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America becomes a place of political refuge
Many British people fled to the United States to escape religious prosecution. -
Deism
belief in the existence of a supreme being, specifically of a creator who does not intervene in the universe. The term is used chiefly of an intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries that accepted the existence of a creator on the basis of reason but rejected belief in a supernatural deity who interacts with humankind. -
Amish
In the late 1600s, Anabaptist leader Jacob Ammann and his followers promoted "shunning" and other religious innovations, which ultimately led to a split among the Swiss Anabaptists into Mennonite and Amish branches in 1693. The population of North American Amish grew slowly in the 18th- and 19th-centuries. -
Roger Williams
The political & religious leader Roger Williams is remembered for founding the state of Rhode Island & advocating separation of church and state in America. His views on religious freedom & tolerance, with his disapproval of confiscating land from Native Americans, earned him wrath of his church & banishment. Williams & followers settled Narragansett Bay where they purchased land from Narragansett Indians and established a new colony governed by religious liberty & separation of church & state. -
Puritans suffer in England
leaders of the English state and church grew
increasingly unsympathetic to Puritan demands. They insisted that the Puritans conform to religious practices that
they abhorred, removing their ministers from office and threatening them with "extirpation from the earth" if they
did not fall in line. Zealous Puritan laymen received savage punishments. -
Pilgrims emigrate to Massachusettes
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John Winthrop
He is famous for delivering his speech entitled "A Modell of Christian Charity," where he compared the flight of the Puritans to the Book of Exodus, and described their future colony as a "city on a hill," a place for others to observe an ideal Christian society. -
Puritans begin emmigrating to America
Puritans emigrated to America from England to gain the liberty to worship as
they chose. Most settled in New England, but some went as far as the West Indies. Theologically, the Puritans were
"non-separating Congregationalists."the Puritans believed
that the Church of England was a true church, though in need of major reforms -
Anne Hutchinson
New England religious leader & midwife, Anne Hutchinson was born in England, and followed Puritan leader John Cotton to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634. She brought attention to Cotton’s spirit-centered theology through meetings, praising him & her brother-in-law John Wheelwright as Christian ministers. A ministerial synod cleared Cotton from the charges, but Hutchinson was punished w/ banishment by General Court of Massachusetts & excommunication by Church of Boston. -
Roman Catholics in Maryland
To avoid conflict between majority Protestants and minority Catholics in the colony, Calvert instituted a progressive religious policy called The Maryland Toleration Act that allowed all Christians, regardless of sect, to freely worship in Maryland. -
William Penn
William Penn was the son of Sir William Penn, and was an English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, early Quaker, and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, the English North American colony and the future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. -
Quakers
Quakers in North America. ... Many Quakers settled in Rhode Island, due to its policy of religious freedom, as well as the British colony of Pennsylvania which was formed by William Penn in 1681 as a haven for persecuted Quakers. -
Salem Witch Trials
During the Salem Witch Trials (1692-1693), citizens accused one another of witchcraft, leading to mass hysteria and the imprisonment/death of approximately 170 community members. -
Jonathan Edwards
Jonathan Edwards was a revivalist preacher, philosopher, and Congregationalist Protestant theologian. Like most of the Puritans, he held to the Reformed theology. -
John Wesley
John Wesley was an Anglican cleric and theologian who, with his brother Charles and fellow cleric George Whitefield, founded Methodism. -
Charles Wesley
Charles Wesley was an English leader of the Methodist movement, most widely known for writing more than 6,000 hymns -
George Whitefield
George Whitefield, also spelled George Whitfield, was an English Anglican cleric who was one of the founders of Methodism and the evangelical movement. Born in Gloucester, he matriculated at Pembroke College at the University of Oxford in 1732. -
John Witherspoon
John Witherspoon (1723-1794) was a Presbyterian minister, president of the College of New Jersey, and the only clergy signatory of the Declaration of Independence. -
1st Great Awakening: emergence of evangelism
a wave of religious enthusiasm among Protestants that
swept the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American religion. It resulted
from powerful preaching that deeply affected listeners (already church members) with a deep sense of personal guilt
and salvation by Christ. Pulling away from ritual and ceremony, the Great Awakening made religion intensely
personal to the average person by creating a deep sense of spiritual guilt and redemption. -
John Carroll
John Carroll (1735-1815) served as the first Catholic bishop in the United States and helped expand the Catholic Church domestically. -
Baptists emerge
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Richard Allen
Richard Allen was a minister, educator, writer, and one of America's most active and influential black leaders. In 1794 he founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent black denomination in the United States. -
Methodists emerge
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Separation of church and state
"Separation of church and state" is a phrase used by Thomas Jefferson and others expressing an understanding of the intent and function of the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." -
Charles Finney
Charles Finney (1792-1875) was a prominent evangelical and revivalist during the Second Great Awakening. -
John Hughes
John Hughes (1797-1864) was a New York archbishop, who oversaw growth in the American Catholic Church due to Irish immigration and advocated Catholic parochial education. -
Treaty of Tripoli
Founding Fathers concern was religious freedom, not state religion. The Founders ensured in no official sense would America be a Christian Republic. Ten years after Constitutional Convention ended U.S. said they were a secular state and negotiations would follow the law, not the Christian faith. assurances were in the Treaty to ease fears of Muslim state by insisting religion wouldn't govern how treaty was interpreted & enforced John Adams & Senate said the pact was between two sovereign states -
2nd Great Awakening
unlike the first, focused on the unchurched and sought to instill in them
a deep sense of personal salvation as experienced in revival meetings, quickly spread throughout
Kentucky, Tennessee and southern Ohio. Each denomination had assets that allowed it to thrive on the frontier. The
