Most people generally accept that as a country, America was founded on religions principals. Many of the writings of the founding fathers, including our own Declaration of Independence, include religious doctrine as not only the partial justification for our separation from mother England but also as a part of the vision of how our new nation would be successful. Over time, our society and culture have changed so that today, even though people claim to be religious, religion is certainly not as main stream in our culture as it once was. By better understanding our society in colonial America, how the denominational makeup of churchgoers has changed, how our legal system has both protected and not protected religion’s presence in our daily lives, the influence of different organizations and social movements on religious practices and perceptions, the change in how Christians are perceived and finally the changes in the message that the church is preaching the reader will be able to understand not only how America has changed but also how contemporary Christian leaders and organizations are trying to remain relevant and consistent with God’s word.
Colonial America & Our Founding Fathers
From the settling of our nation to the Revolutionary War, religion was much more a part of mainstream society. The pervasive nature of religion had an impact on those who led the fight for our freedom. The period of history leading up to the Revolutionary War is commonly referred to as the Great Awakening due to the rise in popularity of evangelical preachers challenging the major denominations’ message to the people. The revolution could also be viewed as much in religious terms as political ones. Since nine colonies had adopted official state churches, many fought the war motivated by their objection to that as to taxation issues. As Patricia Bonomi writes about this time period in her book, Under the Cope of Heaven, “the sights and sounds of today’s cities are not primarily symbolic of religion. But in eighteenth century America…the idiom of religion penetrated all discourse, underlay all thought, marked all observances and gave meaning to every public and private crisis.” (Bonomi, 1986) Public education was mostly based on religion and study of the bible. Popular entertainment as we understand it to be was not yet a part of society, so a good sermon was the equivalent, with popular preachers drawing hundreds, even thousands to hear them on a regular basis. Most denominations also commanded that the Sabbath be kept holy. In Virginia, people were required to attend worship twice on Sunday and until the early eighteenth century; the punishment for missing a service was flogging or death. (Carlisle, 2009. Pg. 97)
Religion in society undoubtedly played a part in the Salem Witchcraft trials of the late 1600s, where 14 women and five men were killed by hanging and stoning when “community emotions reached a fever pitch.” (Carlisle, 2009. Pg. 92) There was even a special court appointed by the governor of Massachusetts that was disbanded once the ulterior motives of the accusers became obvious.
Religious writings were also the most popular form of printed material until 1765, when political writings became available leading up to the Revolutionary War. Even through the conflict, religious writings still rivaled the political discourse.
Two documents that are consistently identified with having religious influence are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Written by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence contains several references that are difficult to interpret any way but as religious. In the very first sentence, Jefferson discusses a people and the station “to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them.” There is also a reference to men being endowed with unalienable rights by their creator. Although the Constitution does not contain any overtly religious language, those who were involved with the writing and interpretation of it were most certainly educated, religious men whose faith had a hand in the direction of our young republic. Those who made up the group in charge of drafting our founding document unanimously identified themselves as Christians. With the exception of two delegates that identified themselves with the Roman Catholic Church, the balance of the delegates were protestant and nearly 70 percent of them claimed membership in the Episcopal Church. Even during the meetings where the very system of government was constructed, prayer was a part of the process. Only a month after officially opening, the constitutional convention found itself needing direction. Ben Franklin provided it by saying “How has it happened that we have not hitherto once thought of humble applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? “ (Beeman, 2009 Pg. 177) There are many other exchanges noted involving Franklin, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Edmund Randolph and others where delegates attempted to involve prayer in the proceedings. Even in later years, their work was described by historians as notable as George Bancroft as proof of “the divine power which gives unity to the universe, and order and connection to events.” (Beeman, 2009 Pg. 177)
For the sake of balance, even though religion played a critical role in colonial America, organized religion was not the reason. With only one out of five New England residents having a formal religious affiliation, most people’s faith “lacked public expression and organized influence.” (Stark & Finke, 2005 Pg. 26) This is a symptom of living in a frontier society. There is a social disorganization caused by a lack of human interpersonal relationships since everyone is a newcomer to the area. The social networks that sustain organizations like churches were just not yet fully developed in colonial America. As a result this one like others was, “short on churches, long on crime and vice, simply because they are frontiers.” (Stark & Finke, 2005 Pg. 34)
Legal & Moral As the Constitution and other founding documents were being written, there were already movements afoot to move the social and political barometer in America toward the scientific rationale if not the secular. Beeman even notes that while some in New England “persisted in (maintaining) the connection between government, public order, morality and religion…the independent American states were deliberately moving in the opposite direction.” (Beeman, 2009 Pg. 180) This change notwithstanding, there was still an almost universal agreement with preventing a state sponsored religion. This goal was accomplished via the First Amendment and the Establishment Clause. As a result of several cases, the modern Supreme Court has developed a three part test to determine if a government action violates this clause. Adam Silberlight details them in his article for the Widener Law Journal in 2008. In Lemon vs. Kurtzman the Court established: * A statute must have a secular legislative purpose * Its primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion * A state must not foster an excessive entanglement with religion
The Pledge of Allegiance is another document where religious references have sparked controversy. Originally written in 1892 by a socialist, it did not contain the words under God. They were added in 1954 by then President Eisenhower in response to the “Communist threat of the times.” (US History.org, n.d.) In 2002, California resident Michael Newdow sued to remove those words on behalf of his daughter, as they violated his belief system. (Ginn, 2007) That case was dismissed but the author goes on to relate that he has reintroduced the lawsuit on behalf of other children. Closely linked with the issue of prayer in classrooms and at sanctioned public school events like athletic contests, through the decades since our nation was founded these two expressions of patriotism and faith have been pushed from mainstream society via various legal challenges such as the one previously mentioned.
