ABSTRACT
Christianity is the basis of religion in the small towns and rural areas of the United States. Few Jewish congregations or other non-Christian religious groups are found in rural and small town America. As a cultural universal, religion is interrelated in meaningful ways with each of the other essential social institutions—systems. The pattern set in the colonial period of the importance of religion in life became an incised characteristic of the developing American culture. The structure and functioning of the original white American family system was refined in the crucible of Puritanism. Physical isolation is closely associated with cultural isolation. Conservative religious groups have used rural locations as effective boundary maintenance mechanisms. Church size and community size are also often related to involvement of a religious group in social action. The increasing complexities of American society have somewhat blurred the interrelationships among economics, social differentiation, and organized religion.
