* Chancellors’ Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana University—Bloomington.
1. RELIGION IN AMERICAN HISTORY 1 (Jon Butler & Harry S. Stout eds., 1998).
2. One striking measure ofthe vitality of American religious history as a field today is the
cluster of revisionist literature recentlypublished in anthologies edited by leading scholars.See,
e.g., LIVEDRELIGIONINAMERICA:TOWARDA HISTORYOFPRACTICE (David D. Hall ed.,1997);
NEW DIRECTIONS IN AMERICAN RELIGIOUS HISTORY (Harry S. Stout & D.G. Hart eds., 1997);
PERSPECTIVES ON AMERICAN RELIGION AND CULTURE (Peter W. Williams ed., 1999);
RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY AND AMERICAN RELIGIOUS HISTORY: STUDIES IN TRADITIONS AND
CULTURES (Walter H. Conser, Jr. & Sumner B. Twiss eds., 1997) [hereinafter RELIGIOUS
DIVERSITY]; RETELLING U.S. RELIGIOUS HISTORY (Thomas A. Tweed ed., 1997).
3. For an alternative approach to the measurement and assessment of religious diversity
in contemporary America, see HANDBOOK OF DENOMINATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES (Frank
S. Mead ed., 9th ed. 1990); ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN RELIGIONS (J. Gordon Melton ed.,
5th ed. 1996).
Religion/Religions in the United States:
Changing Perspectives and Prospects
STEPHEN J. STEIN*
The opening lines of a recent anthology edited by Yale historians Jon Butler and
Harry S. Stout read as follows:
One of the more interesting commentaries on the age in which we live isthat no
field of American history has enjoyed a greater renaissance over the past three
decades than religion. From a cottage industry that was once limited to seminaries
and denominational colleges, the field has grown exponentially, and now major
books and articles are emerging from history departments and religious studies
departments located in major research universities.1
It is out of the context of that dramatic historiographical expansion that I approach my
task.2
I intend to draw on that literature to examine the profound changes occurring
in the religious makeup of our nation today by setting those changes into historical
perspective and to explore the implications of those changes for understanding the
contemporary challenge facing the principle and the practice of religious liberty.
One reason that the field of American religious history has enjoyed this threedecade
burst of scholarly energy and investment is the accelerating growth of religious
diversity. We have always been a religiously diverse people, but never to the degree
as at the present moment. To illustrate that point, I will begin by constructing a collage
composed of contemporary religious persons, individuals who define their being and
reality by religious practices.3
Each of these persons lays claim to constitutional
protections. These religious people must be the center of any discussion of
contemporary religious life in America and the subjects on whom we focus if we are
to deal adequately with issues of religious liberty. The free exercise of religion is more
than an abstract principle; it involves concrete practice. It requires someone, some
person, to do the practicing. I begin therefore by looking at the manifold ways your
neighbors and mine, fellow citizens of the republic, practice religion in contemporary
America.
A collage, as you know, is by definition “an art form in which bits of objects . . . are
pasted together on a surface in incongruous relationship for their symbolic or
38 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 75:37
4. See WEBSTER’S NEW WORLD DICTIONARY OFAMERICAN ENGLISH 273 (3d college ed.
1988).
5. On the struggle within the Episcopal tradition over worship forms, see Don S.
Armentrout, Episcopal Splinter Groups: Schisms in the Episcopal Church, 1963-1985, HIST.
MAG. PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH 295-320 (1986); see also MICHAEL MORIARTY, THE
LITURGICAL REVOLUTION: PRAYER BOOK REVISION AND ASSOCIATED PARISHES: A
GENERATION OF CHANGE IN THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH (1996).
6. For an example of dolphin channeling, see THE NEW BELIEVERS (Monticello Prods.
1990). For information on the New Age movement, see CATHERINE L. ALBANESE, NATURE
RELIGION IN AMERICA: FROM THE ALGONKIAN INDIANS TO THE NEW AGE (1990); MICHAEL F.
BROWN, THE CHANNELING ZONE: AMERICAN SPIRITUALITY IN AN ANXIOUS AGE (1997);
PERSPECTIVES ON THE NEW AGE (James R. Lewis & J. Gordon Melton eds., 1992).
7. See M.JAMES PENTON,APOCALYPSEDELAYED:THE STORY OF JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES
(1985). The most instructive look into the religious culture of the Witnesses is obtained by
examining their leading publications, The Watchtower and Awake.
8. For discussions of recent Marian apparitions in the United States, see MICHAEL W.
CUNEO, THE SMOKE OF SATAN: CONSERVATIVE AND TRADITIONALIST DISSENT IN
CONTEMPORARYAMERICANCATHOLICISM 5-6, 44-47(1997);DANIELWOJCIK,THEENDOFTHE
WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: FAITH, FATALISM, AND APOCALYPSE IN AMERICA 60-96 (1997); see
also Sandra L.Zimdars-Swartz,The Marian RevivalinAmericanCatholicism, inBEINGRIGHT:
CONSERVATIVE CATHOLICS IN AMERICA 214-15, 218, 227-33 (Mary Jo Weaver & R. Scott
Appleby eds., 1995).
9. See ROBERT PEEL, HEALTH AND MEDICINE IN THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE TRADITION:
PRINCIPLE, PRACTICE, AND CHALLENGE (1989). The most striking testimonial evidence
regardingspiritual healing is found in thechurch’s publications,The Christian Science Journal
and Christian Science Sentinel.
10. See JOHN JEFFERSON DAVIS, ABORTION AND THE CHRISTIAN: WHAT EVERY BELIEVER
SHOULD KNOW (1984); JAMES RISEN &JUDY L. THOMAS, WRATH OF ANGELS: THE AMERICAN
ABORTIONWAR (1998); JOSEPH M.SCHEIDLER,CLOSED:99WAYS TOSTOP ABORTION (1985).
11. See CLAUDE ANDREW CLEGG, AN ORIGINAL MAN: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ELIJAH
MUHAMMAD (1997); MATTIAS GARDELL, IN THE NAME OF ELIJAH MUHAMMAD: LOUIS
FARRAKHAN AND THE NATION OF ISLAM (1996); C. ERIC LINCOLN, THE BLACK MUSLIMS IN
AMERICA (1994).
suggestive effect.”4
To that end I juxtapose a devout Episcopalian whose week does
not begin properly unless opened with the fixed liturgical responses of The Book of
Common Prayer and the traditional celebration of the Eucharist,5
side by side with a
New Age representative who channels dolphins for a fee-paying audience who joins
him in the conviction that all mammals are kindred spirits and are able to learn from
one another.6
The next two religious persons include a Jehovah’s Witness “publisher”
who spends nearly every free hour going door to door in obedience to the command
of Jehovah God,7
and a devout conservative Roman Catholic who has visited every
site in the United States where the Virgin Mary allegedly has appeared and has a set
of Polaroid pictures taken at those sites, several of which contain cloud formations
thought to be evidence of the Virgin’s presence.8
Then three more, including a
Christian Scientist whose understanding of God provides the metaphysical basis for
the practice of spiritual healing,9
a born-again Christian whose evangelical convictions
have led to three arrests at abortion clinics for violations of safe corridors,10
and a
member of the Nation of Islam who is serving a life sentence in a federal penitentiary
for first-degree murder.11
Now let’s paste near the edges a member of a Presbyterian
2000] CHANGING PERSPECTIVES AND PROSPECTS 39
12. The term “cell church” is a name newly given to a grassroots house church movement
emerging among some Christian denominations. These small groups center their activities in
the home instead of the institutional churches. They look to the pattern of early Christians as
a model for their cells. See Cell Church Page (visited Nov. 7, 1999) <http.//www.cell-
church.org>.
13. Randall Balmer’s three-part video series on American evangelicalism, entitled MINE
EYESHAVESEENTHE GLORY:AMERICANFOLKRELIGION (GatewayFilms/Vision Video 1992),
includes an instructive segment on Willow Creek; see also Paul Brauodakis, Why They
Struggle to Believe: Inside the Minds of Today’s Spiritual Seekers, LEADERSHIP, Winter 1997,
at 40 (containing interviews with Willow Creek participants); Lester Ruth, Lex Agendi, Lex
Orandi: Toward an Understanding of Seeker Services as a New Kind of Liturgy, 70 WORSHIP
386-405 (1996).
14. See CLAUDE F. JACOBS & ANDREW J. KASLOW, THE SPIRITUAL CHURCHES OF NEW
ORLEANS: ORIGINS, BELIEFS, AND RITUALS OF AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN RELIGION (1991).
15. On life among the devotees at New Vrindaban, see A KRISHNA FAMILY (Kurt P. Dudt
& Joel Mlecko eds., 1989); see also FRANCINE JEANNE DANER, THE AMERICAN CHILDREN OF
KRSNA: A STUDY OF THE HARE KRSNA MOVEMENT (1976); E. BURKE ROCHFORD, JR., HARE
KRISHNA IN AMERICA (1985).
16. See STEPHEN J. STEIN, THE SHAKER EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA: A HISTORY OF THE
UNITED SOCIETY OF BELIEVERS (1992). For a sense of the resilience of this small community,
see their publication, The Shaker Quarterly.
