious group, the
Latter Day Saints beliefs in theocracy and polygamy alienated many.
Congress passed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862 to curb the Mormon practice of polygamy in the territory, but President Abraham Lincoln did not enforce this law; instead Lincoln gave Brigham Young tacit permission to ignore the act in exchange for not becoming involved with the American Civil War.[176]
Postwar efforts to enforce polygamy bans were limited until the 1882
Thanks to worldwide
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses comprise a fast-growing denomination that has kept itself separate from other Christian denominations. It began in 1872 with Charles Taze Russell, but experienced a major schism in 1917 as Joseph Franklin Rutherford began his presidency. Rutherford gave new direction to the movement and renamed the movement "Jehovah's witnesses" in 1931. The period from 1925 to 1933 saw many significant changes in doctrine. Attendance at their yearly Memorial dropped from a high of 90,434 in 1925 to 63,146 in 1935. Since 1950 growth has been very rapid.[179]
During the World War II, Jehovah's Witnesses experienced mob attacks in America and were temporarily banned in Canada and Australia because of their lack of support for the war effort. They won significant Supreme Court victories involving the rights of
Church of Christ, Scientist
The Church of Christ, Scientist was founded in 1879, in Boston by Mary Baker Eddy, the author of its central book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which offers a unique interpretation of Christian faith.[181] Christian Science teaches that the reality of God denies the reality of sin, sickness, death and the material world. Accounts of miraculous healing are common within the church, and adherents often refuse traditional medical treatments. Legal troubles sometimes result when they forbid medical treatment of their children.[182]
The Church is unique among American denominations in several ways. It is highly centralized, with all the local churches merely branches of the mother church in Boston. There are no ministers, but there are practitioners who are integral to the movement. The practitioners operate local businesses that claim to help members heal their illnesses by the power of the mind. They depend for their clientele on the approval of the Church. Starting in the late 19th century the Church rapidly lost membership, although it does not publish statistics. Its flagship newspaper Christian Science Monitor lost most of its subscribers and dropped its paper version to become an online source.[183]
Some other denominations founded in the US
- Adventism - began as an inter-denominational movement. Its most vocal leader was William Miller, who in the 1830s in New York became convinced of an imminent Second Coming of Jesus.
- Stone-Campbell Movement").
- Episcopal Church - founded as an offshoot of the Church of England; now the United States branch of the Anglican Communion.
- National Baptist Convention - the largest African American religious organization in the United States and the second largest Baptist denomination in the world.
- Pentecostalism - movement that emphasizes the role of the Holy Spirit, finds its historic roots in the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, California, from 1904 to 1906, sparked by Charles Parham
- Reconstructionist Judaism
- Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Baptist group in the world and the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. In 1995, it renounced its 1845 origins in the defense of slavery and racial superiority.
- Universalistchurches.
- Congregational Christian Church and Evangelical and Reformed Church. Congregations participating in the merger descended from Congregationalist churches of New England, German Lutheran and Reformed Churches largely from the Midwest, and various of Campbellite, Christian Connexion and "Christian"churches.
- Cumberland Presbyterian Church - founded in 1810 in Dickson County, Tennessee by Samuel McAdow, Finis Ewing, and Samuel King.
Eastern Orthodoxy
Eastern Orthodoxy reached to the North American continent with the founding of
In the 21st century
Judaism
The
Islam
The first migration of Muslims to America is estimated to be started since 1820 (or 1860), and these Muslims were from Syria, Lebanon, Albania, Macedonia, Turkey and other regions. And from that time on, Islam became more widely known in America gradually. On the other hand, the record of the presence of the first Muslim person in America was mentioned in 1520 (by a Moroccan Muslim).[188][189]
See also
- Ethnocultural politics in the United States
- Freedom of religion in the United States
- First Amendment to the United States Constitution
- First Great Awakening
- Fundamentalist Christianity
- Historical religious demographics of the United States
- Historiography of religion
- Religion in the United States
- Religious discrimination in the United States
- Second Great Awakening
- Separation of church and state in the United States
- Third Great Awakening
References
- ^ Compare Steven K. Green, Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding (2015) with Thomas S. Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (2010)
- ^ Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise by Kevin M. Schultz, p. 9
- ^ Obligations of Citizenship and Demands of Faith: Religious Accommodation in Pluralist Democracies by Nancy L. Rosenblum, Princeton University Press, 2000 – 438, p. 156
- ^ The Protestant Voice in American Pluralism by Martin E. Marty, chapter 1
- ^ "10 facts about religion in America". pewresearch.org. August 27, 2015. Retrieved August 27, 2017.
- ISBN 9780874518085. Retrieved August 27, 2017 – via Google Books.
- ISBN 9780195300925. Retrieved August 27, 2017 – via Internet Archive.
united states founded on calvinism.
