Introduction
In her America: Religions and Religion, Catherine Albanese proposes two main axes for understanding religion in the United States: she differentiates on the one hand between "ordinary" and "extraordinary" religion, and on the other she argues that American religion is characterized simultaneously by "oneness" and "manyness".
Albanese views religion generally as having to do with borders and limits between the natural, visible, tangible world and the supernatural, invisible world. What she calls ordinary religion includes those rules of behavior that have to do with living within the limits of this world, for example, within a given community. Relations between members of the community are governed by rules that
Extraordinary religion has to do with those aspects of life that have to do with relations with the other world, outside of everyday experience.
Catherine Albanese finds what she calls "oneness" in a number of features of American religion: 1) what she calls "public Protestantism", 2) what is often referred to as the "civil religion", and 3) a broad cultural religion, as well as 4) a national culture [Albanese, p 395]. 1, 2 and 3 are tied to the idea of millenialism, that is, the idea of the return of Christ and the establishment of his reign on earth.
In Albanese's formulation, public Protestantism begins in history: from the colonial period until well into the twentieth century, Protestants (and in fact, the variety of Protestants called Calvinists) represented a very large majority of the population, which made of Protestantism the dominant, though not the sole, religion in North America. That dominance was reinforced by educational practices: the Puritans opened both schools and colleges from the seventeenth century; [Protestant translations of] the Bible or simplified versions of it were often used as primers (i.e., first books for learning to read), which meant putting into practice in public schools one of the precepts of Protestantism, that the individual has direct contact with God through the sacred text.
Another aspect of oneness comes from one of the major theological debates in Protestantism: the interpretation of the Book of Revelations, the last book of the Bible, which prophesies that the end of the world as we know it and the Apocalypse will be preceded by a thousand years (a millennium) of the rule of Christ and those who have accepted him. Some believers (premillennialists) expect that Christ will come before the millennium, others (postmillennialists) that Christ will come after the millennium. Their differences lead to differences in interpreting events in this world, but they share the expectation that, sooner or later, an end to this world is coming, to be followed by a radically new order, in which the moral uncertainties of everyday life will be replaced by a completely unambiguous situation that can for the moment only be imagined and hoped for. Various Christian groups place varying degrees of importance on this issue, but in one way or another, millennialism is a factor of unity and oneness, providing a common link between groups as different as Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons.
Millennialism is also a component of what is often called "civil religion":
Manyness is much easier to understand than oneness. Albanese points out a number of factors that contribute to manyness: even before European colonization, native Americans were examples of religious pluralism; Europeans brought with them, at a minimum, the three historically linked religions that Herberg points out (Will Herberg, one of the classic writers on American religious sociology, classified Americans into three not-quite hermetic categories: Protestant, Catholic and Jewish.), and Protestantism itself is a source of constant ramification and evolution. Furthermore, starting especially in the nineteenth century, new religions grew up in the United States, creating additional multiplicity. Other factors of American life, such as racial segregation and industrialization, have also generated manyness.