春雨直播app

“America is a land of religious liberty.”
 
“America is a Christian nation.”
 
America's history and present, viewed through the lens of religion, have unfolded under the tense relation between the aforementioned premises. The Constitution has provided for religious liberty since 1791, not long after the founding of the nation, and religious liberty has been revered as America’s “first freedom.” However, Christians have been the religious majority in the United States since the British colonial period, and Protestants have continued to dominate both in numbers and power. While Protestantism was considered to be the “de facto establishment” up to the 19th century, the sudden increase in Catholic immigrants at that time rekindled the anti-Catholic sentiment that had been latent among Protestants since the Reformation.
 
The anti-Catholicism among Protestants, who were the overwhelming majority in the 19th century, is one of many examples of intolerance in the United States, the supposed land of religious liberty. By studying how these Protestants viewed religious liberty, this book aims to shed light on one of the critical moments in the historical development of religious liberty in the United States.
 
Many studies already exist on the 19th-century anti-Catholicism. They have described how nativism, an anti-immigrant political movement, arose among the Protestants of that time when many of the immigrants were from Catholic Europe. The nativists often called for the defense of American liberty from the “despotic” Catholic religion.
 
This book argues, however, that some of the Protestants attempted to deal with the "problem" by converting Catholics to Protestantism while sharing the anti-Catholicism of the nativists. Moreover, they believed that, as long as there was religious liberty, the truth of Protestantism would naturally become apparent to the public. They began to promote activities to export the same religious liberty enjoyed in the United States to the world, including Catholic countries in Europe. They were confident that religious liberty and Protestantism would reinforce each other and help fight against Catholicism all over the world. This book also addresses how those who advocated the global spread of religious liberty viewed the inconvenient fact of slavery in the United States. Here we find another historical example of the deep-rooted racism in America.
 
Today, in the spring of 2024, it appears that the November presidential election will be a contest between incumbent Biden and former President Trump, who held the office for four years beginning in 2017. President Trump and his supporters were known to value religious liberty, support the view that the United States is a Christian nation, and be indifferent to racial issues. The tensions between “the land of religious liberty” and “the Christian nation” as well as the intersection of religion and racism, still have a significant impact on America.
 

(Written by: SATO Seiko / June 17, 2024)