- ^ Ward, Charles (September 1, 2007). "Protestant work ethic that took root in faith is now ingrained in our culture". Houston Chronicle.
- ^ Luzer, Daniel (September 4, 2013). "The Protestant Work Ethic is Real". Pacific Standard.
- ^ "In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace" Archived October 3, 2021, at the Wayback Machine, Pew Research Center, October 17, 2019, Retrieved July 27, 2020.
- ^ Newport, Frank (17 October 2019). "In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace". Pew Research Center. Retrieved October 5, 2020.
- ^ "Religion - Publications - US Census Bureau". Census.gov. Archived from the original on 1999-05-08. Retrieved 2012-09-17.
- ISBN 9780813518381.
- ^ Boorstein, Michelle. "One in five Americans reports no religious affiliation, study says." The Washington Post. October 9, 2012.
- ^ a b c d "Religion". gallup.com. Gallup, Inc. 2007-06-08.
- ISBN 9780520042391.
- ^ Adam Jortner, The Gods of Prophetstown: The Battle of Tippecanoe and the Holy War for the American Frontier (2011)
- ^ Rachel Buff, "Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa: Myth, Historiography and Popular Memory." Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques (1995): 277–299.
- ^ Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., Salvation and the Savage: An Analysis of Protestant Missions and American Indian Response, 1787–1862 (1965)
- ISBN 9781617034602.
- ^ Kimberly Jenkins Marshall, ""Navajo Reservation Camp Meeting a Great Success!" The Advent of Diné Pentecostalism after 1950." Ethnohistory 62#1 (2015) pp. 95–117.
- ^ Patricia U. Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America (1988)
- ISBN 978-0-8028-1352-7.
- ^ a b "Puritanism | Definition, History, Beliefs, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
- ^ "The Pilgrims". HISTORY. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
- ^ Sciences, Arts & (2020-11-17). "Pilgrims, Puritans, and the importance of the unexceptional". Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
- ^ "William Bradford and the First Thanksgiving [ushistory.org]". www.ushistory.org. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
- ^ "Introduction: The Puritans". academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
- S2CID 161344951.
- ^ "The Puritans". HISTORY. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
- ^ ISSN 1918-7173.
- ^ The Cousins' Wars, Kevin Phillips, 1999
- ^ Thomas Herbert Johnson. The Puritans: A Sourcebook of Their Writings. p. 185.
- ^ "Roger Williams | American religious leader". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2021-09-18.
- ^ "Anne Hutchinson | Beliefs, Significance, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2021-09-18.
- ISBN 978-0-664-22259-8.
- ^ "A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2021-10-09.
- ISBN 978-0-8204-7929-3.
- ISBN 978-0-7006-1525-4.
- ^ Herhkowitz, Leo. "By Chance or Choice: Jews in New Amsterdam 1654" (PDF). Americanjewisharchives.org. Retrieved 2021-10-07.
- ^ Smith, Ellen; Sarna, Johnathon. "The Jews of Rhode Island" (PDF). Retrieved 2021-10-07.
- ISBN 9781556358098.
In 1912 Rufus M. Jones formulated the first theory of the origins and essence of Quakerism as fundamentally "mystical" in his introduction to William Braithwaite's history of Quakerism [Jones based his introduction on an earlier exploration of the history of Christian mysticism, Studies in Mystical Religion, one of a handful of pioneering works in that field in The early Twentieth century (1909). A few years later he expanded his study with Spiritual Reformers of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1914)] (Braithwaite, 1912). In 1921, he emphatically reaffirmed his thesis: "No other large, organized, historically continuous body of Christians has yet existed which has been so fundamentally mystical, both in theory and practice, as the Society of Friends ... " (Jones, 190 I, xiii). For over 25 years, Jones' claim seemed too accurate to question. But in 1955 a major shift in Quaker studies occurred when L. Hugh Doncaster claimed that new scholarship viewed Quakerism in another light. [See L. Hugh Doncaster, "Forward to the Second Edition," in Wm. C. Braithwaite's The Beginnings of Quakerism, ed. Henry J. Cadbury (1955).] The paradigm shift had been set in motion with the publication of Geoffrey F. Nuttall's work, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience, in 1946 (revised 1992). Nuttall, a non-Quaker historian, supplanted Jones' mystical theory with a new theory of Quakers as radical Puritans. According to NuttalI, George Fox and the Quakers, "... who in the exclusive sense are not puritans but the puritans' fiercest foes, ... repeat, extend, and fuse so much of what is held by the radical, Separatist party within Puritanism, that they cannot be denied the name or excluded from consideration."
- ISBN 9780226609416.
- S2CID 159731272.
- ISSN 0005-576X.
- S2CID 162204724.
