【英美概况】【课堂笔记】美国宗教religion in United States.doc

RELIGION in the UNITED STATES Religious Liberty “Among the rights which the new nation guaranteed, as a political necessity in a religiously diverse society, was freedom of religion” (p. 86) The Constitution forbade the government to give special favours to any religion, nor were they allowed to stop or interfere with religion. The USA was determined it would have no state-supported religion. When there is a disagreement between the government and any religion, the American courts must settle it. Protestants in the United States 60% of Americans are Protestant believers. The Baptists are the largest Protestant group.* The largest concentration of Baptists live in the Southern States of America and, although some Southern Baptists have liberal attitudes to black Americans, many believe and practice racial discrimination and prejudice towards them. Most black Americans are Baptists too, but they go to different churches than the white Americans. Church is a major social and community centre for the black churchgoers. There are over a 100 Protestant sects in America. They express variety on a theme, rather than major differences in belief. In recent decades there has been an increase in the number of fundamentalist churches, which often use the medium of television to communicate with citizens. These fundamentalists are sometimes extreme in their views. Catholics The largest single religious group is the Roman Catholics. More than 25% of Americans identify themselves as Catholics. The increase in the number of Catholics is mainly due to later immigration waves of Irish, Polish and Italians. For instance, over a million Irish Catholics left Ireland, due to a famine there that saw many suffer starvation. There was significant prejudice against the Catholics by the Protestants. * In the 1950s, many Catholics began to question the idea of the separation of Church and State. The Catholic Church had developed many social institutions, including schools, to preserve their fai