17. See CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY, SCIENTOLOGY: THEOLOGY & PRACTICE OF A
CONTEMPORARY RELIGION (1998); L. RON HUBBARD, DIANETICS: THE MODERN SCIENCE OF
MENTAL HEALTH: A HANDBOOK OF DIANETIC PROCEDURE (1975).
18. See JAMES PENNER,GOLIATH:THELIFE OFROBERTSCHULLER (1992); DENNISVOSKUIL,
MOUNTAINS INTO GOLDMINES: ROBERT SCHULLER AND THE GOSPEL OF SUCCESS (1983). For
two perspectives on religious kitsch, see COLLEEN MCDANNELL, MATERIAL CHRISTIANITY:
RELIGIONAND POPULAR CULTURE IN AMERICA (1995); Leigh E. Schmidt, EverydayBlessings,
115 CHRISTIAN CENTURY 752-54 (1998).
19. See generally NEW WORLD HASIDIM: ETHNOGRAPHIC STUDIES OF HASIDIC JEWS IN
AMERICA (Janet S. Belcove-Shalin ed., 1995) (discussing the “complexity of contemporary
Hasidim,” a conservative minority group within the Jewish community); MENAHEM MENDEL
SCHNEERSOHN, ANTICIPATING THE REDEMPTION: MAAMARIM OF THE LUBAVITCHER REBBE
MENACHEM M.SCHNEERSOHN CONCERNING THE ERA OF REDEMPTION (Rabbi Eliyahu Touger
& Rabbi Sholem Ber Wineberg trans., 1994) (addressing the concepts of the Messiah and
Redemption through translations of seven Rebbe discourses called maamarim); Jim Yardley,
Messiah Fervor forLate RabbiDivides Many Lubavitchers, N.Y.TIMES, June 29, 1998, at B1.
cell church that meets in a neighbor’s living room;12
a “Baby Boomer” seeker who
attends the contemporary worship service at the Willow Creek megachurch in
suburban Chicago;13
an African-American preacher in a New Orleans Spiritual
church;14
a devotee in the Krishna Consciousness movement resident at New
Vrindaban, West Virginia;15
one of the seven remaining Shakers living in community
at Sabbathday Lake, Maine;16
a Scientologist in California who measures her spiritual
progress toward “clear” by the use of an e-meter;17
a midwestern housewife who has
not entered a church building for years but whose refrigerator is covered with a
multitude of magnetic religious images and who watches Robert Schuller’s Hour of
Power religiously;18
and a Hasidic Jew who believes that Rebbe Menahem Mendel
Schneersohn will return from the dead.19
Scattered on top of all these let’s place one
40 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 75:37
20. The most instructive sources available at this time concerning Marshall Herff
Applewhite and the Heaven’s Gate community are several video tapes made by the members
of the group. See, e.g., Videotape: Do’s Final Exit (Right to Know Enterprises 1997) (on file
with the Indiana Univ. Undergraduate Library); Videotape: Last Chance to Evacuate Earth
Before It’s Recycled (Right to Know Enterprises 1996) (on file with the Indiana Univ.
Undergraduate Library); Videotape: Students of Heaven’s Gate Expressing Their Thoughts
Before Exit (Right to Know Enterprises 1997) (on file with the Indiana Univ. Undergraduate
Library); see also Martin E. Marty, Playing with Fire: Looking at Heaven’s Gate, 114
CHRISTIAN CENTURY 379 (1997); Evan Thomas, Web of Death: Inside the Heaven’s Gate
Suicide, NEWSWEEK, April 7, 1997, at 28.
21. On Lakota religion and spirituality, see ARCHIE FIRE LAME DEER & RICHARD ERDOES,
GIFT OF POWER:THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF A LAKOTA MEDICINE MAN (1992); JULIAN RICE,
BEFORE THE GREAT SPIRIT: THE MANY FACES OF SIOUX SPIRITUALITY (1998); MICHAEL F.
STELTENKAMP, THE SACRED VISION: NATIVE AMERICAN RELIGION AND ITS PRACTICE TODAY
(1982).
22. On the relationship between meditation and well being, see PATRICIA DRAKE
HEMINGWAY, THE TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION PRIMER: HOW TO STOP TENSION & START
LIVING (1975); MICHAEL MURPHY, THE PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF
MEDITATION:AREVIEW OF CONTEMPORARYMEDITATIONRESEARCH WITH A COMPREHENSIVE
BIBLIOGRAPHY, 1931-1988 (1988).
23. See IRWIN ALTMAN & JOSEPH GINAT, POLYGAMOUS FAMILIES IN CONTEMPORARY
SOCIETY191, 207, 273 (1996); Patricia Lynn Scott,Mormon Polygamy: A Bibliography, 1977-
1992, 19 J. MORMON HIST. 133-155 (1993). It is important not to confuse Mormon
fundamentalism with evangelical fundamentalism.
24. There is no established historical literature documenting the religious patterns of the
elderlyin contemporaryAmerica. There are, however, publications in the area of pastoral care.
See HAROLD G. KOENIG, AGING AND GOD: SPIRITUAL PATHWAYS TO MENTAL HEALTH IN
MIDLIFE ANDLATERYEARS (1994); JeffreyS. Levin,ReligiousResearch in Gerontology, 1980-
1994: A Systematic Review, 10 J. RELIGIOUS GERONTOLOGY 3-31 (1997).
25. It has been suggested that Hal Lindsey’s THE LATE GREAT PLANET EARTH, in its many
editions and translations has sold in excess of twenty million copies. For the most helpful
volume for understanding the place of apocalyptic within contemporary American religion, see
PAUL BOYER, WHEN TIME SHALL BE NO MORE: PROPHECY BELIEF IN MODERN AMERICAN
CULTURE (1992). For a useful analysis of the rhetorical appeal of Lindsey’s publications, see
STEPHEN D.O’LEARY,ARGUING THE APOCALYPSE:ATHEORY OF MILLENNIAL RHETORIC 134-
71 (1994).
26. U.S. CONST. amend. I.
of the members of Heaven’s Gate that did not make the trip with the thirty-nine;20
a
Native American of the Lakota tribe who uses traditional therapies to deal with an
alcohol problem;21
a corporate lawyer on Wall Street who meditates twice a day to
relieve stress;22
a Mormon fundamentalist in Idaho whose “family” includes three
wives and eight children;23
a seventy-eight-year-old widower in Florida who falls
asleep each night to the words of “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my
soul to keep”;24
and a fan of Hal Lindsey who is convinced that the Second Coming
is about to take place.25
As a border for this collage I would write in bold letters the
words of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . .”26
Many other religious Americans belong on this collage, but there is no need to add
more. The point is clear. The religious diversity that exists in America today is
2000] CHANGING PERSPECTIVES AND PROSPECTS 41
27. The denominations, communities, and groups in this collage are all easily categorized
as “religious” based on an ostensive definition of religion. It is more difficult to agree about
the “religious” nature of some other groups that are less obvious in their claims and activities.
For example, the World Church of the Creator, an organization preaching white supremacist
views and linked to possible acts of terrorism, pushes even the limits of a functional definition
of religion. See Jared Sandberg, Spinning A Web of Hate, NEWSWEEK, July 19, 1999, at 28.
The definition of religion is critical for First Amendment issues.
28. See SYDNEY E. AHLSTROM, A RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 1-13
(1972).
29. See THE ANTINOMIAN CONTROVERSY, 1636-1638: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY 4-10
(David D. Hall ed., 1968); John Cotton, The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared, in
THE ANTINOMIAN CONTROVERSY,1636-1638:ADOCUMENTARYHISTORY, supra, at 396,414-
37.
30. PHILIP F.GURA,AGLIMPSE OF SION’S GLORY:PURITANRADICALISM IN NEW ENGLAND
1620-1660, at 145-50 (1984).
31. On religious dissent in early New England, see id.; DAVID S. LOVEJOY, RELIGIOUS
ENTHUSIASM IN THE NEW WORLD: HERESY TO REVOLUTION (1985).
genuinely bewildering.27
The religious pluralism in our nation becomes more complex
with each passing day. The challenge we face at the turn of the new century and the
beginning of the new millennium is to construct some conceptual model or to write
some collective narrative that will do justice to this contemporary situation and will
assist us in understanding its implications for the future of our nation.
I. THE EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN RELIGIOUS PLURALISM
Let me repeat one point: religious diversity in America is not something new. But
the scope of religious diversity in contemporary America is greater than ever before.
Observers of American religion—sometimes participants, sometimes scholars—from
early on have struggled to find ways to describe and explain religious pluralism as it
has evolved historically in America. They have used a variety of models and
narratives to make sense of the nation’s religious life in different time periods.28
We
can follow the evolution of that diversity through American history by examining the
reflections of some of these observers.