- ISBN 9781450269551.
They stretched the sober deportment of the Puritans into a glorification of "plainness." Theologically, they expanded the Puritan concept of a church of individuals ...
- ^ Joseph E. Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: A History (1976)
- ^ Charles McLean Andrews (1936). The colonial period of American history. Yale University Press. p. 279.
- ^ John D. Krugler, "The Calvert Vision: A New Model for Church-State Relations," Maryland Historical Magazine, (2004) 99#3 pp. 268–285
- ^ Beatriz Betancourt Hardy, "Roman Catholics, Not Papists: Catholic Identity in Maryland, 1689–1776," Maryland Historical Magazine (1997) 92#2 pp. 138–161
- John Carrollin 1785 estimated the Catholic population in the 13 states was 25,000; the 1790 Census counted four million Americans. Edwin Scott Gaustad and Leigh Eric Schmidt. The religious history of America (2002) p. 100
- ^ Jay P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (1985) p. 94
- ISBN 978-0-945015-28-4
- ISBN 978-0-86554-708-7.
- ^ Jacob M. Blosser, "Irreverent Empire: Anglican Inattention in an Atlantic World," Church History, Sept 2008, Vol. 77 Issue 3, pp. 596–628
- ^ 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
- ^ Janet Moore Lindman, "Acting the Manly Christian: White Evangelical Masculinity in Revolutionary Virginia," William & Mary Quarterly, April 2000, Vol. 57 Issue 2, pp. 393–416
- ^ John A. Ragosta, "Fighting for Freedom: Virginia Dissenters' Struggle for Religious Liberty during the American Revolution," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, (2008) 116#3 pp. 226–261
- ^ a b c d "II. Religion in Eighteenth-Century America". Religion and the Founding of the American Republic. Library of Congress. 2001-08-24. Archived from the original on 2001-10-17. Retrieved 2011-10-04.
- ISBN 978-0-8050-4927-5.
- ^ Oxford English Dictionary, "Deism." http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/deism.
- ^ Sydney E. Armstrong, A Religious History of the American People. (1972) p. 263
- ^ a b Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (2007)
- ^ Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (2009)
- ^ Jewel L. Spangler, Virginians Reborn: Anglican Monopoly, Evangelical Dissent, and the Rise of the Baptists in the Late Eighteenth Century (University Press of Virginia, 2008), ch 1
- ^ Christine Leigh Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (1998)
- ^ Thomas S. Kidd and Barry Hankins, Baptists in America: A History (2015) ch 1
- ^
Spangler, Jewel L. (2008). Virginians Reborn: Anglican Monopoly, Evangelical Dissent, and the Rise of the Baptists in the Late Eighteenth Century. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. ISBN 9780813926797.
- ^ Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America (1988) pp. 187–222 and 269–78, cites over forty scholars.
- ^ Rhys Isaac, "Evangelical Revolt: The Nature of the Baptists' Challenge to the Traditional Order in Virginia, 1765 to 1775," William and Mary Quarterly 1974 31(3): 345–368
- ^ Richard K. MacMaster, "Liberty or Property? The Methodist Petition for Emancipation in Virginia, 1785," Methodist History, Oct 1971, Vol. 10 Issue 1, pp. 44–55
- ^ Christopher Grasso, "The Religious and the Secular in the Early American Republic," Journal of the Early Republic (Summer 2016) 36#2 pp. 359–388.
- ^ Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, eds. Rethinking Secularism (Oxford University Press, 2011).
- ^ James S. Kabala, Church-State Relations in the Early American Republic, 1787–1846. (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2013); Nicholas P. Miller, The Religious Roots of the First Amendment: Dissenting Protestants and the Separation of Church and State. (Oxford University Press, 2012)
- ^ The Founders' Constitution Volume 5, Amendment I (Religion), Document 53. The University of Chicago Press, retrieved 8/9/07.
- ^ Jefferson's Danbury letter has been cited favorably by the Supreme Court many times. In its 1879 Reynolds v. United States decision the high court said Jefferson's observations 'may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the [First] Amendment.' In the court's 1947 Everson v. Board of Education decision, Justice Hugo Black wrote, 'In the words of Thomas Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state.'
- ^ Bellah, Robert Neelly (Winter 1967). "Civil Religion in America". Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 96 (1): 1–21. Archived from the original on 2005-03-06. From the issue entitled Religion in America.
- ^ Feldman, Noah (2005). Divided by God. p. 24 ("Williams's metaphor was rediscovered by Isaac Backus, a New England Baptist of Jefferson's generation, who believed, like Williams, that an established church—which he considered to exist in the Massachusetts of his day—would never protect religious dissenters like himself and must be opposed in order to keep religion pure.")
