Jerry Falwell told Pat Robertson Sept. 14, 2001 that prior to September 11th, God had protected America "wonderfully these 225 years. And since 1812, this is the first time that we've been attacked on our soil and by far the worst results. ... Throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools... The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. .... the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America," Falwell continued, "I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"
“The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind ranging from compulsory military service to the payment of taxes; to health and safety regulation such as manslaughter and child neglect laws, compulsory vaccination laws, drug laws, and traffic laws; to social welfare legislation such as minimum wage laws, child labor laws, animal cruelty laws, environmental protection laws, and laws providing for equality of opportunity for the races. The First Amendment's protection of religious liberty does not require this. … To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.”
Antonin Scalia, in the 1990 Employment v Smith case rejecting
Native Americans’ petition to use peyote for religious purposes:
USA - Religion
America is among the most religious of the world’s developed nations. Nearly six-in-ten U.S. adults say that religion is “very important” in their lives.
The methodology of the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) 2008 replicated that used in previous surveys. The surveys are based on random-digit-dialing telephone surveys of residential households in the continental USA. Respondents were asked to describe themselves in terms of religion with an open-ended question. Interviewers did not prompt or offer a suggested list of potential answers. Moreover, the self-description of respondents was not based on whether established religious bodies, institutions, churches, mosques or synagogues considered them to be members. Instead, the surveys sought to determine whether the respondents regarded themselves as adherents of a religious community. Subjective rather than objective standards of religious identification were tapped by the surveys.
In 2008, of an adult population of 228,182,000, total of 173,402,000 self-idenbtified as Christian, inccuding Catholic 57,199, Baptist 36,148,000, Protestant [no denomination supplied] 5,187,000, Methodist/Wesleyan 11,366,000; Lutheran 8,674,000; and Christian [no denomination supplied] 16,834,000.
Other religions included Jewish 2,680,000; Muslim 1,349,000; Buddhist 1,189,000; Unitarian / Universalist 586,000; and Hindu 582,000. A total of 34,169,000 answered "No Religion" including Atheist and Agnostic, while 11,815,000 refused to answer.
Today’s Muslim American population is an extraordinary mosaic of ethnic, linguistic, ideological, social, economic, and religious groups. Native Muslim Americans are well integrated into American society, while many newcomers are just beginning to adapt to American life. In terms of religious devotion, Muslims range from highly orthodox to moderate to secular. Muslims resemble Christians, Jews, Hindus, and other American religious communities in that many of them seek full political and social integration, while others prefer to live primarily in the context of their communities and cultural practices. Many of the immigrants come from Muslim-majority countries and inevitably go through a period of adjustment as they learn the ways of a pluralistic society.
For the Christian, it is their responsibility to God to be part of a congregation. The Bible instructs Christians against "forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching" (Hebrews 10:25). Some people like smaller churches where they know everyone. Other people like the big church experience where a lot of programs are offered, especially for children.
Gallup polls and other statisticians have turned in the same percentage — about 40 percent of the population — of average weekend church attendees for the past 70 years. Numbers from actual counts of people in churches (Catholic, mainline and evangelical) showed that in 2004, only 17.7 percent of the population attended a Christian church on any given weekend. Americans tend to over-report socially desirable behavior like voting and attending church and under-report socially undesirable behavior like drinking.
On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the September 2010 survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. The U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey shows that large numbers of Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history and leading figures of major faith traditions – including their own. More than four-in-ten Catholics in the United States (45%) do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but are the "actual presence" of the body and blood of Christ. For context, only about six-in-ten Americans could name the vice president of the United States (59%).
The term "Bible Belt" refers to areas of the United States characterized by ardent fundamentalism and literal interpretation of the Bible. In the Bible-belt South people were expected to be in Church all the time, with two week revivals with red faced shouting evangelists preached in fancy clothes. Strict religious tenets were initially at odds with Southern views on race, gender, and class. The evangelical movement began to flourish only after it accommodated to the prevailing culture and values.
As the ante-bellum economy boomed, more and more of the plain folk moved up the economic ladder and joined the ranks of the slaveowners, and more and more wealthy converts came into the churches. The evangelicals abandoned their stance as cultural revolutionaries and social critics as they grew from small sects to major denominations. The change brought major divisions to all the denominations.
Evangelicals now became the most ardent defenders of a hierarchical social system grounded in slaveholding and patriarchal households. This dramatic shift was reflected in the churches where ritual and practice relegated women and blacks to more subordinate positions.
Evangelicals were so wedded to their orderly, hierarchical slaveholding republic that they contributed to the disastrous U. S. Civil War that destroyed it. Their impassioned defense of slavery, their own division along sectional lines, and their vision of southern whites as God's chosen people served to undermine their commitment to the Union and helped propel secession and war.
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