Religious Differences in the United States Essay

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Cultural Differences

The predominant religions of Northern and Western European American and Southern and Eastern European Americans are Protestantism and Catholicism. Prior to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, Europe as a whole was Roman Catholic. That unity of religious expression was shattered when Luther, Calvin, Knox, Henry VIII and others revolted against the Church and preached their own new religious ideas. The aristocracy got behind them in many cases, particularly in the Northern and Western portions or Europe (England, northern Germany, pockets of France), while Southern and Eastern Europe remained attached to the Catholic Church (Italy, Spain, Hungary, Poland, southern Germany). The Protestants aligned with Jewish groups, who saw an opportunity to get out of the ghetto by working with the new Protestant aristocracy (Jones, 2014). Jews were welcomed back into England (they had been kicked out for centuries), and they settled in parts of Germany and France. Eventually they all came to America, with White Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs) leading the political way forward, as the Founding Fathers were all English Deists. These groups—Protestants, Jews and Catholics—all influenced American culture and society since the founding of the nation, as they all came over from all parts of Europe and brought their cultural and religious beliefs with them. This paper will show how these predominant religions, primarily the Protestants and the Catholics and their religions impacted values, attitudes and behaviors in American culture.

Protestants primarily settled in the South in the U.S. in the early days of the nation. Though, as Kottak and Kozaitis (2012) point out, there were other cultures that influence American life, WASPs did play a significant role in developing the traditional American values at the heart of the nation for the first two centuries. They were agrarian and controlled the land in the South and the finances (along with Jewish families from European wealthy backgrounds) in the North. The Northern states were more industrialized and urban and attracted a variety of diverse peoples—ethnic Catholics from Ireland, Poland, Germany and Italy; Protestants from England and Germany; and Jews from Eastern Europe.

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The urban areas had their own enclaves—pockets of ethnic communities—the Italian quarter, the German center, and so on. Catholics were more liberal with their attitudes and behaviors while Protestants tended to be more severe. The Protestants were Puritans in their religious beliefs. They were very legalistic, viewing the letter of the law as important, while Catholics were much more willing to be indulgent and to accept the fact that people are sinners. Catholics enjoyed drinking—whether they were Irish or German or Italian. Protestants tended to view drink as problematic for society and they were primarily the ones to promote teetotalism and Prohibition, which made the sale of alcohol illegal in the U.S.

WASPs also emphasized race more than Catholics. The idea of whiteness was largely and extension of the Anglo Saxon mythology, whereas Catholics throughout Europe were generally of various races—Spanish, Italian, Polish, German, English, Irish—all of these various ethnicities were inclusive of multiples races, so racial tension was not really an issue for Catholics. Ethnic differences aside, they all shared the same values informed by the same religious teaching. Protestants, however, were generally from England in the U.S. and their outlook was distinctly racial. As Diller (2015) notes, this racism was predominant in American pockets from the beginning—particularly in the Southern region where WASPs dominated the culture. Racism was what allowed the Protestants in the south to engage in slavery and maintain slaves. They did not view blacks as equals and this was an extension of their belief that they themselves were the chosen people. This belief was similar to what the Jews….....

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