In the earliest years of the American experience, during the Colonial Era, the
dominant religious parties framed their descriptions of religious diversity in terms of
heresy and dissent. In colonial New England, for instance, the clergy of the
established Congregational churches labeled dissenters, such as Roger Williams and
Anne Hutchinson, as well as lesser known parties including the Gortonists, as
antinomians and schismatics.29
They branded Quakers with the epithet “Fanaticks” and
sought to drive them from the region through a series of physical penalties, from
cropping an ear to boring the tongue, and finally to hanging.30
In New England,
religious outsiders appeared in the public narratives as theological or social deviants.
Rarely do we learn directly about such groups apart from the views expressed by the
religious parties in power.31
Still less evident in the formal accounts of religious life in the first century of
European colonization on the Atlantic seaboard were the diverse religious traditions
of the natives who were being displaced by the colonizers. The diversity of tribal
42 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 75:37
32. JAMES AXTELL, THE INVASION WITHIN: THE CONTEST OF CULTURES IN COLONIAL
NORTH AMERICA 131-38 (1985).
33. See id. at 137.
34. A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF RELIGION IN AMERICA TO THE CIVIL WAR 123 (Edwin
S. Gaustad ed., 1982) [hereinafter CIVIL WAR] (quoting EDWARD MARSH, SOME ACCOUNT OF
THE CONDUCT OF THE RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS TOWARD THE INDIAN TRIBES 29-30
(1844)); see also AXTELL, supra note 32; FRANCIS JENNINGS, THE INVASION OF AMERICA:
INDIANS, COLONIALISM, AND THE CANT OF CONQUEST (1975).
35. THE CAROLINA BACKCOUNTRY ON THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION: THE JOURNAL AND
OTHERWRITINGS OF CHARLESWOODMASON,ANGLICANITINERANT 97-103 (Richard J. Hooker
ed., 1953) [hereinafter BACKCOUNTRY]. For a fuller account of the southern religious context
in this period, see RHYS ISAAC, THE TRANSFORMATION OF VIRGINIA 1740-1790 (1982).
36. BACKCOUNTRY, supra note 35, at 102-03.
37. “IN GOD WE TRUST”:THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND IDEAS OF THE AMERICANFOUNDING
FATHERS 58 (Norman Cousins ed., 1958).
38. Id. at 59.
religions was obscured by the almost universal application of the categories of
“savage” and “heathen” to all natives.32
In the world of first contact, only destruction
and/or conversion were acceptable modes of interaction with the natives in the eyes
of European Christians.33
Even in the writings of those whom we regard as most
sensitive to the rights of the Native Americans, there was little understanding of the
religious diversity within the tribal groupings, much less of the particular traditions
central to their experience. William Penn’s Christian Eurocentrism was evident in the
opening lines of a letter in 1681 he addressed to the Indians in the Pennsylvania
region. He wrote “There is a great God and power that hath made the world, and all
things therein, to whom you and I, and all people owe their being and well-being, and
to whom you and I must one day give an account for all that we do in the world.”34
In the eighteenth century in the southern colonies where the Anglican Church
enjoyed favored status, the religious activities of backwoods evangelicals were
dismissed with contempt by many observers. For example, in 1766 Charles
Woodmason, an Anglican itinerant, penned a condescending account ridiculing the
manners of the “New Lights” in South Carolina, their “religious Assemblies” where
he saw confusion and anarchy reigning, and their “Love Feasts” celebrated at night
where the “Kiss of Charity” was exchanged and where he alleged promiscuity
prevailed.35
“To see, I say,” wrote Woodmason, “a Sett of Mongrels under Pretext of
Religion, Sit, and hear for Hours together a String of Vile, cook’d up, Silly and
Senseless Lyes . . . must give great Offence to ev’ry one that has the Honour of
Christianity at Heart.”36
His dismissal of these dissenting Christians reflected both an
aesthetic and a class bias.
In 1789 and 1790, shortly after George Washington was elected the first president
of the new United States, he recognized the importance of assuring religious
minorities that all groups—even those that had experienced hostility and disadvantage
under the colonial governments—would enjoy “liberty of conscience”37
and the right
to worship the deity “according to the dictates of their consciences,” free of bigotry
and persecution.38
These assurances he communicated in a series of letters to Baptists
in Virginia, Quakers in Pennsylvania, Roman Catholics in Maryland, and Jews in
Rhode Island as part of his attempt to win support for the newly formed central
2000] CHANGING PERSPECTIVES AND PROSPECTS 43
39. See id. at 44-73.
40. See id. at 58-61, 63.
41. JEDIDIAH MORSE,THEAMERICAN GEOGRAPHY:OR,AVIEWOF THEPRESENTSITUATION
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (1789).
42. D.G. Reid, Jedidiah Morse, in DICTIONARY OF CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA 779 (Daniel
G. Reid et al. eds., 1990).
43. See MORSE, supra note 41.
44. See id. at 268.
45. See id.
46. See id.
47. See id. at 387.
48. See id.
49. Id.
50. See ROBERTBAIRD, RELIGION IN AMERICA,OR,AN ACCOUNT OFTHEORIGIN,RELATION
TO THE STATE, AND PRESENT CONDITION OF THE EVANGELICAL CHURCHES IN THE UNITED
STATES, WITH NOTICES OF THE UNEVANGELICAL DENOMINATIONS (2d ed. 1856).
51. See CIVIL WAR, supra note 34, at 401.
government.39
Washington recognized the substantial religious diversity that already
existed in America. Earlier he had written about the ways in which harmony among
different denominations would contribute to the stability of the new nation.40
In the
1790s that harmony was an ideal yet to be realized.
One of the first published attempts in the new nation to describe in more systematic
fashion the variety of organized denominations was made in 1789 by Jedidiah Morse,
a Congregational clergyman whose ministerial career took him to Connecticut,
Georgia, and New Jersey, and then finally to Massachusetts. Morse’s publication,
entitled The American Geography,41
later earned him the accolade “the father of
American geography.”42
In his publication he took note of the different denominations
active in the three sections of the former English colonies— New England, the Middle
Colonies, and the South.43
He listed, for example, eleven different denominations
active in New York: English Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed, Baptists, Episcopalians,
Quakers, German Lutherans, Moravians, Methodists, Roman Catholics, Jews, and
Shakers.44
Some of these had only one congregation;45
by contrast, the English
Presbyterians had eighty-seven.46
From Morse’s account it is evident that Americans
had not yet learned how to live in the harmonious manner Washington envisioned.
Critics labeled New England’s Congregationalists a bigoted people.47
Theological
controversy between supporters and opponents of the doctrines of predestination and
of perfection raged in several regions.48
Evangelicals in the South were stamped as
poor, “very ignorant,” “generally a moral, well-meaning set,” but “enthusiastic” and
superstitious.49
Morse’s account distinguished among denominations on the basis of
geography, theological beliefs, and social class.
Nearly fifty years later in 1843, Robert Baird, a Presbyterian minister whose
primary commitments were to evangelicalism and the missionary cause,and who spent
some twenty-eight years traveling throughout Europe on behalf of those causes,
published what is considered the first general assessment of American religion.50
His
volume was designed to explain the religious situation in the United States to those
outside its boundaries.51
Baird, too, took note of the “diversity of religious doctrines,”
44 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 75:37
52. Id. at 418.
53. See id. at 418-19.
54. See id. at 419-20.
55. BAIRD, supra note 50, at 579.
56. Id.
57. Id.
58. Id.
59. See PHILIP SCHAFF, AMERICA: A SKETCH OF ITS POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND RELIGIOUS
CHARACTER (Perry Miller ed., 1961).
60. See GEORGE H. SHRIVER, PHILIP SCHAFF: CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR AND ECUMENICAL
PROPHET 40-42 (1987).
61. SCHAFF, supra note 59, at 80.
62. Id. at 80-81.
sometimes even within the same denomination.52
His attempt to explain the
differences underscored the disparate origins and nationalities of Americans, the
divergent traditions that immigrants brought with them to the New World,53
and the
freedom allowed to all kinds of religious views in the United States.54
But for Baird
the fundamental distinction was between evangelicals and what he called “nonevangelicals”
or “unevangelicals.”55
In the latter category he listed Roman Catholics,
Unitarians, “Christians” (of the Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell varieties),
Universalists, Hicksite Quakers, Swedenborgians, Jews, Shakers, and Mormons.56
In
Baird’s analysis we see in nascent form the “mainstream” model of American
religious history. His account focused on the primacy, dominance, and what he saw
as the moral superiority of the evangelical denominations; he left no doubt about the
respect they deserved. The “unevangelical” denominations, by contrast,he linked with
“the sect that has buried the truth amid a heap of corruptions of heathenish origin”57
as well as with “the grossest of all the delusions that Satanic malignity or human
ambition ever sought to propagate.”58
Another instructive nineteenth century attempt to describe the religious diversity in
America was published only a few years later. It was authored by Philip Schaff, an
immigrant from Switzerland who came to America in 1844 and taught church history
at a German Reformed seminary in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania.59
Ten years later he
returned to Europe and lectured about America, including the nation’s religious
situation.60
He tried to make sense of religious pluralism for his European audience.
