Religion is an enormously complex topic, no less so in US society and culture than in others. The relation between religion and other areas of social life, especially politics and education, will be touched upon here. At issue is how people's beliefs about the supernatural and the divine affect their beliefs and actions in the material world. Much debate centers on the degree to which beliefs motivated by and derived from religion should influence action in the public arena, especially by public officials and agencies. A brief and incomplete list of recent events in which religion appears at least to play a significant role can be found here.
In his 1902 book The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James gives this broad and general definition of religion: "... the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto*."
In other words, the study of religion typically deals with individual and collective beliefs regarding relations with a real but invisible world, the inhabitant(s) of which (may) have special powers or influence over the inhabitants of the (usually equally) real, visible and tangible world of everyday life.
The notion that religion involves the relation of the individual with the other world implies that the individual has a (relatively) clearly defined idenity, that is, part of religion is individual identity, including how the individual is part of a group.
Catherine Albanese [see bibliography] provides a useful approach to religion when she holds that some major aspects of religion can be analyzed in terms of boundaries -- crossing them or living within them.
Since crossing boundaries is not exclusively the preserve of what is ordinarily thought of as religion, she defines "extraordinary" religion as about crossing boundaries into "other" worlds (cf. James's "unseen order"), e.g., heaven, while "ordinary" religion is about living within boundaries, being part of the group; her "ordinary" religion also includes everyday moral values and virtues. The Currier & Ives engraving of the ladder of fortune that Albanese includes on page 8 of her book is a suggestive example: practical everyday virtues like punctuality, courage and temperance, supported by morality and honesty, lead to the fruits of riches, influence, and the favor of God. In other words, action in this (ordinary) world can influence relations with other world, i.e., the limit between ordinary religion and extraordinary is sometimes blurred.
The title of Albanese's book, America: Religions & Religion, calls attention to another important facet of religion in the US: American religion is characterized simultaneously what she calls "oneness" and by multiplicity ("manyness"). Protestantism plays a significant role in both: Protestantism has, from the early colonial period, been the dominant form of Christianity in what is now the US, and for generations Protestant values provided the central moral and social rules of everyday life. This is what Albanese calls "public Protestantism". Furthermore, as Will Herberg noted in the mid-1950s**, even though Americans practice many different religions, they are united by the conviction that religion is a "good thing". [Read more about these concepts here]
By its nature, however, Protestantism tends to produce multiplicity: one of the characteristics common to the vast majority of Protestant faiths is insistence on the importance of the relation of the individual to God, through the mediation of the sacred text, the Bible; ecclesiastical organizations and structures may be useful to the individual, but are not, as they are in Roman Catholic doctrine, a necessary intermediary between the individual and God. It follows that doctrine, in the sense of interpetation of the sacred text, is to a large extent a matter of individual choice. Religious groups form as individuals who share interpretations join together, but there is no ecclesiastical hierarchy to officialize a common Protestant doctrine, and individuals who disagree with their church's interpretations and doctrines may well leave it and form a new church. As such schisms multiply, they lead to an expanding number of church organizations. Other factors have also contributed to the growth in the number of religious groups in the second half of the twentieth century, including the legal and constitutional environment [the overlap of religion and education can be observed here: see some of the recent decisions by the Supreme Court on the issue of "establishment"] as well as immigration from countries previously held at a distance. The upshot is that an astounding number of religions and religious groups exist in the US**, and that most Americans agree that religion plays an important role in society, and that Protestantism [one is tempted to say "Protestantisms"] has a privileged status, even though no one religion, including Protestantism, has any official status.
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* James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. 1902.
This book is regarded as one of the major philosophical discussions of religion; it iis available as an electronic text from Gutenberg, and Michael E. Nielsen, Ph.D., of the Department of Psychology at Georgia Southern University has a large web-site devoted to it here. [back to text].
** Herberg, Will. Protestant, Catholic, Jew; an Essay in American Religious Sociology. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday. 1955. Cf. also: "From the very beginning the American Way of Life was shaped by the contours of American Protestantism; it may, indeed, best be understood as a kind of secularized Puritanism, a Puritanism without transcendence, without sense of sin or judgment. The Puritan's vision of a new "Promised Land" in the wilderness of the New World has become, as we have suggested, the American's deep sense of the newness and uniqueness of things in the Western Hemisphere. The Puritan's sense of vocation and "inner-worldly asceticism" can still be detected in the American's gospel of action and service, and his consciousness of high responsibility before God in the American's idealism. The Puritan's abiding awareness of the ambiguity of all human motivations and his insight into the corruptions of inordinate power have left their mark not only on the basic structure of our constitutional system but also on the entire social philosophy of the American people. Nor have other strands of early American Protestantism been without their effect. There can be little doubt that Pietism co-operated with frontier revivalism in breaking down the earlier concern with dogma and doctrine, so that the slogan, "deeds, not creeds," soon became the hallmark both of American religion and of the American Way of Life. These are but aspects of an influence that is often easier to see than to define." [back to text].
** "Recent editions of J. Gordon Melton's Encyclopedia of American Religions lists some 2,300 religious groups active in the United States; most of them either have at least 2,000 members or operate in multiple, widely separated geographic locations to qualify for inclusion." Timothy Miller, "Religious Movements in the United States: An Informal Introduction" [emphasis added]. This essay and a number of other equally interesting ones can be found on the Religious Movements site at the University of Virginia here. [back to text]