What effect have these changes had on our nation’s culture? According to a study performed at the University of Washington in 2003 involving 250 students between 11 and 16 years old designed to determine whether educators should “work to maintain the…scale of national allegiance or should they attempt to produce new subjects oriented to Earth and the human family?” (Mitchell & Parker, 2008) The study found that even in advance of any “civic education reform, (the subjects) were imagining and producing allegiances that were multiple, flexible and relational. This is a dramatic shift from the traditional patriotic and nationalistic viewpoint exhibited by our nation’s youth in years past. The study also reports that these teens regarded patriotic symbols and images of September 11th as overused and cliché, another example of a shift away from traditional values in modern America. The Ten Commandments are another foundation of our republic whose usage has changed over time. The aforementioned Supreme Court standard concerning the Establishment Clause addresses the use of the Ten Commandments by saying that secular purposes need not by “exclusively secular” and as such “government use of the Ten Commandments is not a per se violation of the purpose prong.” (Silberlight, 2008 Pg. 118) The first ruling on their public display was not until 1980 and even though addressed numerous times in lower courts, was not again addressed by our nation’s highest court until 2005 and since in cases involving their display in schools and other government buildings. How is this significant in demonstrating societal shift? Prior to 2005, the Supreme Court had always upheld the public display of the Ten Commandments but according to Silverlight, the opinions and rulings from Van Orden V. Perry and McCreary County V. ACLU of Kentucky place the constitutionality of their public display in question. Cases will be decided on a case by case basis using the Lemon test. He points out that because “government action and sentiment towards religion must appear neutral to the casual observer…public display of the Ten Commandments may or may not be constitutional.” (Silverlight, 2008) It is also important that even as the Court’s position has liberalized towards them, the Ten Commandments remain on display on their very own grounds. Another impact that religion had on society was the passage of Blue Laws. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia defines them as “legislation regarding public and private conduct, especially laws relating to Sabbath observance.” These laws have roots in the Puritan culture of early America and declined in popularity as the Puritan population did. They lay dormant for decades until the prohibition movement in the early twentieth century revived them. An article in Time magazine sheds some light on the social and practical reasoning behind this legislation in colonial times and beyond. The debate surrounding these laws has always been “less between sacred and secular than between work and respite.” (Gibbs, 2004) The article goes on to say that America is too “diverse, our lives too busy, our economy too global and our appetites too vast to lose a whole day.” Sunday newspapers actually started during the Civil War due to the appetite for current information. Major league baseball held its first Sunday game in 1892. Even as society began to change to allow more types of commerce on Sundays, industries like to liquor store owners and car dealerships actually lobbied to keep them so that their employees could be un-busy without losing out in the marketplace. Today there are still industries and legal jurisdictions that keep blue laws in place but it is evident that the viewpoint of most people toward keeping the Sabbath a day of rest began changing over a century ago.
