SOCIAL CLASS AND RELIGION

• INTRODUCTION • Social class and

Educational Equality
 Social class and Educational Equality
• In chapter 4. will talk about:

• Social class is a powerful variable in U.S. • In chapter 5 will see the description of

Society despite entrenched beliefs about religious diversity within the united

individual opportunity in the u.S

states and some of its educational
• Students who attend affluent middle- and
implications.
upper-class schools have more resources,

better teachers, and a better educational • Religion in American Life

opportunities than other students from the • The spread of evangelical Protestantism
lower, middle and upper classes attend

different kinds of schools and have teachers

who have different beliefs and expectations

about their academic achievement. Also,

causes of cultural change.

 CAUSES OF CULTURAL CHANGES

Members of a society are confronted by customs that differ from those which they have learned to

accept. They adopt some of the new customs, reject others, and practice modified versions of others.

(Cultural eclecticism).


New practices and customs are likely to be more readily adopted under two conditions: a) if they

represent what is viewed as socially desirable and useful, b) if they don’t clash with re-existed and

still valued customs and practices.


Changes in culture are always super imposed on existing culture especially during cultural contact


The crisis tends to accelerate cultural changes. The changes are accepted once due the crisis, they

tend to persist.

•Cultural change leads to chain reaction; the incorporation of change

becomes defined as a social necessity.

 CHRISTIAN NATION OR PLURALISTIC CULTURE: RELIGION IN AMERICAN LIFE

Perception 1 Perception 2

Religious diversity flourishes in the united

The United States is a Christian
nation founded on biblical principles
still informing the laws under which
we live. Other religious communities
are tolerated, but Christianity in its
States with no one group of belief
system dominating. Thanks to the
principle of separation of church and
state, religious freedom prevails in the
united states and Americans are free

many forms is the dominant religious to believe whatever they want and
to worship however they want.
influence in common life.
 EUROPEANS PLANT CHRISTIANITY IN NORTH AMERICA
European settlement in the thirteen British colonies that

became the United States in 1776 had a history of less

than 175 years. Most who came from England shared

a religious consciousness shaped by protestant

Christianity.

In southern areas such as Virginia although some

variations of belief existed, colonial arrangements

included legal establishment of the Church of England.

It meant that public tax money supported Church of

England parishes and their clergy and that all who lived

there were theoretically expected to be part of a parish..

.
ROGER WILLIAMS
Moved to Rhode Island , Religious tolerance
 EARLY SIGNS OF DIVERSITY
• Patterns of immigration generated more diversity in the Eng From the arrival of the first slave ships

in 1619, an African tribal substratum made southern Christian life diverse because many

congregations in time became biracial.

• Ethnicity contributed to other manifestations of diversity: the Dutch settled in New York (New

Netherlands) with Calvinistic reformed faith, Scandinavian immigrants brought Lutheran Tradition,

German immigrations coming to Pennsylvania carried some variants of protestant Christianity ,

Jewish immigrants, they established synagogues in places as Charleston, south Carolina, Georgia ,

new York, etc.

• Scots- Irish immigrants planted their brand of Presbyterianism, then Methodism, by the middle of the

18th century.
 COMMON THEMES
JHON CALVIN Salvation concept
• Reformer who tended to attribute all

to the work of God, while Methodist

were convinced that people had to

accept God’s salvation of their own

free will. For many, the work of

God in salvation was a mystery.

 
 THE SPREAD OF EVANGELICAL PROTESTANTISM

DEVELOPMENT
MARTIN LUTHER
• Evangelical Protestantism became the

dominant style of Christianity in the United

States by the time of the civil war. Even the

arrival of thousands of Roman Catholics

from Ireland in the 1830s and 1840s did not

diminish that influence. Protestants were

generally the ones who ran the developing

businesses and industries and the ones

elected to political office. This protestant

Christian character became deeply into

American culture as public education began

 GOD
BLESS YOU!!!!!!