Religion in America

What are the major cultural and intellectual forces shaping religions in America? How have religious Americans encountered people of other faiths and nationalities? How have they seen America as a promised land or place of refuge—or as a place of bondage, conflict or secularity? What are the main ways that religious Americans think about faith, spirituality, religious diversity and church and state? How might we understand the complexity of these and other issues in a country of so many different religious groups—Protestant, Jewish, Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim? There will be several other topics that we will examine: 1) What it means to be an American or a religious American; 2) how Americans of different faiths have interacted, argued and cooperated with each other; and 3) how Americans have thought about personal religious experiences.

 

This syllabus was created for the Young Scholars in American Religion program.

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