...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...
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...RELIGION IN AMERICA WEEK 5: FINAL PAPER INTRODUCTION Within this article I will discuss the effects of religion in America based on an etic (outsider’s) perspective, and I will identify the different religions present in America as well as the backgrounds of these groups. The effects of religion in America range from religiously influenced political decisions, to social ethics and dilemmas, and even racial discrimination. PART I There are many different religious groups in America, the most prominent being Christianity- which was the first religion to spread like wildfire soon after colonization. Christianity is defined as an “Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ as presented in the New Testament and sacred tradition” (1) and makes up approximately 78% of the religious preference of United States citizens according to the 2007 study conducted by the Pew Forum. (2) Other religious groups in America are Jews (1.7%), Buddhists (0.7%) and Muslims (0.6%) and 16.1% of Americans declared themselves to have no religion. (3) Christianity is comprised of three main branches, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and protestant. Roman Catholicism was first developed in Western Europe and is lead by the pope. Their beliefs are “the doctrines of Transubstantiation and Purgatory, and distinctive practices include devotion to the saints and Mary and use of the rosary (Christian Denominations).” The Catholic Church was founded by Jesus...
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...African American Religion in America in the 1800's Introduction The act of religious revivals took place in the middle of the eighteenth century. The religious revival quickly swept over the colonies of America. The impact of the religious revival was it resulted in the doctrinal change as well as stimulated and provoked social as well as political thoughts. It was able to have a permanent effect on the religion of America. The act or the revival was also termed as the Great Awakening. This act made Christianity as a religion extremely personal to everyone. It also fostered an intense sense of religious belief and reclamation. It also encouraged and introduced the concept of self-analysis according to the theological perspective and induced a sense committal to the newly established benchmark of personal morality. Consequently, the Second Great Awakening also occurred in the early 19 century. The movement began in the 1800’s. It introduced a set of reforms which was aimed at removing the evils from the society (www.encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com). The impact of the Great Awakening The First Great awakening eventually led to a major change and a revolution took place. In the lower county, the Baptist in the northern side and the Methodist preachers aided in converting whites and blacks into Christianity, enslaved them as well as gave them freedom. The blacks were given a warm welcome and were asked to play an active role in the congregations as well as become preachers...
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...Christianity: A case study on Theology in Africa Today Christianity is a term that is used very broadly. Over the past few decades Christianity has mainly been predominate in the West and looked upon as a Western religion. For example, one would not expect high number of Christians in places overseas like Indonesia where it is a Muslim majority country. But as times have gone on the number of Christians throughout the entire world have drastically increased since then. According to the Phew Form, the top countries with the largest number of Christians are the United States, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Germany, Philippines, China, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Ethiopia. In fact Indonesia actually contains more Christians than the combined 20 countries within Middle East-North Africa region (Phew, 2011, 13). According to Barrett, within multiple graphs and statistics shows rapid growth of Christianity in the developing countries of the Global South, in places like Asia, Africa, and Latin America (1970). About 90% of Christians live in countries where Christians are in the majority leaving approximately 10% of Christians worldwide living as minorities (Phew, 2011). Christianity is a religion that is found everywhere throughout the world. The religion today can definitely be said to be nothing at all alike as to what it was like a century ago. Christianity has truly become a global faith accepted by people, communities, and homes across the entire world. Christians...
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...Religion in Colonial America Deanna Levant ENG 491/American Literature to 1860 Professor Rathi Krishnan October 27, 2014 The Colonial period was an abundant period of American history in its source of respectful and influential people who helped to shape modern society through questioning the past beliefs. As a result, many people came to America with the purpose of searching for religious freedom. Their major hopes and wishes were to escape the religious persecution, which they were forced to face. In addition, they had the opportunity to choose religion that wished to be part of. Hence, the settlers came here with a load of European cultural and artistic traditions and began to implement them in real life. Consequently, the earliest writings that emerged during the colonial period were religious tracts and historical essays. Thus, this paper presents the information on the role of religion in colonial American literature and discusses the works of colonial authors to analyze how their religious views shape their literary works, their styles, and their interpretation of historical and political events. To start with, for the Puritans of the Colonial Period, various creations were actually connected to their religious beliefs and views of God. The Puritans sailed to America in order to build their lives on biblical laws away from the rule of the old church. Severe Calvinists, they believed in the indisputable authority...
