America: Religions and Religion

Catherine L. Albanese






Table of Contents

Click on the underlined chapter number to read a summary; click on the underlined subject to go to a bibliography and selected reading list to learn more.

[GLOSSARY]




INTRODUCTION: The Elephant in the Dark

Defining Religion
Finding American Religion


Part One: THE MANYNESS OF RELIGIONS IN AMERICA



Part One/ A:

THE ORIGINAL CAST



Chapter One: Original Manyness: Native American Traditions

Native American Diversity
Common Characteristics in Religion
Differences in Religion
Change in Native American Traditions


Chapter Two: Israel in a Promised Land: Jewish Religion and Peoplehood

The Jewish Immigrations
Jewishness and Peoplehood
Judaism as Biblical Religion
Jewish Tradition and the Consecration of Time
American Forms of Judaism
American Judaism and Contemporary Life

Chapter Three: Bread and Mortar: The Presence of Roman Catholicism

Spanish Missions
French Missions
English Colonies
Roman Catholic Religion
The American Saga of Catholicism

Chapter Four: Word from the Beginning: American Protestant Origins and the Liberal Tradition

The Religion of the Reformation
The Reformation in England
The Reformation in the English Colonies
Colonial Foreshadowings of Liberalism
Liberalism in the American Revolution
Early Liberal Heyday: From the Revolution to the Civil War
From Gilded Age into Twentieth Century
Protestant Liberalism in the Later Twentieth Century

Chapter Five: Restoring an Ancient Future: The Protestant Churches and the Mission Mind

Missionizing on the Home Front
Mission to the World

Chapter Six: Black Center: African-American Religion and Nationhood

West African Religions
New Land, New Religion
Black Christianity
The Black Church in Freedom
Black Religion in the Twentieth Century




Part One/ B:

NEWMADE IN AMERICA



Chapter Seven: Visions of Paradise Planted: Nineteenth-Century New Religions

Sectarianism and Nineteenth-Century New Religions
The Mormons
The Seventh-day Adventists
The Christian Scientists
Communalism

Chapter Eight: Homesteads of the Mind: Belief and Practice in Metaphysics

The Religious Meaning of Metaphysics
Metaphysical Sources in the Western Tradition
Traditional Occultism in the Colonies
The Metaphysical Revival of the Nineteenth Century
Popular Metaphysics in a New Nation
Metaphysics Later in the Twentieth Century




Part One/ C:

PATTERNS OF EXPANSION AND CONTRACTION



Chapter Nine: East Is West: Eastern Peoples and Eastern Religions

Nearer East: Eastern Orthodoxy
Middle East: Islam
Farther East: Hinduism
Farther East: Buddhism
East is West: Combination and Community

Chapter Ten: Regional Religion: A Case Study of Religion in Appalachia

The General Study of Regional Religion
The Appalachian Region
The Origins of hte Mountain People
The Growth of the Mountain Tradition
Tradition and Change in the Twentieth Century

Chapter Eleven: Fundamentals of the New Age: An Epilogue on Present-Day Pluralism

Patterns of Contemporary Expansion: The New Age
Patterns of Contemporary Contraction: Fundamentalists and Evangelicals
Expansion, Contraction, and the Limits of Pluralism


Part Two: THE ONENESS OF RELIGION IN AMERICA

 

Chapter Twelve: Public Protestantism: Historical Dominance and the One Religion of the United States

American Religious History and Public Protestantism
The Protestant Code
The Protestant Cultus
The Protestant Creed

Chapter Thirteen: Civil Religion: Millennial Politics and History

The Foundations of the Civil Religion
Civil Religion in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Chapter Fourteen: Cultural Religion: Millennial Explorations of Dominance and Innocence

Religion and Ordinary American Culture
Cultural Religion: A Brief Survey
A Case Study in Nature Religion
Afterthoughts on Cultural Religion



CONCLUSION: Many Centers Meeting

Defensive Deities: The One Confronts the Many
Acculturative Religions: The Many Encounter the One
Colliding Atoms: The Many Face the Many
Summing Up the Present


GLOSSARY