Methodists had an efficient organization that depended on ministers known as circuit riders, who sought out people
in remote frontier locations. -
Brigham Young
Brigham Young (1801-1877) succeeded Joseph Smith as Mormon president. He led a Mormon exodus to Utah and helped expand the church to 150,000 members. -
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) promoted Transcendentalist thought, which emphasized experiencing God through lived experience and intuition. -
Joseph Smith
Joseph Smith (1805-1844) was the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a controversial and influential new religious movement in America. -
Mormon Church founded
Mormonism represents the non-Protestant faith taught by Smith in the 1840s. After Smith's death in 1844, most Mormons followed Brigham Young on his westward journey to the area that became the Utah Territory, calling themselves The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). -
William Miller
William Miller (1782-1849) predicted that the return of Christ would occur in 1843, garnering both religious fervor and criticism. -
Southern Baptist Convention founded
The southern Baptists met at the First Baptist Church of Augusta in May 1845. At this meeting, they formed a new convention, naming it the Southern Baptist Convention. They elected William Bullein Johnson as the new convention's first president. -
Mormons arrive in Utah
On July 24, 1847, an exhausted Brigham Young and his fellow members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints arrived in Utah's Great Salt Lake Valley and called it home. The Mormons, as they were commonly known, had moved west to escape religious discrimination. -
3rd Great Awakening
The Third Great Awakening refers to a hypothetical historical period proposed by William G. McLoughlin that was marked by religious activism in American history and spans the late 1850s to the early 20th century. It affected pietistic Protestant denominations and had a strong element of social activism. -
Social Gospel Movement
The Social Gospel Movement was a religious movement that arose during the second half of the nineteenth century. Ministers, especially ones belonging to the Protestant branch of Christianity, began to tie salvation and good works together. They argued that people must emulate the life of Jesus Christ. It occurred from 1870-1920. -
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses believe that Jesus is God's only direct creation, that everything else was created through Christ by means of God's power, and that the initial unassisted act of creation uniquely identifies Jesus as God's "only-begotten Son". -
Hinduism comes to America
Anandibai Joshi is believed to be the first Hindu woman to set foot on American soil, arriving in New York in June 1883 at the age of 19. -
Charles Coughlin
Charles Coughlin (1891-1979) was a Catholic "radio priest," who was controversial for his anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi views leading up to World War II. -
L. Ron Hubbard
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, better known as L. Ron Hubbard and often referred to by his initials, LRH, was an American author and the founder of the Church of Scientology. -
Malcolm X
When twenty-one, he was sentenced to prison for burglary and there encountered the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, popularly known as the Black Muslims. Muhammad's thesis that the white man is the devil with whom blacks cannot live had a strong impact on Malcolm. -
Scopes Trial
In the 1920s, a Tennessee law forbade the teaching of evolution in the classroom, but when a new biology teacher named John T. Scopes challenged the law, controversy ensued. The Scopes trial, also known as the "Monkey Trial," garnered media attention as the American Civil Liberties Union supplied Scopes with eminent trial lawyer and religious skeptic Clarence Darrow. Scopes lost the trial, however it was a significant turning point for education in America. -
Ban on teaching evolution ruled unconstitutional
The Scopes Trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case in May 1925 in which a substitute high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. -
Nation of Islam founded
On July 4, 1930, W.D. Fard founded the Nation of Islam (NOI) in Detroit. He argued that whites had stripped blacks from their original religion of Islam and replaced it with the white religion of Christianity. -
Jewish refuge in America
The outbreak of World War II seriously affected the plight of refugees attempting to flee Nazi's. As the German military swept through Europe, it became difficult for refugees to flee abroad. Fewer passenger liners crossed the Atlantic Ocean. Those that did left from neutral ports. In German-occupied Poland, the SS prohibited Jews from emigrating. Jews in Germany could legally leave until fall 1941. It was possible until fall 1942 for some refugees to leave France to travel to the United States. -
Billy Graham
William Franklin "Billy" Graham, Jr. is an American evangelical Christian evangelist, ordained as a Southern Baptist minister, who rose to celebrity status in 1949 reaching a core constituency of middle-class, moderately conservative Protestants. -
Religious radio programming regulated
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Westboro Baptist Church is founded
The Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is an unaffiliated Baptist church known for its hate speech, especially against LGBT people (homophobia), Jews (antisemitism), and politicians. The church is categorized as a hate group and is monitored as such by the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center. -
Muhammad Ali joins the Nation of Islam; brings Islam into pop culture
Clay then converted to Islam and changed his name from Cassius Clay, which he called his "slave name", to Muhammad Ali. He set an example of racial pride for African Americans and resistance to white domination during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. In 1966, two years after winning the heavyweight title, Ali further antagonized the white establishment by refusing to be drafted into the U.S. military, citing his religious beliefs and opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War -
Conservative Resurgence Movement
Its initiators called it a Conservative Resurgence while its detractors have labeled it a Fundamentalist Takeover. The movement was primarily aimed at reorienting the denomination away from a liberal trajectory and towards an unambiguous affirmation of biblical inerrancy. It separated Baptists and Southern Baptists. -
Office of Faith-Based Initiatives established
The Faith-Based Initiative is a federal program that provides houses of worship, religious organizations, and other faith-based institutions with federal funding to deliver government-mandated social services. It was established under President George W. Bush. -
9/11
The September 11 attacks (also referred to as 9/11) were a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda on the United States on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. The attacks killed 2,996 people, injured over 6,000 others, and caused at least $10 billion in property and infrastructure damage and $3 trillion in total costs. This attack altered the way the American people reacted toward the Islamic people.