- ^ James Madison's Detached Memoranda
- ^ Dumas Malone, Jefferson and his Times 6:393
- ISBN 978-0-691-12602-9.
- ^ Based on data in James A. Henretta et al. (2010) America's History, Combined Volume Bedford/St. Martin's. p. 259
- ^ US Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: From: the Colonial Times to the Present (1976) pp. 8, 392
- ISBN 9780664224097.
- ^ Robert William Fogel, The Fourth Great Awakening & the Future of Egalitarianism (2000)
- ^ Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System, 1853–1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures (2009)
- ^ Richard Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest (1971) p. 171
- ^ Randall M. Miller, et al, eds. Religion and the American Civil War (1998)
- ^ James F. Findlay Dwight L. Moody: American Evangelist, 1837–1899 (2007)
- ^ Ruth Bordin, Women and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873–1900 (1981)
- ^ Paul A. Varg, "Motives in Protestant Missions, 1890–1917," Church History 1954 23(1): 68–82
- ^ Wilbert R. Shenk, ed. North American Foreign Missions, 1810–1914: Theology, Theory, and Policy (2004)
- ^ David P. Setran, "Following the Broad-Shouldered Jesus: The College YMCA and the Culture of Muscular Christianity in American Campus Life, 1890–1914," American Educational History Journal 2005 32(1): 59–66.
- ^ Dwight Burlingame, ed. Philanthropy in America: a comprehensive historical encyclopedia (2004)
- ISBN 9780226363103.
- ^ Patricia Grimshaw, Paths of Duty: American Missionary Wives in 19th Century Hawaii (1989) p. 195
- ^ Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood, Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830 (1998).
- ^ Ahlstrom, Religious History. pp. 698–714.
- ^ James H. Hutson, Religion and the founding of the American Republic (1998) p. 106
- ^ James T. Campbell, Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa (1995)
- ^ A. Nevell Owens, Formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Nineteenth Century: Rhetoric of Identification (2014)
- ^ Timothy L. Wesley. The Politics of Faith during the Civil War (Louisiana State University Press, 2013)
- ^ George C. Rable, God's Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2010).
- ^ Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout and Charles Reagan Wilson, eds. Religion and the American Civil War (Oxford UP, 1998) p. 4
- ^ M. Hamlin Cannon, "The United States Christian Commission", Mississippi Valley Historical Review, (1951) 38#1 pp. 61–80. in JSTOR
- ^ Richard Carwardine, "Methodists, Politics, and the Coming of the American Civil War," Church History, (2000) 69#3 pp. 578–609 in JSTOR
- ^ Ralph E. Morrow, "Methodists and 'Butternuts' in the Old Northwest," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 49#1 (1956), pp. 34–47 in JSTOR
- ^ William W. Sweet, "Methodist Church Influence in Southern Politics," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 1#4 (1915), pp. 546–560 in JSTOR
- ^ Ralph E. Morrow, "Northern Methodism in the South during Reconstruction," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 41#2 (1954), pp. 197–218 in JSTOR
- ^ Kathleen L. Endres, "A Voice for the Christian Family: The Methodist Episcopal 'Ladies' Repository' in the Civil War," Methodist History, January 1995, Vol. 33 Issue 2, pp. 84–97.
- ^ Drew Gilpin Faust, "Christian Soldiers: The Meaning of Revivalism in the Confederate Army." Journal of Southern History 53.1 (1987): 63–90. online
- ^ Miller, et al. eds. Religion and the American Civil War (1998) pp. 131–66.
- ^ Pamela Robinson-Durso, "Chaplains in the Confederate Army." Journal of Church and State 33 (1991): 747+.
- ^ W. Harrison Daniel, "The Southern Baptists in the Confederacy." Civil War History 6.4 (1960): 389–401.
- ^ G. Clinton Prim "Southern Methodism in the Confederacy." Methodist history 23.4 (1985): 240–249.
- ^ Edgar Legare Pennington, "The Confederate Episcopal Church and the Southern Soldiers." Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 17.4 (1948): 356–383. online
- ^ W. Harrison Daniel, "Southern Presbyterians in the Confederacy." North Carolina Historical Review 44.3 (1967): 231–255. online
- ^ David T. Gleeson, The Green and the Gray: The Irish in the Confederate States of America (2013).
- ^ Sidney J. Romero, "Louisiana Clergy and the Confederate Army." Louisiana History 2.3 (1961): 277–300 online.
- ^ Sidney E. Mead, "American Protestantism since the Civil War. II. From Americanism to Christianity." Journal of Religion 36.2 (1956): 67-89. online
- ^ R. Laurence Moore, Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans (1986)
- ^ Leroy Fitts, A history of black Baptists (1985)
- ^ Kenneth Scott Latourette, A history of expansion of Christianity. 4. The great century: in Europe and the United States of America; A.D. 1800 – A.D. 1914 (1941) pp. 325–66.
