Religion and politics in the United States

The majority of Americans identify themselves as Christians (65% as of 2019), while non-Christian religions (including Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and others) collectively make up about 6% of the adult population.

[12] Politicians frequently discuss their religion when campaigning, and many churches and religious figures are highly politically active.

While fundamentalist religious people are less likely to have information collected about who they will vote for, they "tend to engage mainstream political activity at higher rates than the average American".

He argued that in effect there is an American civil religion which is a nonsectarian faith with sacred symbols drawn from national history.

Scholars have portrayed it as a cohesive force, a common set of values that foster social and cultural integration.

Bellah's 1967 article analyzes the inaugural speech of John F. Kennedy: "Considering the separation of church and state, how is a president justified in using the word 'God' at all?

Religious tensions were major issues in the presidential elections of 1928 when the Democrats nominated Al Smith, a Catholic who was defeated.

Catholics formed a core part of the New Deal Coalition, with overlapping memberships in the Church, labor unions, and big city machines, and the working class, all of which promoted liberal policy positions in domestic affairs and anti-communism during the Cold War.

With the decline of unions and big city machines, and with upward mobility into the middle classes, Catholics have drifted away from liberalism and toward conservatism on economic issues (such as taxes).

On social issues the Catholic Church takes strong positions against legal abortion and same-sex marriage and has formed coalitions with Protestant evangelicals to oppose and inspire political resistance to such policies in several Western countries.

a rapid, steep decline in factory wages caused by the sudden influx of very large numbers of Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Famine, 3.)

It was due to this fear that slavery would destroy the economic prospects of white working families after the Party enrolled massive numbers of voters in the wake of the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854.

The party is remembered for anti-Catholicism, an attitude that resulted not only from the fact that America was an almost entirely Protestant country confronted for the first time by a wave of Catholic immigration.

In sharp contrast, liturgical groups, especially the Catholics, Episcopalians, and German Lutherans, looked to the Democratic Party for protection from pietistic moralism, especially prohibition.

[41] Cultural issues, especially prohibition and foreign language schools, became important because of the sharp religious divisions in the electorate.

Liturgical churches constituted over a quarter of the vote and wanted the government to stay out of personal morality issues.

From the onset of significant immigration in the 1840s, the Church in the United States was predominantly urban, with both its leaders and congregants usually of the laboring classes.

Over the course of the second half of the nineteenth century, nativism, anti-Catholicism, and anti-unionism coalesced in Republican politics, and Catholics gravitated toward unions and the Democratic Party.

The matter was resolved in 1887 when Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore interceded in Rome against a proposed condemnation of the Knights.

This was the context in which Pope Leo XIII wrote an encyclical letter that articulated the teaching of the Church with a view to the "new things" of the modern world.

At the same time, he reiterated the Church's defense of private property, condemned socialism, and emphasized the need for Catholics to form and join unions that were not compromised by secular and revolutionary ideologies.

[43] Many of the latter came to America with experience in the socialist, anarchist and communist movements as well as the Labor Bund, emanating from Eastern Europe.

Over the past century, Jews in Europe and the Americas have traditionally tended towards the political left, and played key roles in the birth of the labor movement as well as socialism.

Every major American city has its local "Jewish Federation", and many have sophisticated community centers and provide services, mainly health care-related.

J Street was set up in 2008 to advocate for American diplomatic leadership to achieve a two-state solution and a broader regional, comprehensive peace.