Schaff wrote:
Favored by the general freedom of faith, all Christian denominations and sects,
except the Oriental [by which he meant Eastern Orthodoxy], have settled in the
United States, on equal footing in the eye of the law; here attracting each other,
there repelling; rivalling in both the good and the bad sense; and mutually
contending through innumerable religious publications. They thus present a
motley sampler of all church history.61
One might conclude from the image of “a motley sampler” that Schaff was pessimistic
about religion in America. But, in fact, the opposite was true. In the published version
of his views he described America as “the Phenix grave” for all the churches imported
from Europe to the New World; none of them, he thought, neither Protestantism nor
“Romanism,” would dominate this new situation.62
But out of the conflict and “chaos,”
2000] CHANGING PERSPECTIVES AND PROSPECTS 45
63. Id. at 81.
64. Id. at 80-81.
65. See R.LAURENCE MOORE,RELIGIOUS OUTSIDERS AND THEMAKING OF AMERICANS 72-
101 (1986).
66. See id.
67. See ARTHUR HERTZBERG, THE JEWS IN AMERICA: FOUR CENTURIES OF AN UNEASY
ENCOUNTER 152-282 (1989).
68. See IMMIGRANTS AND RELIGION IN URBAN AMERICA at xi-xvii (Randall M. Miller &
Thomas D. Marzik eds., 1977).
69. See AHLSTROM, supra note 28, at 531-32.
70. See JAY P. DOLAN, THE IMMIGRANT CHURCH: NEW YORK’S IRISH AND GERMAN
CATHOLICS 1815-1865, at 119, 160-61 (1975).
71. See ROBERT A. ORSI, THE MADONNA OF 115TH STREET: FAITH AND COMMUNITY IN
ITALIAN HARLEM 1880-1950, at 55-57 (1985).
72. See Paul D. Garrett, Eastern Christianity, in 1 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE AMERICAN
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 325-44 (Charles H. Lippy & Peter W. Williams eds., 1988).
he asserted, “something wholly new” would arise, a “beautiful creation.”63
Though he
did not spell out the particulars of that future arrangement, Schaff was optimistic
about the ultimate outcome of the “kingdom of Jesus Christ” in America.64
The new immigrants that flooded into America after the Civil War in the decades
surrounding the turn of the twentieth century added complexity to the religious
pluralism in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Jews from eastern Europe
brought to these shores deep commitments to Orthodox Judaism as well as versions
of politically active secularism.65
They overwhelmed the modest numbers ofOrthodox
and Reform Jews who were part of the religious diversity inherited from the colonial
period and the antebellum years.66
In the decades after the 1880s, American Jews
planted the organizational seeds for the discreet “branches” of Judaism that were in
place by the end of the 1920s—Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism.67
Similarly, during these same years the makeup of the Roman Catholic Church in the
United States was transformed from its heavy Irish and German cast by the arrival of
multiple new ethnic groups from Southern and Eastern Europe, especially Italians and
Poles.68
Religious diversity within Roman Catholicism is sometimes harder to discern
because of the presumed unity of the ecclesiastical structure and hierarchy. Tensions,
however, were deep within the ranks of the clergy as well as among the laity, and
often most severe in manifestation when the clergy and the laity in one parish were of
different ethnic backgrounds.69
Differences in language, cultural mores, and
devotional practices complicated efforts to build a strong unified American church.70
These fault lines, for example, emerged clearly in the tepid response of the Irish
hierarchy to the popular devotions of Italian immigrants, as was evident in the festival
honoring the Madonna in Italian Harlem.71
In the United States the notion of “one holy
Catholic church” has always been a theological ideal in the process of being fulfilled.
Other immigrants also added to the religious diversity in America. Orthodox
Christians of Greek and Russian background, as well as Serbian, Syrian, Ukrainian,
Albanian, Bulgarian, and Rumanian groups, founded religious organizations defined
by ethnic and national identities.72
Chinese immigration followed a different path.
After the discovery of gold in California in 1848, hundreds of thousands of Chinese
laborers had come to America, bringing to the West Coast the traditions of Buddhism,
46 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 75:37
73. See ASIAN RELIGIONSIN AMERICA: ADOCUMENTARY HISTORY 73 (Thomas A. Tweed
& Stephen Prothero eds., 1999).
74. See id. at 73-74.
75. Id. at 73-75 (quoting parts of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Act of May 6, 1882, ch. 126,
22 Stat. 58 (repealed 1943)); see also Thomas A. Tweed,Asian Religions in the United States:
Reflections on an Emerging Subfield, in RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY, supra note 2, at 189-217.
76. See HENRY K. CARROLL, THE RELIGIOUS FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES at ix-xiv
(1893).
77. See id.
78. See id. at 457.
79. See id.
80. See id.
81. See id.
82. See id.
83. Id. at xiv-xv.
Taoism, Confucianism, and other popular pieties; and they founded temples.73
But by
1882 the wave of Sinophobia was strong enough in the nation for Congress to pass the
Chinese Exclusion Act.74
Subsequently many of these “pagan temples,” as they were
called by critics, were forced to close.75
The government had a hand in documenting the expanding religious diversity in the
last decade of the nineteenth century. The Federal Census of 1890 for the first time
attempted a thorough and comprehensive surveyof religious organizations.76
Although
the accuracy of the data gathered has been questioned,77
the trends are clear. The
census revealed the Roman Catholic Church as the largest single denomination in the
United States.78
Similarly, Methodism had become the largest Protestant denomination
in the nineteenth century.79
The continuing importance of other Protestant
denominations, especially those with roots in the Colonial Era, was also evident.80
And the astonishing growth of the Latter-day Saints in a short sixty years of existence
was confirmed.81
In these statistics only the Jews broke significantly into this solid
Christian front.82
Henry K. Carroll’s commentary on the religious scene in the United States strikes
a highly appropriate note. He wrote:
The first impression one gets in studying the results of the census is that there is
an infinite variety of religions in the United States. There are churches small and
churches great, churches white and churches black, churches high and low,
orthodoxandheterodox, Christian and pagan, Catholic and Protestant, Liberal and
Conservative, Calvinist and Arminian, native and foreign, Trinitarian and
Unitarian. All phases of thought are represented bythem, all possible theologies,
all varieties of polity, ritual, usage, forms of worship. In our economical policy as
a nation we have emphasized the importance of variety in industry. We like the
idea of manufacturing or producing just as many articles of merchandise as
possible. We have invented more curious and useful things than any other nation.
In matters of religion we have not been less liberal and enterprising.83
The last decade of the century brought new attention of a different sort to the
changing religious situation in America. In 1893 the World’s Parliament of Religions
opened in Chicago in conjunction with the Columbian Exposition celebrating the
2000] CHANGING PERSPECTIVES AND PROSPECTS 47
84. See generally RICHARD H. SEAGER, THE WORLD’S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS: THE
EAST/WEST ENCOUNTER, CHICAGO, 1893 (1995); THE WORLD’S PARLIAMENT OF RELIGIONS
(John H. Barrows ed., 1893).
85. See SEAGER, supra note 84, at 43-62.
86. See generally CARL T. JACKSON, VEDANTA FOR THE WEST: THE RAMAKRISHNA
MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES (1994); THOMAS A. TWEED, THE AMERICAN ENCOUNTER
WITH BUDDHISM 1844-1912: VICTORIAN CULTURE AND THE LIMITS OF DISSENT (1992).
87. See JACKSON, supra note 86, at 16-36; TWEED, supra note 86, at 31-34.
88. See Stephen J. Stein, Apocalypticism Outside the Mainstream in the United States, in
3 THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF APOCALYPTICISM 108, 129 (Bernard McGinn et al. eds., 1998).
89. See ADVENTISM IN AMERICA:AHISTORY 95-113 (Gary Land ed., 1986). See generally
THOMAS G.ALEXANDER,MORMONISMIN TRANSITION:AHISTORY OFTHELATTER-DAYSAINTS
1890-1930 (1986).
90. See STEPHEN GOTTSCHALK, THE EMERGENCE OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE IN AMERICAN
RELIGIOUS LIFE 193 (1973).
91. See MELVIN E.DIETER,THE HOLINESSREVIVALOFTHENINETEENTHCENTURY 271-73
(1980) (discussing possible reasons why members of the Holiness movement were absent).
92. See SEAGER, supra note 84, at 45.
93. See generally PENTON, supra note 7.
94. See PETER W.WILLIAMS,AMERICA’S RELIGIONS: TRADITIONS ANDCULTURES 321-436
(2d ed. 1998).
95. William R. Hutchison, Protestantism as Establishment, in BETWEEN THE TIMES: THE
TRAVAIL OF THE PROTESTANT ESTABLISHMENT IN AMERICA 1900-1960, at 3-6 (William R.
Hutchison ed., 1989) [hereinafter BETWEEN THE TIMES].
400th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival in the New World.84
At that assembly
arranged by liberal Protestant leaders, Americans had an opportunity to hear and see
representatives of religions of the East as well as spokespersons for many of the
organized denominations in America.85
Among the most celebrated Asian participants
were the Hindu Swami Vivekananda and the Buddhist Anagarika Dharmapala.86
Their
presence aroused new public interest in the religions of the East.87
The parade of
speakers at the parliament in Chicago documented the changing character of
America’s religious pluralism and anticipated developments in the twentieth century.
