Читать книгу American Democracy in Context - Joseph A. Pika - Страница 37

Americans are unusually religious. In one study, 49 percent of Americans—a far greater percentage than in any other prosperous country in the world—indicated that God is very important in their lives. Twenty-two percent of Australians responded in kind, but very few did from Japan, Germany, Sweden, or other prosperous countries (see Figure 6.5).¹⁸

Americans are more religious than citizens of any other prosperous nation. Many regularly attend services at temples and churches, like these members of Potter’s House Church in Dallas.

Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times / Getty Images

Moral values rooted in religion have figured strongly throughout U.S. history, influencing both conservatives and liberals. For example, Christian denominations were partially responsible for the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement. Many churches also supported a powerful temperance movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; this movement led ultimately to a constitutional amendment banning the sale of alcoholic beverages (the Eighteenth Amendment, which was passed in 1920, before being repealed in 1933). The civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s drew strong support from both African American and white churches. Today, conflicts over abortion, same-sex marriage, proposals to ban pornography, and the teaching of creationism in public schools have strong moral/religious roots.