On Sun Feb 18, Yoshie Furuhashi said:
> Criticism of Roger Finke and Rodney Stark has to be better than the
> above, in that they are comparing the USA today not with early Puritan
> settlements but with _Revolutionary_ America (their book's title is
> _The Churching of America, 1776-1990_). In other words, we are talking
> about Tom Paine's America (the late 18th century -- the period of
> revolts and revolutions!), not William Bradford's America....
Religion played a bigger role then too. The day after the House of Representatives passed the First Amendment, the one we now interpret as separating Church and State, it passed a resolution calling for a day of national prayer and thanksgiving, to thank god for letting us establish constitutional government. You don't see much of that nowadays. We've still got the holiday. But not the revolutionary religious meaning.
The constitution, on the other hand, is still treated as if it were sacred -- but as much by secular thinkers as by religious ones, if not more so. And in this they may be said to be carrying on in the founding fathers' footsteps, but unconscious and implicit where the latter were conscious and explicit. What makes America's religious experience distinctive, IMHO, is not the extent to which religion has opposed secularism, but the extent to which, instead of opposition, we've gotten mixture.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com