Among the groups not represented on the platform at the parliament were several
new American religions including the Latter-day Saints, who by this time were
themselves split into several competing groups; the Russellites, the followers of
Charles Taze Russell, or members of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, later
in the twentieth century renamed the Jehovah’s Witnesses;88
and the Seventh-day
Adventists led by Ellen Harmon White.89
A representative of Mary Baker Eddy’s
Christian Science movement did address the parliament.90
No individuals associated
with the rapidly expanding Holiness movement lectured at the assembly.91
Only two
delegates from African-American religious communities were on the program at the
parliament.92
This near exclusion was consistent with the deeply racist character of the
entire Columbian Exposition.93
By the middle of the twentieth century religious pluralism in the United States was
infinitely more complex than the situation Jedidiah Morse or Robert Baird had
described.94
Yet the dominant model for making sense of it remained the image of a
mainstream—a Protestant “establishment”—in which certain culturally prominent and
powerful denominations exercised religious hegemony.95
In this model these
48 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 75:37
96. See id.
97. See AHLSTROM, supra note 28, at 555.
98. See WILLIAMS, supra note 94, at 331.
99. See Robert A. Schneider, Voice of Many Waters: Church Federation in the Twentieth
Century, in BETWEEN THE TIMES, supra note 95, at 95, 97.
100. See id. at 111-15.
101. See generally AMERICA’S ALTERNATIVE RELIGIONS (Timothy Miller ed. 1995); see
generally MOORE, supra note 65, at 140-49 (discussing the history of Pentecostalism in
America).
102. See, e.g., THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN HERITAGE (William J. Courtney ed., 1970); THE
JUDEO-CHRISTIAN VISION AND THE MODERN CORPORATION (Oliver F. Williams & John W.
Houck eds., 1982).
103. See ARTHUR A. COHEN, THE MYTH OF THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN TRADITION (1969).
104. See Mark Silk, Judeo-Christian Tradition, in DICTIONARY OF CHRISTIANITY IN
AMERICA, supra note 42, at 602-03.
105. See Alan Richardson, The Rise of Modern Biblical Scholarship and Recent Discussion
of the Authority of the Bible, in 3 THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF THE BIBLE: THE WEST FROM
THE REFORMATION TO THE PRESENT DAY 294, 332-37 (S.L. Greenslade ed., 1963).
Protestants were viewed as the consummate religious insiders, and all other groups
were situated in some manner or other on the outside.96
Numbers alone did not
determine insiderhood and outsiderhood, for the Roman Catholic Church had been the
largest single denomination since the time of the Civil War, and remained so.97
Political power, cultural authority, socialinfluence—these were the apparent measures
that set Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, the white divisions of the
Methodist and Baptist families but not the Southern Baptists, the Disciples of Christ,
and the United Lutherans into an informal coalition, a liberal alliance evident in their
support for both the Federal Council of Churches (formed in 1908)98
and the National
Council of Churches (formed in 1950).99
Now the “mainstream” and the “margins”
replaced Baird’s “evangelicals” and “non-evangelicals.”100
The “margins” included
an astonishing range of religious persons outside this “establishment”—from Roman
Catholics and Jews to Southern Baptists and Missouri-Synod Lutherans, from African
Americans located in traditional black churches such as the African Methodist
Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church to their racial
brothers and sisters who joined Father Divine’s Peace Mission Movement or Elijah
Muhammad’s Nation of Islam, from Pentecostals—black and white—taking part in
a host of regional associations to upper and lower class members of the UnitarianUniversalist
family.101
The 1950s witnessed a few alternative suggestions for conceptual models, but none
ultimately rivaled the mainstream metaphor. Some observers spoke of American
society and culture as Judeo-Christian, a concession to the presence of Jews in
America from early on in the seventeenth century and an acknowledgment of their
significant numbers in the twentieth century.102
The language of “Judeo-Christian,”
however, has rarely implied parity between the two religious traditions in America.103
Many Christians employing that construction have reflected a not-so-subtle implicit
triumphalism.104
For them the “Old Testament” is often viewed as a proto-Christian,
sometimes even as an explicitly Christian, document.105
In 1955 the sociologist Will Herberg crafted a widely heralded variation on the
2000] CHANGING PERSPECTIVES AND PROSPECTS 49
106. See WILL HERBERG,PROTESTANT-CATHOLIC-JEW:AN ESSAY IN AMERICANRELIGIOUS
SOCIOLOGY (1955).
107. Id. at 52-53.
108. See generally id.
109. Id. at 46.
110. See id. at 51-52.
111. See id. at 53.
112. See WINTHROP S. HUDSON, RELIGION IN AMERICA (1965).
113. See EDWIN SCOTT GAUSTAD, A RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF AMERICA (1966).
114. See MARTINE.MARTY,RIGHTEOUSEMPIRE:THE PROTESTANTEXPERIENCE INAMERICA
(1970).
115. See AHLSTROM, supra note 28.
116. See id. at 965-1096.
117. CATHERINE L.ALBANESE,AMERICA:RELIGIONSANDRELIGION (1981).Albanese’stexts
has gone through two major new editions, one in 1992, the other in 1999.
118. Id. at 13.
119. Id. at 9.
120. See id. at 19-38.
121. See id. at 39-58.
earlier models.106
In Protestant-Catholic-Jew he argued that there were three publicly
acceptable ways to be religious in America, all of which served equally well to
establish one’s identity in an increasingly faceless modern society.107
Herberg’s
historical sketches featured the rise to power and influence of immigrant Catholicism
and Judaism, and pointed to the functional role of religion in sanctioning the
American way of life.108
He spoke of a “triple melting pot.”109
Herberg’s judgments
created the notion of a tripartite mainstream.110
Left out of this picture still were all the
“marginal” groups previously excluded, except the Catholics and the Jews.111
The continuing attraction of the mainstream model and of the corresponding
historical narratives featuring powerful Protestant denominations was evident in a
series of major studies of American religious history during the 1960s and early 1970s
published by some of the most prominent historians of religion in America, including
Winthrop S. Hudson in 1965,112
Edwin Scott Gaustad in 1966,113
Martin E. Marty in
1970,114
and Sydney E. Ahlstrom in 1972.115
The last of these, the Ahlstrom volume,
was a magisterial expression of the mainstream model that also contained substantial
attention to the factors creating a new religious pluralism in the second half of the
twentieth century.116
Collectively, these works exerted an enormous influence and
contributed directly to the renaissance of interest in religious history described by
Butler and Stout.
Since 1970, religious change has accelerated in America, producing a situation in
which existing conceptual models have seemed increasingly inadequate. In this
situation one of the most instructive attempts to deal with the changes came from
Catherine L. Albanese who in 1981 published the first edition of America: Religions
and Religion,117
a volume employing a new approach to organizing the story of
America’s religious history. Her two primary controlling themes were “The Manyness
of Religions in America”118
and “The Oneness of Religion in America.”119
Under the
first theme she introduced in the following order the persons and groups constituting
America’s astonishing religious pluralism: Native Americans,120
Jews,121
Roman
50 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 75:37
122. See id. at 61-82.
123. See id. at 85-110.
124. See id. at 113-35.
125. See id. at 141-45.
126. See id. at 145-49.
127. See id. at 163-87.
128. See id. at 189-219.
129. See id. at 221-43.
130. Id. at 9.
131. See id. at 247-81.
132. See generally id.
133. MOORE, supra note 65.
134. See id. at 1-2.
135. Id. at 3 (quoting Christian Century, June 13, 1951).
136. See id.
137. Id. at 21.
138. See id. at 46.
Catholics,122
Protestants,123
and African Americans124
—all of whom came from
somewhere; the members of distinctive new religions, such as the Mormons125
and
Seventh-day Adventists,126
as well as participants in the occult and metaphysical
movements;127
the adherents of Eastern religions;128
and the representatives of
distinctive regional religious patterns in the United States.129
With each of these she
featured the ways in which religion functions. She defined religion as “a system of
symbols (creed, code, cultus) by means of which people (a community) orient
themselves in the world with reference to both ordinary and extraordinary meanings
and values.”130
Under the second theme Albanese acknowledged the ways in which
Protestants have exercised public dominance in the civic and cultural spheres in
American history.131
In this volume for a first time there was a conscious attempt to
create a comprehensive narrative for American religious history in which Protestants
are simply one among the many.132
Albanese brought to her task a broad-based respect
for diversity and a sensitivity to the particularities of different traditions.
In 1986 R. Laurence Moore launched an even more frontal attack on the dominant
Protestant historiography. In Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans133
he
argued that the prevailing historiographical consensus rested on the ecumenical hopes
of Protestants for Christian unity and on their deep fears of sectarianism, religious
dissent, and pluralism.134
Moore cited a leading Protestant periodical as evidence of
the problem. In 1951 The Christian Century editorialized that “‘the United States is
faced with the menace of a plural society based on religious differences.’”135
Moore,
by contrast, celebrated the ways in which religious outsiders—Mormons, Catholics,
Jews, Christian Scientists, millennial sects, twentieth-century fundamentalists, and
African-American churches—have played a positive role in shaping American
culture.136
In his judgment, these groups comprising the alleged “margins,” rather than
the Protestant “mainstream” churches, have been the most creative segment of
American religious life.137
The categories—mainstream and margin—he branded as
strategical fictions.138
Moore’s volume along with multiple publications by scholars
2000] CHANGING PERSPECTIVES AND PROSPECTS 51
139. See ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN RELIGIONS, supra note 3.
140. See JAMES R. LEWIS, THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CULTS, SECTS, AND NEW RELIGIONS
(1998).
