“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish – where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source – where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials – and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.”
– John F. Kennedy, addressing the issue of his Catholicism in his run for president
“… religious adherence in America has actually I increased significantly since the colonial period. The common stereotype that in colonial times virtually everyone belonged to a church turns out to be false. And the correlative stereotype that in the modern world religion is withering away is likewise false. In terms of adherents, churches are doing very well today.
“… the established churches tended to be the first to drift into theological liberalism. The wealthier the church, the more likely its clergy were to enjoy social status and formal academic training and thus also the more likely to welcome the liberalism emerging from European universities at the time.
“… It is a common assumption that, in order to survive, churches must accommodate to the age. But in fact, the opposite is true: In every historical period, the religious groups that grow most rapidly are those that set believers at odds with the surrounding culture. As a general principle, the higher a group’s tension with mainstream society, the higher its growth rate.
“… America remains the most religious of industrialized nations. “In 1790 something like only 10 percent of Americans professed membership in a Christian church,” writes Noll, “but by the time of the Civil War [1861], the proportion had multiplied several times.”
