This is especially the case among immigrant-focused churches. But Christianity in America is growing or at least is holding steady among some key populations. There’s no doubt that cultural Christianity has lost the influence it once held in America, and that biblical literacy in America today is quite low, even among many churchgoers. Kidd: Reports of Christianity’s imminent demise in America still seem premature to me. What is your outlook on Christianity in America in the 21st century and beyond? Tragically, Americans could not agree with one another about whether the Bible condemned or sanctioned slavery. As Abraham Lincoln noted in his Second Inaugural Address, “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God.” Yet, Lincoln added, “each invokes aid against the other.” Their common Christian culture, and Americans’ deep familiarity with the Bible, failed to avert the Civil War. Kidd: Americans have commonly looked to the Bible in times of war for assurance and comfort, and the Civil War was no different. How did both sides in the Civil War view the Bible? Other Christians had preached on the need to be “born again” ( John 3:3) prior to the Great Awakenings, of course, but the evangelical preachers of these awakenings put a laser focus on the need for every person to experience the “new birth” of salvation in Christ.īetween about 17, the Methodists and the Baptists went from being small, sometimes persecuted sects, to the largest Protestant denominations in America. Kidd: The First and Second Great Awakenings were a series of revivals that helped make evangelical Christianity – especially among the Methodists and Baptists – the leading form of Christianity in America by the eve of the Civil War. Similarly, in the 1820s the Cherokee Christian convert Galagina translated the New Testament by using the new alphabet developed by Sequoya, his fellow Cherokee.Įxplain what the First and Second Great Awakenings were and how they influenced American culture. That was the first American Bible translation ever printed. Nevertheless, there were landmark moments in the history of the Bible in the colonial and early national periods, such as Puritan missionary John Eliot’s translation of the Bible into the Massachusett language in the mid-1600s. Kidd: Most of the early colonists expressed at least a nominal desire to evangelize Native Americans, although besetting conflict with Native Americans often got in the way of following through in bringing the Bible to the Indians. How did the Bible factor into the colonization and development of America? Protestantism also became the dominant religion among free and enslaved African Americans, whose ancestors had typically come to America with little Christian background at all. By the time that mass Catholic immigration began from Ireland and other European nations in the mid-1800s, Protestantism was entrenched as the dominant faith in America’s centers of political power and educational influence. Until the 1840s, most of the competition was between the major Protestant denominations, evangelists, and missionary societies. But a great campaign for religious liberty in the era of the American Revolution turned America into a much more pluralistic nation of competing denominations. The American colonies, except for Catholic Maryland, were often officially Protestant. Kidd: I give some attention to most major religions, as well as the role of unbelief in America, but Protestant Christianity has undoubtedly been the greatest shaping influence in the broad story of American religious history. Why do you mainly focus on Protestantism in the book? News media and scholars tend to focus on religion only to the extent that it’s involved with political conflict or scandal, but for the everyday believer, those sensational issues have little to do with the way you live out your faith. I think of this type of religious observance as the “peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” to which 1 Timothy 2:2 refers. Lived religion – going to worship services, reading your Bible, and praying – is often the most significant aspect of faith to believers, but it’s often the aspect that gets the least news coverage or attention from historians. Kidd: “Lived religion” refers to the daily habits and practices of faith. What is “lived religion” and how does it contribute to the fabric of society? Kidd ( author of America’s Religious History (Zondervan, 2019). What is the theological and ethnic diversity and enduring strength of American religion in general, and Christianity and evangelical faith in particular? How have faith commitments and actions shaped the nation?īible Gateway interviewed Thomas S. ![]() Since the founding of America centuries ago, Americans have been a pervasively religious people.
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