141. See AMERICA’S ALTERNATIVE RELIGIONS (Timothy Miller ed., 1995).
142. See, e.g., ARMAGEDDONIN WACO:CRITICAL PERSPECTIVESON THEBRANCH DAVIDIAN
CONFLICT (Stuart A. Wright ed., 1995); FROM THE ASHES:MAKING SENSE OF WACO (James R.
Lewis ed., 1994); MILLENNIUM, MESSIAHS, AND MAYHEM: CONTEMPORARY APOCALYPTIC
MOVEMENTS (Thomas Robbins & Susan J. Palmer eds., 1997) [hereinafter MAYHEM]; JAMES
T. TABOR & EUGENE V. GALLAGHER, WHY WACO?: CULTS AND THE BATTLE FOR RELIGIOUS
FREEDOM IN AMERICA (1995).
143. BETWEEN THE TIMES, supra note 95.
144. See id.
145. See, e.g., Dennis N. Voskuil, Reaching Out: Mainline Protestantism and the Media,
in BETWEEN THE TIMES, supra note 95, at 72, 90.
146. See generally RONALD TAKAKI,ADIFFERENT MIRROR:AHISTORYOFMULTICULTURAL
AMERICA (1993) (discussing the experiences of immigrants from England, Africa, Ireland,
Mexico, Asia, and Russia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries).
147. See RETELLING U.S. RELIGIOUS HISTORY, supra note 2, at 3. A similar attitude about
grand narratives in American history in general is evident in Lawrence W. Levine, Clio,
Canons, and Culture, 849 J. AM. HIST. 80 (1993).
148. RETELLING U.S. RELIGIOUS HISTORY, supra note 2, at 3.
149. See, e.g., Ann Braude, Women’s History is American Religious History, in RETELLING
U.S. RELIGIOUS HISTORY, supra note 2, at 87, 87-107.
such as J. Gordon Melton,139
James R. Lewis,140
Timothy Miller,141
and others has
served as a positive catalyst for the expanding field of historical studies dealing with
religious outsiders and new religious movements, groups often labeled pejoratively
in the media as “cults.” A burst of such scholarship, for example, followed the tragic
conclusion to the standoff between the Branch Davidians and agents of the federal
government in 1993.142
But the mainstream model has not passed from the scene. In 1989 William
Hutchison published one of the most sophisticated attempts to keep the concept alive.
In a volume of essays entitled Between the Times: The Travail of the Protestant
Establishment in America 1900-1960, he and his fellow essayists examined the
persistence of Protestant religious and cultural authority between 1900 and 1960 in
what was clearly an increasingly pluralistic America.143
Hutchison’s collection probed
the ways in which Protestant influence continued during that era of transition.144
Some
of the essayists seemed unwilling to concede that a seismic shift in American religion
had occurred.145
By 1989 denial of change was either a product of nostalgia or an
exercise in wishful thinking. By that time the decentering of American religion was
clearly underway. These same years witnessed the rise of multiculturalism in
American society.146
In this context some historians have given up on constructing a comprehensive
inclusive narrative for American religion.147
In part they have done so because in the
past such narratives “have focused disproportionately on male, northeastern, AngloSaxon,
mainline Protestants and their beliefs, institutions, and power.”148
These
historians also desire to tell the stories of the religious persons and groups who have
been ignored previously—an admirable and important goal.149
On the other hand,
abandoning the effort to create an integrated comprehensive narrative, in my
52 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 75:37
150. See Stephen J. Stein, Our Stories/Their Stories: Insider and Outsider Narratives in
American Religious History, 37 CRITERION 2-15 (1998).
151. See WADE C. ROOF & WILLIAM MCKINNEY, AMERICAN MAINLINE RELIGION: ITS
CHANGING SHAPE AND FUTURE 148-50 (1987); YEARBOOK OF AMERICAN & CANADIAN
CHURCHES 1998, at 8-10 (Eileen W. Lindner ed., 1998) [hereinafter YEARBOOK].
152. See YEARBOOK, supra note 151, at 12.
153. See id.
154. See id.
155. See id.
156. See id.
157. See id.
158. See id.
judgment, is not the answer, for it is through these larger narratives that isolated
religious persons and groups come to see themselves in relation to other religious
individuals and communities. For that reason the search for inclusive models and
comprehensive narratives should not be abandoned even in the face of bewildering
pluralism. Today there is greater need than ever before for such stories.150
II. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS AS A MEASURE OF
MODERN RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY
One asset available to those who wish to make sense of America’s exploding
religious pluralism is the body of instructive statistics on contemporary religions.
Membership figures confirm that most mainstream Protestant denominations are in
serious trouble because year after year they are experiencing membership losses.151
Not only are they not maintaining a growth rate consistent with the rising population,
but they are actually losing net members. For example, the United Methodist Church,
the third largest church body in the United States, has lost slightly over one-half of
one percent of its total membership in each of the last two years.152
The Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.) has a similar pattern, with losses of 1.22% and 0.88% in 1997 and
1998, respectively.153
The United Church of Christ followed the same pattern, but with
still higher percentages, 1.94% and 1.33%.154
Losses in the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America, while smaller, have followed the same downward curve.155
The
American Baptist Churches saw an increase in its decline during these two years, from
0.63% to 0.93%.156
All of these denominations are part of the presumed Protestant
mainstream.
But statistics show that this pattern of loss is not shared by all religious groups.
Roman Catholicism, for example, already far and away the largest denomination, is
enjoying statistical gains in the United States. Between 1997 and 1998 the church
enjoyed a net increase of 927,460 new members, according to reported data; that
represents a 1.54% increase in membership.157
The Southern Baptist Convention and
the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod—both confessionally and politically
conservative denominations—enjoyed modest increases between 1997 and 1998,
0.18% and 0.25%, respectively.158
Far more impressive gains were made by two
denominations often listed on the sectarian edge of the religious scene. The Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints experienced growth rates of 2.39% and 1.88% in
2000] CHANGING PERSPECTIVES AND PROSPECTS 53
159. See id.
160. See id.
161. MOORE, supra note 65.
162. See id. at 6.
163. See id. at 7.
164. See id.
165. See id.
166. See id. at 5.
167. See id.
168. See id.
169. See id.
170. See id.
171. See id.
the last two years.159
The Assemblies of God recorded positive growth rates of 1.70%
and 3.33% in these same two years.160
In a word, R. Laurence Moore’s religious
“outsiders”161
continue to experience positive growth while the denominations that
have been part of the Protestant mainstream are losing members steadily.
There is another way to use statistics to demonstrate the changing character of
religious pluralism in the United States today. In 1998 the thirty-one largest
denominations in America accounted for more than 95% of all church membership.162
In that year the ten largest denominations had these numbers, followed by the
percentage of all church members in the U.S.: The Roman Catholic Church,
61,207,914 or 38.38%; Southern Baptist Convention, 15,691,964 or 9.84%; The
United Methodist Church, 8,495,378 or 5.33%; National Baptist Convention, USA,
Inc., 8,200,000 or 5.14%; Church of God in Christ, 5,499,875 or 3.45%; Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America, 5,180,910 or 3.25%; Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday
Saints, 4,800,000 or 3.01%; Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), 3,637,375 or 2.28%;
African Methodist Episcopal Church, 3,500,000 or 2.19%; and National Baptist
Convention of America, Inc., 3,500,000 or 2.19%.163
Together these ten account for
75.06% of the reported church membership. The remaining quarter is divided among
perhaps some 1700 or more organized religious groups, not counting independent
congregations.164
(It is worth special comment that three of these top ten
denominations are exclusively African-American communions.165
)
Even more revealing statistics can be cited to show the dramatic increase in the
number of religious persons other than Christians and Jews in North America. The
following figures for 1998 are inclusive for both the United States and Canada.166
In
North America the second largest religious group behind the Christians is the Jews
with some 3,850,000 listed as members.167
Next in order are the Muslims with
3,332,000; Islam is experiencing dramatic increases in numbers in America.168
There
is every reason to expect the number of Muslims to exceed the number of Jews in a
very short time.169
These same statistical tables list 1,285,000 Hindus and 565,000
Buddhists.170
In addition, there are also significant numbers of Chinese folk
religionists, Sikhs, Confucians, Bahaists, Jains, and Shintoists.171
Collectively these
groups document the extensive presence of the religions of Asia in North America.
What is not apparent from these numbers, but is apparent from other sources, is that
these Asian religions are now experiencing substantial conversions from among the
54 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 75:37
172. See id.
173. Id.; see also WORLD RELIGIONS IN AMERICA: AN INTRODUCTION (Jacob Neusner ed.,
1994).