- ^ Edward Ayres, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (1992), p 160.
- ^ Edward Ayres, The Promise of the New South (1992), pp 160.
- ^ Kenneth K. Bailey, "Southern White Protestantism at the Turn of the Century." American Historical Review 68.3 (1963): 618-635 Online.
- ^ Joe Coker, Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause: Southern White Evangelicals and the Prohibition Movement (2007).
- ^ Kenneth Scott Latourette, A history of expansion of Christianity. 4. The great century: in Europe and the United States of America; A.D. 1800 – A.D. 1914 (1941) pp. 299–324.
- ^ Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (1984), pp. 501–503.
- ^ Francis Paul Prucha, American Indian Policy in Crisis, Christian Reformers and the Indian, 1865–1900 (2014) pp. 30–71.
- ^ Cary C. Collins, "A Fall From Grace: Sectarianism And The Grant Peace Policy In Western Washington Territory, 1869–1882," Pacific Northwest Forum (1995) 8#2 pp. 55–77.
- ^ James Terence Fisher, Communion of Immigrants: A History of Catholics in America (2002)
- ^ James J. Hennesey, American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States (1983)
- ^ James M. O'Toole, et al. The Faithful: A History of Catholics in America (2009)
- ^ Bill Pitts, "Recruiting for Missions: The Baylor Volunteer Foreign Mission Band, 1900–1906," Baptist History and Heritage (2008) 43#1 online
- ^ Michael Parker, The Kingdom of Character: The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, 1886–1926 (1998)
- ^ Latourette, 4:95–102
- ^ Brian Stanley, "The Legacy of George Sherwood Eddy." International Bulletin of Missionary Research 24#3 (2000): 128–131. online
- ^ John Raleigh Mott (1910). The Decisive Hour of Christian Missions. Church Missionary Society. p. 64.
- ^ Paul A. Varg, "Sino‐American Relations Past and Present." Diplomatic History 4.2 (1980): 101–112, details at p. 102.
- ^ John C. Barrett, "World War I and the decline of the first wave of the American Protestant missions movement." International Bulletin of Mission Research 39#3 (2015): 122–126. online
- ^ Nathan D. Showalter, The End of a Crusade: The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions and the Great War (1998).
- ^ William Ernest Hocking, "Conclusions", Re-Thinking Missions: A Laymen's Inquiry After One Hundred Years (report of Commission of Appraisal), online electronic text at Internet Archive
- ^ Cecelia Tichi, Civic Passions: Seven Who Launched Progressive America (and What They Teach Us). (2009) pp 205-239. online
- ^ Christopher H. Evans, The Social Gospel in American Religion: A History. (NYU Press, 2017).
- ^ David Goetz, "The Monkey Trial". Christian History 1997 16#3: 10–18.
- ^ Burton W. Folsom, Jr. "The Scopes Trial Reconsidered." Continuity (1988) 12: 103–127, by a leading conservative scholar.
- ^ Mark Edwards, "Rethinking the Failure of Fundamentalist Political Antievolutionism after 1925". Fides et Historia (2000) 32#2: 89–106.
- ^ Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., ed. Controversy in the Twenties: Fundamentalism, Modernism, & Evolution (1969)
- ^ George E. Webb, "The Evolution Controversy in Arizona and California: From the 1920s to the 1980s." Journal of the Southwest (1991) 33#2: 133–150.
- ^ William R. Hutchinson, "Americans in World Mission: Revision and Realignment." in David W. Lotz, ed., Altered Landscapes: Christianity in America 1935-1985 (1989): 155-170.
- ^ William Ernest Hocking et al. Re Thinking Missions A Laymen S Inquiry After One Hundred Years (1932) online
- ^ Robert T. Handy, "The American Religious Depression, 1925-1935: Church History 29#1 (1960), pp. 3-16 online
- ^ Jon Butler, "American religion and the Great Depression." Church History 80.3 (2011): 575-578. online
- ^ Martin E. Marty, Modern American religion, volume 2: the noise of conflict, 1919-1941 (1997) pp 250-258.
- ^ Alison Collis Greene, "The End of 'The Protestant Era'?" Church History 80.3 (2011): 600-610.
- ^ John P. Resch, ed., Americans at war: society, culture, and the homefront (2005) 3: 164-166.
- ^ Gerald I. Sittser, A cautious patriotism: The American Churches and the Second World War (U of North Carolina Press, 1985). online.