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...C. T. Bauer College of Business University of Houston Investment Management FINA4320 Rui Liu Full Name: Rogan Finn ID: 1174652 Homework 1 (Due on 07/15/2015) Please submit a copy of your work to hwsubfina4320@gmail.com by 8pm of the due day. Answers to Question 1 Write down your answers to Question 1 in the following table 1 2 3 4 D A D 6 7 8 D D C C C 11 12 13 14 15 C B B D B 16 17 18 19 20 D D D B B D 9 5 A 10 Question 1 (60 points): 1. Real assets in the economy include all but which one of the following? A. Land B. Buildings C. Consumer durables D. Common stock 2. ____ is not a derivative security. A. A share of common stock B. A call option C. A futures contract D. All of the above are derivative securities. 3. Active trading in markets and competition among securities analysts helps ensure that __________. I. security prices approach informational efficiency II. riskier securities are priced to offer higher potential returns III. investors are unlikely to be able to consistently find under- or overvalued securities A. I only B. I and II only C. II and III only D. I, II and III 4. The material wealth of society is determined by the economy's _________, which is a function of the economy's _________. A. investment bankers, financial assets B. investment bankers, real assets C. productive capacity, financial assets ...
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...In Latin America it is becoming a problematic issue of the fading popularity and influence of the Catholic church in civilization. Latin America is inhabited by more than 450 million Catholics. (Religion in Latin America, 2014). Today many are leaving the catholic church and converting into protestants. According to the Global Catholic Population that is nearly 40% of the world’s catholic population. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, an Argentinian citizen now distinguished as Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church. He is the first ever Latin American pope to hold this significant title, however the catholic religion is persistently diminishing at a rapid rate in all Latin countries. Catholicism is practiced in eighteen Latin American countries including...
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...Here are notes on the role gender played on making colonial religion modern religion. You can use gender as a basis for how the colonial past led our future in one direction. The part I think would be most helpful to you is in red. Open with, “After Adam and Eve, there was Anne Hutchinson and john Winthrop.” Because as you know she was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony By John for preaching something different. Gender: If you happen to be someone who participates in jewish/Christian services? How many men/women attend? Usually more women. Why? Protestant is the most dominant until 1860 As you move into the early 19 century, Baptist and Methodist Predominant is protestant Women in Colonial Society: -Adam’s rib - women is a “helpmeet” for man. The side, to be content with equality. -Equality function - Were on equal terms in the value and their degree of their participation on the development of the colonies. But only men could have leadership roles. Think of a farm. Women were managers of household economy, feeding the family, cultivating and producing the food. Own economic system of home production. Most women would live out their lives as junior partners in the household economy, but denied the control of the land. Yet colonial women were unlikely to feel useless or alienated from their family by the subsistence economy because they conducted the education and discipline of the children and extended family. If her husband died, she would be the sole person...
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...Religion Traditions and Democracy in America In Democracy in America, Tocqueville is worried about the disappearance of old aristocratic ranks and privileges, and the emergence of democracy. Tocqueville states that the "key to almost the whole work" can be found in his chapter on the "point of departure" for the Anglo-Americans (Tocqueville, p. 17). How can this chapter on the early history of Puritan New England shed light on what European governments can do to adapt to democratization? It seems odd that Puritans would have much to teach Europeans (or Americans today) about democracy. Tocqueville in fact outlines how vastly different the New England towns were from what we would call democratic. The leaders who made these laws were intent on enforcing good morals by using the most extreme enforcement. There is virtually no conception of a right to personal privacy. Their laws were based on a literal reading of the Old Testament and were extremely harsh. For example, in Connecticut, blasphemy, witchcraft, adultery and rape are punished with death. It is a capital crime for a son to say anything disrespectful of his parents. Tocqueville wants us to focus not on these laws, which he calls "bizarre and tyrannical" (Tocqueville, 27). Instead, he points out that these tyrannical laws were passed with the "free, active participation of all the interested parties themselves, and that the morals were even more austere and puritan than the laws" (Tocqueville...