174. For an instructive exploration of religious pluralism in one urban area, see RELIGIONS
OF ATLANTA: RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY IN THE CENTENNIAL OLYMPIC CITY (Gary Laderman ed.,
1996); see also ROBERT WUTHNOW, AFTER HEAVEN: SPIRITUALITY IN AMERICA SINCE THE
1950S (1998); Wade C. Roof, Modernity, the Religious, and the Spiritual, 558 ANNALS AM.
ACAD. POL. & SOC. SCI. 211-24 (1998).
175. See RANDALL BALMER, MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY: A JOURNEY INTO THE
EVANGELICAL SUBCULTURE IN AMERICA 195-207 (1989).
176. See id. at 195.
177. Id. at 196.
178. Id.
179. See id.
180. See id.
181. See id.
non-Asian portion of the American population.172
In other words, this growth is not
due simply to growing numbers of Asian immigrants in the United States and Canada.
This same statistical source lists 1,439,000 “New-Religionists,” that is, persons active
in the variety of small new religious movements scattered across America.173
In the
aggregate, these figures confirm that America’s religious pluralism increasingly
reflects the full range of the religions of the world.
III. A LOOK AT FOUR PIECES OF THE
AMERICAN RELIGIOUS COLLAGE
Another aspect of the challenge facing those who wish to make sense of America’s
exploding religious pluralism involves confronting the astonishing variety of religious
practice in contemporary America. Earlier I alluded to that diversity in the religious
collage that I pieced together. To that collage I will now add, with a bit more detail,
four select examples of contemporary vernacular spirituality.174
In his tour of America’s evangelical subculture, historian Randall Balmer gives his
readers an inside view of a Friday afternoon healing service at Camp Freedom, the site
of a Holiness camp meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida.175
A plain cinder-block
“tabernacle” was the site of the service. Homemade wooden benches, fluorescent
lights, a large platform in front—these features dominated the modest
accommodations.176
The preacher for the day was Bedsaul Agee whose confidence in
God’s healing power was evident in his testimony. “Our God is able to meet our
needs,” he testified.177
“I had a hand with three withered fingers, and the flesh was
restored on those in two days, and the doctor said he never saw anything like it in all
his days. Of course he didn’t. It was a supernatural miracle of God.”178
This particular
afternoon, when the congregation was invited to come to the front for healing, no one
came.179
Then the ushers passed out white cocktail napkins on which those in
attendance were urged to write prayer requests for friends or relatives.180
Eventually
some in the congregation came forward on second invitation.181
The clergy at the front
prayed with them, laid hands on them, and anointed them with oil; these actions were
2000] CHANGING PERSPECTIVES AND PROSPECTS 55
182. Id.
183. See id. at 197.
184. See id.
185. Id.
186. See KAREN MCCARTHY BROWN, MAMA LOLA:AVODOU PRIESTESS IN BROOKLYN 38-
68 (1991).
187. See id. at 3-4.
188. See id. at 4-5.
189. See id. at 5-6, 44.
190. See id. at 38.
191. See id. at 40-43.
192. Id. at 41.
193. See id. at 45.
194. See id. at 52.
195. See id. at 48-49.
196. See Michael Barkun, Millenarians and Violence: The Case of the Christian Identity
Movement, in MAYHEM, supra note 142, at 247 [hereinafter Barkun, Millenarians and
Violence]; see also MICHAELBARKUN,RELIGION AND THE RACIST RIGHT:THE ORIGINS OF THE
CHRISTIAN IDENTITY MOVEMENT (1994).
greeted with “shouts of deliverance.”182
The clergy then did the same with the napkin
requests.183
Before the service concluded, the minister asked for testimonies of
healing.184
When none were forthcoming, he concluded the service with the words,
“Go by the W ord of God. Go by faith that you are healed in the name of Jesus.”185
This service and the camp meeting stand in a long line of such gatherings and
represent one deep vein of spirituality still present in evangelical America today.
In her firsthand account of Alourdes, or Mama Lola, a Vodou priestess in Brooklyn,
New York, ethnographer Karen McCarthy Brown takes us inside a spiritual world
where family members, dead relatives, and ancestral spirits interact on a daily basis.186
Vodou is a blend of African religions and French colonial Catholicism that emerged
from the eighteenth century slave world in Haiti.187
Alourdes has a core of steady
disciples who turn to her for healing work, which in this tradition embraces health
concerns as well as issues bearing on family, love, and work.188
One of Mama Lola’s
continuing responsibilities is to care for the wants and needs of the spirits whom she
contacts for assistance.189
For example, on one occasion Alourdes presides over the
birthday celebration for Azaka, the spirit of a peasant farmer who reminds her of her
roots in Haiti.190
Brown describes in great detail the care taken to prepare an altar for
the celebration in Alourdes’s home.191
On the table and cabinet converted to “altars”
were placed leafy branches, paper decorations, cloth scarves, bottles of Haitian liquor,
pastries, candies, fruit, peanuts, traditional bread, and a birthday cake.192
The labor
required to assemble and prepare all these items was part of the devotional work in
this spiritual discipline.193
The actual ritual took place late at night and involved the
use of songs and chants to call the spirits.194
Ultimately, the aim of these devotional
practices was to establish proper relationships with family members living and dead.195
In the case of Mama Lola, we gain insight into the special leadership role of women
in this tradition.
The political scientist Michael Barkun has written about the movement known as
Christian Identity.196
It is not a denomination or a religious sect, but a composite
56 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 75:37
197. Barkun, Millenarians and Violence, supra note 196.
198. Id. at 248.
199. See id. at 248-49.
200. See id.
201. See id. at 249-50.
202. See id. at 251.
203. See id.
204. See id.
205. See id. at 248.
206. See id.
207. Kythera Ann, School of Spiritual Integrity (visited Nov. 1, 1999) <http://www.geo
cities.com/Athens/Acropolis/2427/>.
208. Kythera Ann, Reverend Kythera Ann (visited Nov. 1, 1999) <http://www.geocities.
com/Athens/Acropolis/2427/Founder.html>.
209. See id.
210. See id.
211. See id.
212. Id.
213. See Course Descriptions (visited Nov. 1, 1999) <http://www.geocities.com/Athens/
Acropolis/2427/course.html>.
movement that includes “independent churches, Bible study groups, political
organizations, and communal settlements.”197
Uniting these disparate elements is a set
of distinctive beliefs linking “Aryans” with ancient Israel, the Jews with Satan, and the
present with an impending apocalypse.198
A measure of secrecy surrounds membership
in the group, the size of which has been variously estimated.199
Several communal
organizations linked to Christian Identity have used force and violence to achieve their
ends with the result that they have been the object of federal law enforcement
investigation and surveillance.200
Members in the movement believe that they will
have to experience a severe tribulation, including a possible race war, before the
Second Coming of Christ.201
For that reason their activities are parallel in certain ways
to the larger survivalist movement.202
They call for economic self-sufficiency and the
stockpiling of weapons and food.203
Often they have clustered in rural areas, and they
strategize about military operations.204
Christian Identity groups have verbally
attacked Jews and nonwhites; they divide the world sharply between the forces of
good and evil.205
Some cells of the movement believe they have the responsibility to
be instrumental in bringing about the endtime events.206
This is literally a militant
apocalyptic form of spirituality.
The School of Spiritual Integrity is another example of the changing nature of
religious pluralism in America. The Internet website for this organization, which is
attractive and well designed, banners “the harmony of life” as its goal.207
This site is
part of the “ministry” of the Rev. Kythera Ann, who is a native Californian, the owner
and operator of a graphics and design firm, and a New Age prophet.208
By her own
description, she has been a channeler and clairvoyant since childhood; she also claims
to have studied with masters.209
She speaks of having offered classes and workshops
for more than twenty years.210
Now she offers courses both locally at her headquarters
in California and through the mail.211
The stated goal of her school is to “facilitate . . .
discernment and connection to Spirit.”212
To that end, persons who link with her
through the Internet can choose among a variety of courses of study.213
The School of
2000] CHANGING PERSPECTIVES AND PROSPECTS 57
214. Id.
215. See School of Spiritual Integrity, Recommended Reading, Cassettes, and Videos
(visited Nov. 1, 1999) <http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/2427/books.html>.
216. ROBERTWUTHNOW,THE RESTRUCTURINGOF AMERICANRELIGION:SOCIETYANDFAITH
SINCE WORLD WAR II (1988).
217. See Donald E. Miller, Postdenominational Christianity in the Twenty-First Century,
558 ANNALS AM. ACAD. POL. & SOC. SCI. 196, 197-98 (1998); see also REIMAGINING
DENOMINATIONALISM: INTERPRETIVEESSAYS (Robert Bruce Mullin & Russell E. Richey eds.,
1994).
218. Mark A. Shibley, Contemporary Evangelicals: Born-Again and World Affirming, 558
ANNALS AM. ACAD. POL. & SOC. SCI. 67, 74-75 (1998).
219. See WilliamMcKinney, Mainline Protestanism 2000, 558 ANNALSAM.ACAD.POL.&
SOC. SCI. 57, 61-62 (1998).