- ^ Walter B. Shurden, "What" Being Baptist" Meant for Southern Baptists during World War II." Baptist History and Heritage 36.3 (2001): 6. Online
- ^ Robert L. Fleegler, "'Forget All Differences until the Forces of Freedom Are Triumphant': The World War II–Era Quest for Ethnic and Religious Tolerance." Journal of American Ethnic History 27.2 (2008): 59-84. Online
- ^ a b Jonathan A. Wright, Separation of Church and State (2010)
- ^ Adam Laats, "Our schools, our country: American evangelicals, public schools, and the Supreme Court decisions of 1962 and 1963." Journal of religious history 36.3 (2012): 319-334 at p 321-22.
- ^ Geoffrey R. Stone, "In Opposition to the School Prayer Amendment." University of Chicago Law Review 50 (1983): 823-848. online.
- ISBN 9781461731634.
- ^ 505 U.S. 577, Syllabus.
- ^ John Fea, "Using the Past to 'Save' Our Nation: The Debate over Christian America." OAH Magazine of History 27.1 (2013): 7-11.
- ^ John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction (2nd ed. John Knox Press, 2016).
- ^ "The Separation of Church and State Is Rooted in American Christianity". Origins. Retrieved 2022-10-27.
- ISBN 9780300166323.
- ^ Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? (2016) pp 40-42.
- ISBN 978-0-8028-3898-8, 854 pages, entry on Restoration, Historical Models of
- ISBN 978-0-415-37420-0, 684 pages
- ISBN 9780807843000.
- ISBN 9780807843000.
- ISBN 978-0-252-06980-2,
Having signed the Morrill Act, Abraham Lincoln reportedly compared the LDS Church to a log he had encountered as a farmer that was 'too hard to split, too wet to burn and too heavy to move, so we plow around it. That's what I intend to do with the Mormons. You go back and tell Brigham Young that if he will let me alone, I will let him alone.'
- ^ Kathleen Flake, The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle (2004)
- ISBN 9780812983364.
- ^ Stark et al., "Why Jehovah's Witnesses Grow So Rapidly: A Theoretical Application," Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 12, # 2, 1997: 133–157
- ^ Patrick J. Flynn, "Writing Their Faith into the Law of the Land: Jehovah's Witnesses, the Supreme Court and the Battle for the Meaning of the Free Exercise Clause, 1939–1945," Texas Journal on Civil Liberties and Civil Rights, 2004
- ^ Gillian Gill, Mary Baker Eddy (1998)
- ^ Stephen Gottschalk, The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life 1973)
- ^ Stephen Gottschalk, "Christian Science Polity in Crisis," The Christian Century Volume: 110. Issue: (March 3, 1993) pp. 242+.
- ^ Sergei Kan, Memory eternal: Tlingit culture and Russian Orthodox Christianity through two centuries (U of Washington Press, 2014).
- ^ Thomas FitzGerald, "Eastern Christianity in the United States" in The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity (2007) pp. 269–279
- ^ Hasia Diner, The Jews of the United States, 1654–2000 (2006)
- ^ Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History (2004)
- ^ islam in the U.S. Retrieved 10 July 2022
- ^ Manseau, Peter (February 9, 2015). "The Muslims of Early America". The New York Times. Retrieved February 12, 2015.
Bibliography
- Ahlstrom, Sydney E. A Religious History of the American People (1972, 2nd ed. 2004); widely cited standard scholarly history excerpt and text search; also online free to borrow
- ISBN 0-671-86737-7
- Bodensieck, Julius, ed. The encyclopedia of the Lutheran Church (3 vol 1965) vol 1 and 3 online free
- Collier-Thomas, Bettye. Jesus, Jobs, and Justice: African American Women and Religion (2010)
- Diner, Hasia. The Jews of the United States, 1654–2000 (2006) excerpt and text search, standard scholarly history online edition
- Dolan, Jay P. In Search of an American Catholicism: A History of Religion and Culture in Tension (2003)
- Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists: Presenting Their History, Doctrine, Polity, Life, Leadership, Organization & Work Knoxville: Broadman Press, v 1–2 (1958), 1500 pp; 2 supplementary volumes 1958 and 1962; vol 5 = Index, 1984
- Foster, Douglas Allen, and Anthony L. Dunnavant, eds. The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement: Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, Churches of Christ (2004)
- Granquist, Mark. Lutherans in America: A New History (2015)
- Hein, David, and Gardiner H. Shattuck. The Episcopalians. (Praeger; 2004)
- Hempton, David. Methodism: Empire of the Spirit, (2005) ISBN 0-300-10614-9, major new interpretive history. Hempton concludes that Methodism was an international missionary movement of great spiritual power and organizational capacity; it energized people of all conditions and backgrounds; it was fueled by preachers who made severe sacrifices to bring souls to Christ; it grew with unprecedented speed, especially in America; it then sailed too complacently into the 20th century.
- Hill, Samuel, et al. Encyclopedia of Religion in the South (2005), comprehensive coverage.
