Unit 4: Religion in the United States

Catholics

Crystal Cathedral,LA(outside)

Although the largest church is of the Protestant faith, the largest single religious group is that of Roman Catholics. More than one-quarter of all Americans are now of the Roman Catholic faith. According to a survey done in the early 1990s, Roman Catholics represent 26.2% of the U.S population(the 4 large Protestant groups, the Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians represent 31.9% of the population). The majority of the Catholics are descendants of immigrants from Ireland, Italy and Poland. Most of the early Catholics stayed near the East Coast. They were concentrated especially in New York and Massachusetts, and are still a very

Irish Immigrants

important element of the population in those two states. By the Civil War, over a million Irish Catholics, many driven by hunger, had come to the United States. Most were working people. Anti-Catholic prejudice was so strong that, on a few occasions, it broke out in mob violence. In 1844, two Catholic churches were burnt and 13 people died in rioting that swept through the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. More often prejudice took the form of discrimination, particularly at the polls. By 1960, however, John F. Kennedy's presidential election victory put to rest the catholic religion as an issue in national politics. Kennedy was Roman Catholic. Catholics were not shut out of public schools and hospitals but they wanted their own schools, colleges and hospitals.Catholics believed that these institutions were needed

Nortre Dame University Church

to preserve their faith. Many Catholics now attend public schools and secular colleges. But Catholic institutions, especially in large cities, still serve large numbers of Catholics and a growing number of non-Catholics, who are attracted by the discipline and education offered in these schools. By the 1950s, many Catholics had risen to positions of leadership, not only in labor unions, but also in business and politics as well. As Catholics grew more confident about their place in American life, they began to challenge, not the basic idea of separation of Church and State, but the way American courts interpreted it. The costs of modern education had made their schools very expensive to maintain. Catholics began to seek some way in which they could obtain public funds to help meet these expenses. Other private schools, not necessarily religious in origin or concern, also sought this help.

The lawmaking bodies of many states were sympathetic to these demands. But most attempts to provide help for religious schools were ruled unconstitutional (declared to violate the Constitution) by the Supreme Court of the United States. Giving public money to a religious school was held to violate the clause, or part of the First Amendment which prohibits the establishment of religion. Public money for religious schools remains an issue in American politics in the 1990s.If Catholics feel that government should support the non-religious aspects of private education, other American groups call for even less government connection to religion. Sunday closing laws were a real hardship to Jews. In effect, they were forced to observe two Sabbaths, or days of rest—their own and the majority Christian one as well. Nonbelievers, and some religious people as well, objected to prayer and Bible reading in public schools. They thought that a modern government in a free society should be basically secular.