ABSTRACT
The formation of the United States of America was never a foregone conclusion. And even when it did become a reality, no one could have anticipated the role that religion would play in the new nation. On the heels of the Great Awakening and at a time of political revolution, many American colonists based their opposition to British rule on philosophical principles of the Enlightenment, longstanding hostility toward the Catholic Church, and Protestant concepts of freedom found in scripture. An explosive growth in church affiliation and religious experimentation followed the American Revolution, much of it fueled by a wave of Protestant revivalism during the early nineteenth century that came to be known as the Second Great Awakening. Black and white Americans contributed to the surge in evangelical Protestantism, many of whom were motivated by their Christian faith to fight for the abolition of slavery. Others (especially white southerners) justified the perpetuation of slavery on theological and biblical grounds. These contrasting Christian worldviews clashed in the American Civil War. Concurrently, Roman Catholic and Jewish immigrants from Europe started to populate urban centers in the East and rural frontiers in the West, sparking demographic shifts that inspired nativism and xenophobia in many Protestant Americans. By midcentury, with so much racial and ethnic variation, we see how even the powerful influence of a white Protestant majority couldn’t curb the religious diversification of the United States.