- Hopkins, C. Howard. History of the Y.M.C.A. in North America (1951),
- Hutchison William R. Errand to the World: American Protestant Thought and Foreign Missions. (1987).
- Keller, Rosemary Skinner, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and Marie Cantlon, eds. Encyclopedia of Women And Religion in North America (3 vol 2006) excerpt and text search
- Kidd, Thomas S. and Barry Hankins, Baptists in America: A History (2015).
- Latourette, Kenneth Scott. A history of expansion of Christianity. 4. The great century: in Europe and the United States of America; A.D. 1800-A.D. 1914 (1941)
- Leonard, Bill J. Baptists in America. (2005), general survey and history by a Southern Baptist scholar
- Lippy, Charles H., ed. Encyclopedia of the American Religious Experience (3 vol. 1988)
- McClymond, Michael, ed. Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America. (2007. Vol. 1, A–Z: xxxii, 515 pp. Vol. 2, Primary Documents: xx, 663 pp. ISBN 0-313-32828-5/set.)
- McLoughlin, William G. Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607–1977 (1978). excerpt and text search
- Melton, J. Gordon, ed. Melton's Encyclopedia of American Religions (2nd ed. 2009) 1386pp
- Morris, Charles R. American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church (1998), a standard history
- Norwood, Stephen H., and Eunice G. Pollack, eds. Encyclopedia of American Jewish history (2 vol ABC-CLIO, 2007), 775pp; comprehensive coverage by experts; excerpt and text search vol 1
- Queen, Edsward, ed. Encyclopedia of American Religious History (3rd ed. 3 vol 2009)
- Sarna, Jonathan D. American Judaism: A History (2004), standard scholarly history
- Schmidt, Jean Miller Grace Sufficient: A History of Women in American Methodism, 1760–1939, (1999)
- Williams, Peter W. America's Religions: From Their Origins to the Twenty-first Century (3rd ed. 2008), a standard scholarly history
Historiography
- Dolan, Jay P., and James P. Wind, eds. New Dimensions in American Religious History: Essays in Honor of Martin E. Marty (Eerdmans, 1993)
- Frey, Sylvia R. "The Visible Church: Historiography of African American Religion since Raboteau," Slavery and Abolition, Jan 2008, Vol. 29 Issue 1, pp. 83–110
- Goff, Philip, ed. The Blackwell Companion to Religion in America (2010) online; 43 essays by scholars
- Goff, Philip. "Revivals and Revolution: Historiographic Turns since Alan Heimert's Religion and the American Mind." Church History (1998) 67#4: 695–721. online
- McGreevy, John T. "Faith and Morals in the Modern United States, 1865–Present." Reviews in American History 26.1 (1998): 239–254. excerptonline
- Orsi, Robert A. and Randall J. Stephens. "Beyond the Niebuhrs: An Interview with Robert Orsi on Recent Trends in American Religious History," Historically Speaking (2006) 7#6 pp. 8–11 doi: 10.1353/hsp.2006.0035 online
- Schultz, Kevin M.; Harvey, Paul. "Everywhere and Nowhere: Recent Trends in American Religious History and Historiography," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, March 2010, Vol. 78#1 pp. 129–162
- Smith, Timothy L. "Religion and ethnicity in America." American Historical Review (1978): 1155–1185. in JSTOR
- Stout, Harry S., and D. G. Hart, eds. New Directions in American Religious History (1997) excerpt and text search
- Sweet, Leonard I., ed. Communication and Change in American Religious History (1993) 14 essays by scholars; very long annotated bibliography pp. 355–479
- Wilson, John F. Religion and the American Nation: Historiography and History (2003) 119pp
Before 1800
- Bonomi, Patricia U. Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America (1988) online edition
- Bumsted, J. M. "What Must I Do to Be Saved?": The Great Awakening in Colonial America 1976
- Butler, Jon. "Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The Great Awakening as Interpretative Fiction." Journal of American History 69 (1982): 305–25. in JSTOR, influential article
- Butler, Jon. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. (1990). excerpt and text search
- Carté, Katherine. Religion and the American Revolution: An Imperial History (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture/U of North Carolina Press, 2021) online book review
- Gaustad, Edwin S. "The Theological Effects of the Great Awakening in New England," The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 40#3 (1954), pp. 681–706. in JSTOR
- Hatch, Nathan O. The Democratization of American Christianity (1989). excerpt and text search
- Heimert, Alan. Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (1966) online in ACLS e-books
- Kidd, Thomas S. The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (2007), 412pp excerpt and text search
- Lambert, Frank. Inventing the "Great Awakening" (1999), 308pp
- McLaughlin, William G. "Essay Review: the American Revolution as a Religious Revival: 'The Millennium in One Country.'" New England Quarterly (1967) 40#1: 99–110. in JSTOR
- Noll, Mark A. A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (1992)
- Sensbach, Jon F. "Religion and the Early South in an Age of Atlantic Empire," Journal of Southern History, Aug 2007, Vol. 73 Issue 3, pp. 631–642
1800–1900
- Abell, Aaron. The Urban Impact on American Protestantism, 1865–1900 (1943).
