{"id":1315,"date":"2013-07-23T20:30:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-23T20:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/americas-religious-market.html"},"modified":"2013-07-23T20:30:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-23T20:30:00","slug":"americas-religious-market","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2013\/07\/americas-religious-market.html","title":{"rendered":"America’s Religious Market"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
America has long been the most religious of the affluent, western nations, having the most professing and practicing population. (A couple of the nearly 100-percent-Catholic countries are close, but only Canada otherwise.) Explaining this aspect of American exceptionalism has preoccupied many scholars of religion. Part of the answer is that since the early 1800s the United States has had no established religion and has had instead a free \u201cmarketplace\u201d of religion. Suppliers\u2014that is, churches and ministers\u2014emerged to meet nearly every religious \u201ctaste\u201d people might have.<\/span><\/div>\n
The early days of this market had all the features of an unsettled market free-for all, exacerbated by the unsettled features of American law. Today, our religious \u201cmarket\u201d is far more orderly, but we still shop around.<\/span><\/div>\n


Hawking<\/span><\/h4>\n
The nineteenth century saw a fervor of religious inspiration, entrepreneurship, and frantic competition. In 1800, most Americans belonged to no church or denomination; many others were only nominally committed to the stuffy and stern established churches of several states. But now, a host of young, energetic, and plain-speaking preachers evangelized all across the country for new denominations like the Methodist Episcopalians, Disciples of Christ, and dissident Baptists. The Catholic Church, rooted in a continent where people were born into a faith and never left it, was shocked by the competition. One priest dispatched to Maryland complained in 1821, \u201cThere are Swarms of false teachers [Methodist preachers] all through the Country, in every School house, in every private house\u2014you hear nothing but night meetings, Class meetings, love feasts &c; &c.;\u201d Historian of religion Martin Marty described \u201ca competition in which the fittest survived,\u201d one in which backwoods ministers found that their \u201cfirst enemy was neither the devil nor the woman but the Baptist\u201d\u2014or any number of evangelists. (Later in the century, even atheists came together in formal association.)<\/span><\/div>\n
Energetic ministers proselytized through missions, camp revivals, and aid to the spiritually and often materially destitute. They heaped scorn on what they considered to be overeducated, overfed, and overly boring reverends of old-line denominations. Theologically, the new faiths attacked the doctrine of predestination that favored elites and threatened eternal damnation. Most instead preached a happier theology of individual conscience and democracy, praising the Lord, as one hymn had it, because \u201cThy saving grace for all is free \/ And none are doom\u2019d to misery.\u201d Everyone can be reborn to salvation.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

America has long been the most religious of the affluent, western nations, having the most professing and practicing population. (A couple of the nearly 100-percent-Catholic countries are close, but only Canada otherwise.) Explaining this aspect of American exceptionalism has preoccupied many scholars of religion. Part of the answer is that since the early 1800s the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nAmerica's Religious Market<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"America has long been the most religious of the affluent, western nations, having the most professing and practicing population. 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