220. See id. at 59; Shibley, supra note 218, at 68.
Spiritual Integrity offers instruction in “metaphysical disciplines” and New Age
topics, including angels, chakras, crystals, dreams, kabbalah, mandalas, sacred
geometry, and tarot.214
Book and video recommendations are also available for those
who desire to explore these areas of spirituality.215
IV. RELIGIOUS PLURALISM:
CHALLENGING THE ASSUMPTIONS
The dramatic changes evident in the religious makeup of the nation and the
exploding variety of alternative and innovative forms of spirituality require careful
reassessment of certain longstanding assumptions about religion in America. In the
search for better ways to understand the contemporary religious situation, we must
acknowledge that some of the assumptions on which earlier models and narratives
rested are no longer valid. I will identify five such assumptions in need of reappraisal.
A. Living in a Post-Denominational Age
Denominational categories are no longer sufficient or primary religious identifiers
for many contemporary Americans. I do not mean thereby that denominational
language has no usefulness. Obviously it continues to function in particular ways.
Rather I intend to suggest the necessity of recognizing the alternative markers
preferred by many religious persons. Robert Wuthnow has shown how the categories
of “religious liberals” and “religious conservatives” have become more important than
denominational labels for many because of the division over such controversial issues
as abortion, homosexuality, and family values.216
That has led some commentators to
talk about this as a post-denominational age.217
Likewise, large numbers of religious
persons prefer to identify themselves as “evangelicals,” “born-again Christians,” or
even “fundamentalists” rather than as members of specific denominations.218
In our
day these terms often carry clearer meanings than denominational categories; they also
draw sharper boundaries than most denominational terminology. One other factor
weakening the value of traditional designations stems from the greater loyalty many
religious persons feel for local institutions over national organizations.219
Support—both financial and personal—has risen for one and declined for the other.220
58 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 75:37
221. See DONALD E.MILLER,REINVENTING AMERICANPROTESTANISM: CHRISTIANITYIN THE
NEW MILLENNIUM (1997). Megachurches are also called “new paradigm churches.”
222. WEBSTER’S NEW WORLD DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN ENGLISH, supra note 4, at 1134.
223. Martin E. Marty,Revisingthe Mapof American Religion, 558 ANNALSAM.ACAD.POL.
& SOC. SCI.13, 21 (1998).
224. Id.
225. See id.
226. HAROLD BLOOM, THE AMERICANRELIGION:THE EMERGENCE OFTHE POST-CHRISTIAN
NATION 30 (1992).
One of the advantages, for example, enjoyed by megachurches is that they usually
operate as independent local entities without high profile denominational
affiliations.221
B. Religion Versus Spirituality
The common definition of “religion” as belief in a divine or superhuman power to
be obeyed and worshiped, or the expression of such a belief, is not expansive enough
to deal with the breadth of religious experiences and spiritual endeavors in
contemporary America. Today religion is increasingly likely to be defined as any
system of belief or practices resembling, suggestive of, or likened to a religious
system; or perhaps even simply “any object of conscientious regard.”222
Religion has
become whatever a person declares to be the object of regard or pursuit. Some
commentators on American religion are offering a slightly different formulation of this
same phenomenon. The last twenty-five years, they suggest, have witnessed a growing
number of Americans who completely reject the word “religious” and in its place use
the word “spiritual.”223
Often they choose to live apart from established religious
institutions, “indifferent to organized religion or even hostile to it.”224
These
individuals see the cosmos as pulsing with spiritual energies which can be tapped
through various spiritual disciplines.225
These newer expressions of individual and
vernacular forms of spirituality are part of the story behind Harold Bloom’s judgment
that “[n]o W estern nation is as religion-soaked as ours.”226
Only a very fluid definition
of religion can do justice to the multitude of different “religions” and forms of
spirituality that exist in contemporary America.
C. The End of Monotheism and
Judeo-Christian Value Dominance
Several common assumptions regarding the place of religion in Western public
culture are no longer shared by many Americans. Monotheism—the notion that there
is one divine power or God responsible for the world—is not a given for all religious
groups in the United States today, much less for those who explicitly espouse a secular
worldview. Some imported and/or new religious movements, for example, are
explicitly polytheistic or nontheistic. The cultural authority once almost universally
conceded to the Bible in the West (the Hebrew Scriptures, or Old Testament, and the
New Testament) no longer is a given. One factor contributing to that development
may be the widespread scriptural illiteracy in our society, even among persons active
2000] CHANGING PERSPECTIVES AND PROSPECTS 59
227. See Roof, supra note 174, at 219-21.
228. See generally ROBERTF.BERKHOFER,JR.,SALVATION AND THESAVAGE:AN ANALYSIS
OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS AND AMERICAN INDIAN RESPONSE 1787-1862 (1965); RAY ALLEN
BILLINGTON,THE PROTESTANT CRUSADE 1800-1860: ASTUDY OFTHE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN
NATIVISM (1938); KLAUS J. HANSEN, MORMONISM AND THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE (1981);
JOHN P.NEWPORT,THE NEW AGE MOVEMENT AND THE BIBLICALWORLDVIEW: CONFLICT AND
DIALOGUE (1998); LEO P. RIBUFFO, THE OLD CHRISTIAN RIGHT: THE PROTESTANT FAR RIGHT
FROMTHE GREAT DEPRESSION TO THE COLDWAR (1983);THE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN ANTICULT
MOVEMENT: CHRISTIAN COUNTER-CULT LITERATURE (Aidan A. Kelly ed., 1990); John
L. Esposito, Islam in the World and in America, in WORLD RELIGIONS IN AMERICA: AN
INTRODUCTION, supra note 173, at 243, 255-57.
229. See GABRIEL J. FACKRE, THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT AND CHRISTIAN FAITH (1982); NEW
CHRISTIAN POLITICS (David G. Bromley & Anson Shupe eds., 1984).
230. See Shibley, supra note 218, at 78-80.
231. See, forexample, theeditorialLimits of Politics, 116 CHRISTIAN CENTURY 299 (1999).
in the Christian and the Jewish communities.227
Additionally, other scriptures—the
Quran, the Bagavad Gita, the Book of Mormon—now compete for favored status.
And the related notion that there is a universal set of fixed, self-evident moral values
binding on everyone derived from Judaism and Christianity—the “Decalogue” or Ten
Commandments—is also rejected explicitly by some and hotly contested by others.
D. The Unifying Power of Religion:
The Myth
The idea that religion can be, or should be, or is a cohesive unifying force in
American society has little relationship to either historical or contemporary reality.
The nation has never possessed a common religion—not even a common “civil
religion,” and it certainly does not at the present. In the past religion has been a major
point of division among Americans, even during those times when observers and
historians alike have focused attention on the dominance of the mainline Protestant
churches. We need only remind ourselves of the sustained campaigns against Native
Americans, Catholics, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, “cults,” “New Agers,” and other
groups to make that point.228
At present, the undeniable reality of astonishing religious
diversity undermines even the notion or the ideal of a religious unity. Perhaps the lastgasp
effort to attain a Christian America was the Moral Majority of Jerry Falwell.229
Finally even its leaders recognized the disjunction between their idea of Christianity
as a cohesive force in our society and the fact of radical religious pluralism in
contemporary America; they disbanded that organization.230
Political observers tell us
today that even the Christian Right is reevaluating the overall strategy of involvement
in politics.231
In my judgment, most Americans now recognize the practical
impossibility of ever achieving a religious consensus. In America, religion will most
likely remain a divisive issue rather than a unifying force among our population.
E. Outgrowing the Founders’ Intent
The “intentions of the founders” with respect to religion, as expressed in the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights, may not be a sufficient philosophical or theoretical
60 INDIANA LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 75:37
basis for dealing with the new challenges that will face the principle and practice of
religious liberty in our nation in the years ahead. The constitutional clauses providing
for disestablishment and free exercise, of course, deserve continuing preeminence and
respect, but the possible matters of contestation regarding religion in the future are
likely to become more and more complex and less and less related to the historical
concerns that informed those clauses. How, for example, should the legal and
constitutional concessions granted to organized denominations, including tax benefits,
zoning variances, and medical exclusions, apply to a self-declared shaman who
operates a website for his virtual congregation out of his home, collects free-will
offerings from his followers, prescribes a variety of remedies for everything from a
toothache to cancer, uses “recreational drugs” for spiritual ends, and is far more
“religious” than nine out of ten Americans? Our best hope in the future may be wise
legislators who will craft new tolerant legislation, and even wiser judges who will
apply democratic principles to issues involved with the free exercise of religion. I
suspect that our collective experience to date has not equipped us particularly well for
the host of issues concerning religious liberty likely to arise in the coming century.
AFTERWORD
I often tell my students that the Founders of our nation created a religious system
in which they agreed to disagree about matters of religion. I am confident the
Founders would be dumbfounded if they could return today and see the religious
world—the teeming marketplace of religious options—in America at the end of the
twentieth century. “Free exercise” is a glorious principle; it is a wild thing in practice!
We and our children have the responsibility of rising to the challenge of working out
the full implications of that principle in practice.