Page 511 - Sociology and You

Section 4
Chapter 14 Religion 481 Religion in the United States
Key Terms
• secularization
• fundamentalism
The Development of Religion in America
The search for religious freedom was only one of many reasons Puritan colonists came to America—but it was an important one. From the outset, the Puritans viewed themselves as a religious example for the world to follow and admire. Sociologist Robert Bellah has described the American religious connection this way:
In the beginning, and to some extent ever since, Americans have inter- preted their history as having religious meaning. They saw themselves as being a “people” in the classical and biblical sense of the word. They hoped they were a people of God (Bellah et al. 1991:2).
The U.S. guarantees religious freedom. Pictured clockwise from the bottom left are a Hindu priest in Ohio, an Islamic prayer group in Maine, a Baptist congregation in Alabama, and a Jewish Chanukah celebration in Maryland.
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Through the process of secularization, the sacred and the profane tend to be- come intermixed. There has been a revival of religious fundamentalism in the United States. Religious faiths can be analyzed by major social characteristics such as class, and political tendencies.