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Religion played an important role in the history of the United States. In some way, it can be said that it helped to shape America into what it is today. However, the belief that some religions are better than others created conflicts between their members. The aim of this paper is to show how different religions were perceived and tolerated (if they even were) throughout the history of America, and what is the situation of tolerance and freedom of religion today.
Nowadays, the religions in the United States are numerous and originate from all over the world. The reason for this could be the tolerance America displays towards these religions and the so-called freedom of religion. However, this tolerance towards different beliefs is not really something that was practiced if we take into account the relationship different religions and America had throughout history. And this applies especially to the attitudes that various denominations of Christianity had towards each other and other religions.
Native Americans were not a monotheistic nation, but they held different religious beliefs especially in the way of spirits and spiritualism. They strongly believed in nature and the Great Spirit, and this became a point of contention when Europeans came to America. These European colonists were predominantly believers of Christianity, and they did not approve of these different religious beliefs and deemed them to be unfounded and false. When they began establishing colonies in their goal of conquering the American land, they exhibited strong intolerance towards the religion that was different from theirs and wanted it to be eliminated. One of the main reasons for the establishment of the colonies, especially English ones, was also the spreading of Christianity, e.g., the Church of England. Even though the spreading of Christian faith came second to the search of profit to most colonists, they still succeeded in their Christianization of Native Americans. By the 19th century, most of the Native Americans were members of one of the Christian denominations.
In the early 1600s Puritans and Pilgrims came to America to escape the religious persecution they were experiencing in England. We would have thought that because they had also experienced intolerance towards their own religion, they would be more tolerant towards others. However, that was not so, and the religious freedom that they sought for themselves was not extended to others. Those that were opposed to it were often severely punished and even banished from the Puritan colonies.
As a result of various religious disagreements, some members of the colonies decided to break away and establish their own colony where they will be able to practice their religion. One of them was a Puritan clergyman Roger William, who was banished after he had disagreed with the policies and theology in his colony. He established the colony of Rhode Island, where he inaugurated religious tolerance and freedom. He did not differentiate between those of his own religious beliefs and those whose religious beliefs he did not agree with (e.g., Quakers and Jews). He also established the separation of the church and the state in his colony, which was not adopted by the other colonies until after America became independent. Eventually, the Toleration Act was passed in 1682 which allowed several other denominations, e.g., Quakers, to build their churches and have public service. They were not legally punished if they did not challenge Puritan’s authority; however, the discrimination towards them still continued.
After the American Revolution in 1775, there were numerous laws regarding different religions and religious beliefs. In some states, such as the State of New York, only Christians could hold public office and Catholics were banned from them, whereas, in the State of Maryland, Catholics had a full civil right, while the Jews had not. Thomas Jefferson wrote a Bill in 1779 that guaranteed all citizens legal equality – even those who were not religious. However, the bill did not come into fruition until 1786. The draft was modified and adopted the view that Roger William established in his colony of Rhode Island – the separation of church and state. This meant that the Congress could not make laws that would infringe on the people’s freedom of religion. Furthermore, in 1791 the Virginia Declaration became part of the First Amendment, which allowed for the free exercise of religion.
However, despite the portrayal of the religious tolerance on the side of the early American leaders, the nation itself was not so tolerant. In the 19th century, anti-Catholic movements were going strong as people feared that the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church was incompatible with democracy. Those opposed to Catholicism burned down convents and churches, which also resulted in deaths, as was the case in Philadelphia, where two churches were burned and 20 people killed by the people of anti-Catholic sentiment in 1844.
In the 20th century, another group expressed their hostility towards people with different religious belief – Ku Klux Klan. The group was already established in the 19th century, and with the revival in the 20th century, its members were after all-white, Protestant America. They enforced violence while presenting their anti-black, anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic ideology. Members of the group burned crosses and even killed people, predominantly African American members of the society, until the group was reduced in the Great Depression. Ku Klux Klan was never disbanded in its entirety and is still active today.
Discrimination against Jews was most prominent from the late 19th century until the middle of the 1960s. The fights against the fascism in the World War I and World War II, and the later civil rights movements in the 1950s and 1960s helped to diminish the discrimination against the Jews. And even then, the discrimination against them was not so strong as it was against the Catholicism and African Americans at that time.
In the 1990s with the fall of the Soviet Union, America turned its gaze towards Muslim nations. As a result of the rise of the oil prices in the 1970s and the international crisis in the Middle East in the 1980s, America began to exhibit strong anti-Arab and anti-Muslim feelings. This was further exacerbated with the attack on the World Trade Center in New York in 1993, and the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001.
America was seen as a nation that those who are oppressed and persecuted can turn to. The religious discord is deeply steeped into the American history; however, the religious freedom and tolerance are widely spread values in the present day America.
In the American Constitution, the First Amendment clause guarantees the separation of church and state, and says that everyone has a right to practice his or her religion, or no religion at all. And there is no official religion of America precisely because of this Amendment. The presidential candidates, like John F. Kennedy and George H.W. Bush, like to reaffirm the idea of the religious liberty, and identify it as the basis for other rights.
Today, America is a home to numerous religious groups that originate from all over the world. According to Pew Research Centre, the most practiced religions in 2010 were Protestantism (50.1%), followed by Catholicism (24.3%), unaffiliated (16.4%), other Christians (3.3%), Judaism (1.2%), and Buddhism (1.2%) (US Religion Demographics). This diversity points towards the tolerance of different religions; however, in recent years, especially in 2017, there were more hate-crimes and harassments of Muslims and Jews happening. It appears that even though the freedom of religious expression is highly emphasized in America, it is still undermined by those who express their religious bigotry.
My aim in this paper was to present how the tolerance towards different religious beliefs was or was not expressed in American history, and what is the situation in the present day. By using information from the listed sources, it has been shown that even though America today is a country where freedom of religion is highly valued it was not so in its history. There were periods when those that opposed the dominant religion, mostly Protestantism, were being persecuted and even killed. The persecution of different religious beliefs already began when the first colonists came to America and they did not agree with the views Native Americans had when it came to their religion. Throughout the colonial period, various conflicts were being made because of the opposing views of which religion is the right one. After the American Revolution, some progress had been achieved towards the tolerance of different religions and the freedom of religious expression with the establishment of the First Amendment clause. However, this did not completely eliminate the religious discriminations. In the 20th century, the religious bigotry continued with the revival of Ku Klux Klan and the discrimination against the Jews and especially Muslims after the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. However, America is still the country where religious tolerance and freedom of expression are still highly emphasized. Even though there are still people who like to discriminate those that belong to the religious minority, they are not expressing what the whole population of the United States thinks about them.
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