Organizations
The fundamental freedom of religion that Americans enjoy has its roots with the founding fathers. When initially proposed, not a single state delegation supported the idea of a federal bill or rights, a decision that shocked Thomas Jefferson. When he learned of the decision, he told James Madison that he was “deeply concerned and dismayed about the absence of a bill of rights” (Beeman, 2009 Pg. 342) like those offered by the states. Another portion of the Constitution has been used by both sides as justification for their pursuit of either keeping religion as a part of a sociopolitical structure or restricting it. The first lines of the First Amendment to the Constitution read “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” (Haugen & Musser, 2011)
Throughout the decades there have been groups of people and organizations that have challenged the status quo and have been successful at moving the social barometer away from the religious toward the secular.
Green Society
Societal Changes The social leanings within our country are often determined by the example of our leaders. There is not a more visible one than our President. From the Easter Egg roll on the White House Lawn that has a tradition of over 130 years to President Reagan declaring 1983 the year of the Bible (Silverlight, 2008 Pg. 121) Americans have seen their leaders as being influenced by Christian values. The tip of the spear relative to communicating those values to Presidents and paupers alike has always been America’s clergy.
Statistics
Although the focus of this project is not to quote statistics, understanding the shift in religious denominations and even religions in the US is critical to understanding their influence and the cultural changes they help shape.
According to the statistics used by Stark and Finkle, there were 3,228 church congregations in the US between 1775 and 1776. Because of the lack of concentration, many found themselves in communities with several small churches of different denominations. Thomas Jefferson even characterized his community by saying “The population of my neighborhood is too slender, and is too much divided into other sects to maintain any one preacher well. (Rosser, 2005) The top five denominations were (Stark, 1988): Denomination | Number of Members | Percent | Congregational | 668 | 20.7 | Presbyterian | 558 | 18.2 | Baptist | 497 | 15.4 | Episcopal | 495 | 15.3 | Quakers | 310 | 9.6 |

The total church membership, according to complete chart, was 3,198, so the top five denominations represented over 79 percent of churchgoers and 10 to 20 percent of the population.
By comparison, USA today reported that in 2010 there were 102.5 million church members in the US (Yeakley, 2011). With our population being 308.7 million at the close of 2010 (Census Bureau, 2010), it is obvious that the percentages today are much larger.
In conclusion,
References
Beeman, R. (2009). Plain, Honest Men and the Making of the American Constitution. Random House. New York.
Bonomi, P. (1986). Under the Cope of Heaven. Oxford University Press. New York
Carlisle, R. (2009). Handbook to line in America. The Colonial and Revolutionary Era. Volume 1. Infobase Publishing. New York.
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia (2011). Blue Laws. Sixth Edition. Available from Academic Search Complete. Retrieved via the Harding University Library on November 13, 2011.
Finke, R. & Stark, R. (2005). The Churching of America, 1776-2005. Rutgers University Press. New Brunswick
Gibbs, N. (August 2, 2004) And on the Seventh Day We Rested? Time. [serial online] 164 (5): 90. Retrieved November 13, 2011 from the Harding University Library.
Ginn, J. (2007). Do Religious Groups in America Experience Discrimination? Thomson Gale Publishing. Farmington Hills, Michigan.
Haugen, D. & Musser, S. (2011). Religion in America. Greenhaven Press. Farmington Hills, Michigan.
Mitchellm K. & Parker, W. (April, 2008). I Pledge Allegiance To…Flexible Citizenship And Shifting Scales of Belonging. Teachers College Record. Volume 110, Issue 4, pp 775-804. Retrieved via Google on November 12, 2011. http://education.washington.edu/areas/ci/profiles/documents/Mitchell-Parker.pdf
Rosser, B. (February 20, 2005). John Adams versus Thomas Jefferson: Unitarians Struggling Over the Soul of our Nation. Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Harrisburg Virginia. Retrieved via Google on November 2, 2011. http://huuweb.org/Sermons/john-adams- versus-thomas-jeffers.htm
Silberlight, A. (2008). Thou Shall not Overlook Context: A Look at the Ten Commandments Under the Establishment Clause. Volume 18, Issue 1, Pp. 113-147. Retrieved via the Harding University Library on November 13, 2011. http://nexus.harding.edu:2054/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=a9307ad7-e285-43f1-b299- 980f4a77e6fa%40sessionmgr112&vid=6&hid=108
Stark, R & Finke, R. (1988). American Religion in 1776: A Statistical Portrait. SA. Sociological Analysis. 49(1) 39-51.
US Declaration of Independence, paragraph 1 (1776)
US History.org (n.d.). The Pledge of Allegiance. Retrieved via Google on November 12, 2011. http://www.ushistory.org/documents/pledge.htm