Religions In America

BOOK REVIEW: 'Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?'

Well, was it? Um, er, ah … it depends - the Christian Founding question, as John Fea addresses it, depends on more things in heaven and earth than are readily summarized in a bumper sticker. And if that doesn’t answer the question the author boldly proposes in his title, he still gives readers the raw data wherewith to draw conclusions that will likely differ from each other in large measure. And which certainly won’t resolve anything at this late date in American history.

That isn’t for a minute to say such questions aren’t worth raising.

Mr. Fea ’s judiciously amassed research has in it something to unsettle firm convictions on all sides of the question: yes, Christian; no, Christian; Christian to a degree, but how a large a degree? Indeed, what does it mean, “Christian nation”? He finds that particular question as perplexing as any having to do with the early settlers’ and Founders’ intentions.

Was America at any point consecrated to Christian and no other purposes? Mr. Fea , chairman of the history department at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa., says - here’s what I hear anyway - probably not, but at the same time America was full of Christians intent that their faith should be fully realized here.

The problem in wading through the evidence - Thomas Jefferson ’s “wall of separation” language, state establishments of religion, the Constitution’s omission of divine purpose in the American arrangement, etc., etc., etc. - is the political nature of the inquiry. The U. S. Supreme Court got us into this. Didn’t it - with decisions proposing the unconstitutionality of prayer and Bible reading in public schools? Or did the Court really start this affray? If America were as thoroughly a Christian nation as some argue, why didn’t Americans instruct the justices to go to hell, literally or figuratively, and get out of Christianity’s upward pathway?

Mr. Fea has done a brave thing in simply laying before us the competing considerations and inviting us to make up our own minds. Many of these considerations don’t weigh heavily in favor of Christian consecration as the key to our identity. The religion of the Founding Fathers, as is often alleged by foes of the religious Founding thesis, was less than orthodox, despite the “vague and generic God-language used in the Declaration of Independence.

America may not be the world's top religion exporter forever - By ...

This week, Molly Worthen wrote about how Mormonism may affect the foreign policy positions of GOP candidates Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman. Mormons tend to get singled out in discussions of international religion because of their active missionary culture, relatively recent founding, and the fundamental American-ness of their founding doctrine.

But in fact, Mormonism is hardly alone on the list of America's religious exports. Of the world's 35 largest protestant denominations, 24 are headquartered in the United States, making the U.S. the world's largest single exporter of Protestant Christianity. The most significant of these if Pentecostalism, a movement that originated in the United States in the early 1900s and involves a literal reading of the bible as well as "ecstatic" worship practices, such as speaking in tongues. Today, Pentecostalism has 600 million adherents worldwide today, accounting for 26 percent of all Christians.

These facts come from a fascinating new paper by economists Gordon Hanson of U.C. San Diego and Chong Xiang of Purdue University, titled, " Exporting Christianity: Governance and Doctrine in the Globalization of U.S. Denominations." The paper takes the novel approach of looking at religious sects as types of multinational enterprises, whose success or failure is determined by how well their "product" responds to local market conditions.

They found, among other trends, that denominations with stricter religious doctrine are more successful in countries with a high degree of economic uncertainty - war, natural disasters, etc. The also found that when pastor "productivity" can be higher, because of better communications and transportation infrastructure, it benefits denominations with a more decentralized structure.

I asked Hanson how the U.S. came to be the world's top religious exporter:

Forget about religion for a second and just think about the U.S. capacity to innovate. Seen in that light, our success in religion isn't much different than our success in movies, or electronics, or commercial aircraft. We're a country that leads the world in entrepreneurship and religion is no different. 

You could look at historical factors associated with freedom of religion and religious tolerance, but that's only part of the story. We're also a place where people are constantly creating new organizations, whether to serve a business function or a social function.

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