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...One of the positive factors about the religion in America is that all sects in the country belong to the family of Christian beliefs, therefore the morality is the same everywhere. Also, this morality is not just presented in the believer’s worlds, but in their way of life and actions. Tocqueville described this unity of different sects by having the same Creator that demands morality, obligations toward other people. Second of the positive factors about the prevalent religion in the United States is that preachers are in factor of civil liberty and are not biased toward any politicians, no matter if they allow religious liberty or not. The church is not involved in the government and public affairs. Of course, because of life changing power...
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...The Establishment Clause established there would be no set religion in America. The government was not allowed to have this country practice one specific religion. It also prohibited the government from favoring one religion over another. This way to the government can’t favor one religion, or favor the non religion people. The fact they passed the Clause was very unique for its time. This was a time when a lot of different countries and specific religions. It was almost unheard of when America came out and declared this because they were one of the only countries like this. One challenge is that America is a melting pot to religion. There are so many people that believe different things, and sometimes that can get to be very challenging....
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...Religion of Colonial Life The aspect of religion in colonial life started out a little rocky in the beginning. The Protestants from England were unhappy with their corrupt religion, and wanted to start fresh in the New World called America. The reason it was corrupt is because they had no separation of church and state, and they wanted to be free to choose their own religion. However, when they got to the New World, things actually didn’t change that much. The citizens still didn’t really have the freedom to choose their religion. Inhabitants of Virginia were forced to attend the Church of Anglican, and pay taxes to keep it going. In 1698 a freedom to worship bill was put into place stating that people could worship whatever religion they wanted, but major limitations were put in place. The limitations were that the civil authority got to choose what groups got to practice this freedom. Later advocates for religious freedom argued that religious freedom should be defined as a natural right rather than as a right afforded by a civil government. Later on though, the Bill of Rights was created and the first amendment was basically freedom in religion in the United States of America. All the religions that had gained popularity and followings during this period were Catholic, Methodists, Quakers, Lutherans, Mennonites, Judaism, and Baptists. The first religion talked about is one that it still very popular and followed in today’s world, Catholic. The first Catholic colony...
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...Weber concluded that society is undergoing a process of modernisation – a transition from religious tradition to rational and scientific ways of thinking – and rationalisation – the process by which rational ways of thinking have gradually replaced the religious teachings and understandings of the world. This secularisation is said to have started by Marten Luther when he challenged the principles and ideas of the Roman Catholic Church. This religion was the main religion especially within the UK that most of the population believed to be true. Luther undermined the popular religious view by writing 93 reasons challenging the churches beliefs and this initiated the processes of modernisation and rationalisation. Luther had started the end of the rule of the church within the UK by causing a Protestant revolution and disenchantment. Weber talks about disenchantment as a way of escaping the beliefs of the church, this caused the thought that the world operates according to its own laws of nature based on science and reason instead of religion and superstition and that God is transcendent. There is strong evidence to suggest that secularisation is very high within European societies, especially the UK as we can see from church attendance statistics. Crockett identifies the 19th century to be the golden age of religiosity as in 1851 census of Religious worship 40% or more of the adult population attended church. In the past 200 years this has now dropped to 10-15% as recorded during...
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...belief.” One of the main reason people migrated to North America was because the King of England forced all English people to attend his church, the Church of England, which was a Protestant Church. Every other religion was forced to be practiced privately, and were oppressed by people who are Protestant. Religious freedom has played a very important role in the history of the United States before 1865. Europeans migrated to America to escape religious injustice and forced beliefs by the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England. This religious injustice increased the desire of the forefathers to form the organization of a country that separates church and state, and the freedom to practice any religion without fear of being judged or persecuted. Religion including Christians, Separatist, Puritans, Quakers and many others, were determined to find...
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...Religion’s Effect on American Government America is a secular nation, which means it doesn’t have a state religion, or discriminate based on religion. “Separation of church and state” is a key principle in American legislation. Despite this, signs of religion are everywhere in our country. It’s can be observed every day. For example, “In God We Trust” is engraved on all American currency, and “one nation, under God…” is in the pledge of allegiance. This influence also reaches to the highest levels of the government, and is a major factor in politics. Although America was created to be a country of religious freedom, church and state overlap, with both government policy restricting religious freedoms and religious values affecting government...
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