Response Paper # 2

Establishment of Religion in America

Weltee Wolo

Rasmussen College

Author Note

This paper is being submitted on October 22, 2017 Sherry Kamrowski’s

American Religious History G333/REL3131 course

Introduction

Back in the 17th century, the world was ruled by one religion that worked for hand in hand with the state governments. The Catholic faith was considered the official religion in most countries, and it was imposed on the subjects through the use of authority. People were not left with any kind of freedom to choose what they would want as their religion.

Religion in the USA

Narrowing down to religion in the USA, one cannot discuss the history of religion without highlighting the aspect of freedom of worship. Religion first came to the United States when people fled from Europe to the USA (Fitzgerald, 2014).The immigrants were fleeing the oppression that they had faced back in their country. Catholic was using the advantage of being a state religion to force people to subscribe to its belief system. Things would get so bad to a point that anyone who was part of any other faith was persecuted.

In a bid to be free, some people fled Europe and moved to the USA to escape the wrath of the pope and his followers. Once they were in the USA, they brought in and established their various religion

Other than people fleeing oppression from their country, religion was also established because of the element of freedom. The USA in a way gave people a chance to be part of a religion of their choice after constitutional amendments were made in line with religious issues. This made things much easier for the religions to be established.

Efforts by protestant leaders also facilitated the quick spread of religion in the USA. As soon as the leaders heard that the USA had put in place reforms that would allow religion in the country, they moved in and quickly acted so that they could get as many followers as possible (McLoughlin, 2013). 

References

Fitzgerald, T. (2014). Religion and the secular: Historical and colonial formations. Routledge.

McLoughlin, W. G. (2013). Revivals, awakenings, and reform. University of Chicago Press.