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● Religious
Liberty
● Protestants
in the United States
● CathoLics
● Three
Faiths
● Religious
Diversity
● American
Character of Religion
Protestants in the United States
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Baptist
Immersion
|
 Today,
the majority of Americans belong to the Protestant church. Over
60% of Americans are said to be Protestant believers. The Baptists
are the largest Protestant group. They
believe in adult baptism by immersion, symbolizing a mature and
responsible conversion experience. From a beginning in
17th century England, the Baptists have continued on a small scale
in England where they are about 1% of the population. But in the
Unites States, they have
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| The
Holy Bible |
their main strength, with over 25 million
members (19.4% of the population), divided among more than 20 branches
and concentrated particularly in the
Southern Bible Belt. Some white Baptists have liberal attitudes
toward the blacks and stand up courageously in difficult circumstances
for their belief in the equality of all human beings before God,
whatever their color. But
the great majority seems to have no difficulty in reconciling their
Christian belief and practice with their racial prejudice.
Meanwhile, most of the blacks are Baptists too, but they go to different
churches from the white. In southern communities the blacks find
their main social center in their Baptist churches and sometimes
a base from which to organize group action.
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| A
Methodist Camp Meeting |
Next
to the Baptists, the most numerous Protestants are the Methodists,
adherents of the group which grew up in 18th century England following
the lead of John Wesley. Most Methodists are united in the Methodist
Church, which has a form of service based on that of the Church
of England.
Thus
the main Protestant groups with the origins in Britain are flourishing,
and seem to have taken on a distinctively American character, including
a tendency to form subgroups.
But this is not the whole story of Protestantism. Smaller sects
from Europe have taken root, and new sects
have formed within America, some of them around individual leaders.
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| A
Christ Church in New Jersey |
There
are more than 100 other Protestant sects, many of them hardly known
to anyone except their own members, but with a combined membership
of more than 20 million. They express variety, rather than doctrinal
schism.
Some of them are of recent foundation, and the dominant trend is
fundamentalist.Four
of the smaller sects are really quite large, with 2 million or more
members. These
are the Latter Day Saints, the Churches of Christ,the United Church
of Christ and the International Convention of Disciples of Christ.
Some of the small sects are extremely intolerant,
and depend on a highly emotional and even hysterical approach. Some
have shown themselves particularly ready to be pragmatic
in
adapting themselves to what they imagine to be the ideas of modern
society. And new prophets
and movements of religion are appearing all the time.
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