- Birdsall Richard D. "The Second Great Awakening and the New England Social Order", Church History 39 (1970): 345–364. in JSTOR
- Bruce, Dickson D., Jr. And They All Sang Hallelujah: Plain Folk Camp-Meeting Religion, 1800–1845 (1974).
- Findlay, James F. Dwight L. Moody: American Evangelist, 1837–1899 (1969).
- Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. Righteous Discontent: The Woman's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (Harvard UP, 1993)
- Mathews, Donald. Religion in the Old South (1979)
- Mead, Sidney E. "American Protestantism Since the Civil War. II. From Americanism to Christianity" Journal of Religion 36#2 (1956), pp. 67–89 online
- Miller, Randall M., Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan. Religion and the American Civil War (1998) excerpt and text search; complete edition online
- Shenk, Wilbert R., ed. North American Foreign Missions, 1810–1914: Theology, Theory, and Policy (2004) 349pp important essays by scholars excerpt and text search
- Sizer, Sandra. Gospel Hymns and Social Religion: The Rhetoric of Nineteenth-Century Revivalism. Temple University Press, 1978.
- Raboteau, Albert. Slave Religion: The "invisible Institution' in the Antebellum South, (1979)
- Smith, Timothy L. Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War, 1957
- Wigger, John H.. and Nathan O. Hatch, eds. Methodism and the Shaping of American Culture (2001) excerpt and text search, essays by scholars
Since 1900
- Allitt, Patrick. Religion in America Since 1945: A History (2004), very good overview
- 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.)
- Hollinger, David A. Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America (2017) excerpt
- Lacroix, Patrick. John F. Kennedy and the Politics of Faith (2021)
- 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
- Porterfield, Amanda, and Darren Grem, eds. The Business Turn in American Religious History (2017).
- 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
- Sutton, Matthew Avery. American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Belknap Press, 2014). 480 pp. online review
African American religion
- Fitts, Leroy. A history of black Baptists (Broadman Press, 1985)
- Frey, Sylvia R. and Betty Wood. Come Shouting to Zion: African American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to 1830 (1998).
- Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. Righteous Discontent: The Woman's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (1993).
- Johnson, Paul E., ed. African-American Christianity: Essays in History (1994).
- Raboteau, Albert. Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South (1978)
- Raboteau, Albert. African American-Religion (1999) 145pp online basic introduction
- Raboteau, Albert J. Canaan land: A religious history of African Americans (2001).
- Sernett, Milton C, ed. Afro-American Religious History: A Documentary Witness (Duke University Press, 1985)
- Eddie S. Glaude, eds. African American religious thought: An anthology (2003).
Primary sources
- Ellis, John Tracy, ed. Documents of American Catholic History (2nd ed. 1956).
- Griffith, R. Marie, ed. American Religions: A Documentary History (2007) 672pp excerpt and text search
- Heimert, Alan, and Perry Miller ed.; The Great Awakening: Documents Illustrating the Crisis and Its Consequences (1967)
- McClymond, Michael, ed. Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America. (2007). Vol. 1, A–Z: 515 pp. Vol. 2, Primary Documents: 663 pp. ISBN 0-313-32828-5
- McBeth, H. Leon, ed. A Sourcebook for Baptist Heritage (1990)
- McLoughlin, William G. ed. The American Evangelicals, 1800–1900: An Anthology 1976.
- Richey, Russell E., Rowe, Kenneth E. and Schmidt, Jean Miller (eds.) The Methodist Experience in America: a sourcebook, (2000) ISBN 978-0-687-24673-1. – 756 p. of original documents
- Sweet, W. W., ed. Religion on the American Frontier: vol I: Baptists, 1783–1830 (1931); Vol. II - The Presbyterians: 1783–1840; Volume III, The Congregationalists; Vol. IV, The Methodists (1931) online review about 800pp of documents in each
- Woodmason, Charles. The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution: The Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican Itinerant (1953), ed. by Richard J. Hooker, ed. excerpt and text search
External links
- Historic photographs on religious leaders and institutions; These are pre-1923 and out of copyright
- U.S. Library of Congress religion exhibit
- Unique Presidential speech: President Ronald Reagan uses report of Navy Chaplain, Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff, for keynote address, affirming importance of chaplains in United States military, Text version; Video version
- The Decline of Institutional Religion Faith Angle Forum South Beach, Florida March 18, 2013 Luis Lugo Pew Research Center Washington, D.C.