UNITED NORWEGIAN LUTHERAN CHURCH. See Lutherans, III., 6, § 2.
UNITED ORIGINAL SECESSION CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. See Presbyterians, I., 6.
UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF NORTH AMERICA. See Presbyterians, VIII., 6.
UNITED SOCIETIES IN SCOTLAND. See Purves, James.
I. Historical Review: The religious history of North America opens with the landing of Columbus (1492), whose first act was to raise the 1 banner of the cross and dedicate the new world to Christ and the Church. For more than 300 years, under the devoted lead of Spanish and French monks, the effort to convert the native Indians to the Roman Catholic faith continued, often with brilliant success, though frequently marred by religious intolerance and cruelty peculiar to the spirit of the age (see Indians of North America, Missions to the; Home Missions; and Roman Catholics). The Protestant era in America begins with the settlement of Virginia in 1607, followed in 1620 by the landing of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts Bay. From then on, America was, on an immensely larger scale, what Geneva was under Calvin, a refuge for persecuted Protestants of all lands. Puritans, Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists, Huguenots, Salzburg Lutherans, Moravians, Lutherans, and Reformed refugees from the Palatinate, Mennonites, and others, emigrated thither in order to find a quiet place to practise their religion, and showed in their new home predominantly a religious earnestness and a tolerance which sprang not from indifferentism, but from bitter experience of unrighteous persecution. English Roman Catholics, also, who then were subjected to severe penalties in England, found in Maryland an asylum. These .were joined by the Dutch Reformed in New York, and the English Episcopalians in Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia, who, however, had not come for conscience' sake. Thus the American colonies were made up of almost all branches of European Christianity, mostly Protestants, with a small number of Roman Catholics. Of course these churches were all weak; but they were strong enough to produce a people able to defend themselves against the demands of Great Britain, and under the leadership of George Washington, by the aid of France, to carry on a successful war of seven years' duration, which issued in their complete independence of the British crown.
With the peace of 1783, or even with the declaration of independence in 1776, the colonial period of the country closed. The nation was 2 then composed of thirteen colonies, loosely bound together, and numbering scarcely three million inhabitants. The representatives of the free people, assembled in Philadelphia in 1787, drew up a constitution, modeled, indeed, upon that of England, but further developed upon its principles. A sharp
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Up to 1840 the total immigration, from all sources, had not exceeded half a million. Then began the flood. During the next 25
3. The years, the United States receivedProblem of 6,000,000 foreigners, mostly from IreImmigra- land and Germany.- Between 1865 tion. and 1885 more than 7,000,000 were added to the foreign population. Their quality had not improved. The Irish and German tides were ebbing, while those of southern and eastern Europe were both increasing and threatening. One hundred and sixty American cities, each with a population of more than 25,000 and an aggregate population of 20,000,000, show 53.7 per cent, or more than one-half, foreign-born or of foreign parentage. In this sense it is true, as sometimes declared, that American cities are more foreign than American; all of which constitutes a serious religious problem. Yet hand in hand with the increase in the number of states and inhabitants go industry, wealth, and general culture. The United States has not had to struggle through 2,000 years, out of barbarism to civilization, as the countries of the old world have done. It fell heir to their progress, but with it have come the old world's evils. And the new world has also its troubles, arising from haste after wealth, from reckless speculation, and those misunderstandings between capital and labor which issue sometimes in blood. It is almost incredible how quickly the chaotic confusion of so many different peoples thrown together under one general government is reduced to order, how thoroughly the new dwellers are assimilated in the body politic. Thus it has come about that the type of American civilization is Anglo-Saxon, and the speech English.
The enormous increase of population adds proportionally to the field of labor and to the member-
United Evangelical Church Qnited Statesship of the different churches. America is the land of church erection, of formation of congregations, and of every conceivable ecclesiastical and religious experiment, in which there are not missing the elements of fanaticism, hypocrisy, and humbug. It is the seed-plot of almost all branches of the Christian Church, and there is no check put upon their fullest development.
The religious life in the United States is in general like that of other lands; but it presents some peculiar features, which are stated in the following paragraphs.
II. Separation of Church and State: A distinction must be made between the general government and the individual states. The general government has
been from the beginning limited to pox. The litical affairs, and has nothing -to do
General with the internal arrangements of the Government several states, and especially with any-
and the thing relating to religion. The consti- Church. tution, adopted under Washington in1787, provides, "No religious tests shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States" (Art. vi. § 3). And even more emphatically speaks the first amendment, made by the first congress, 1789: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or of the rights of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." In this way there was secured, on the one hand, the separation of the Church from the government, and, on the other, the free, unhindered exercise of religion in every way which does not endanger the State or public morals. The above-quoted articles are not only a declaration of independence of federal control, they are also a declaration of the independence of the Church from the civil power. They did not originate in indifference to religion, but, on the contrary, in so great a respect that their framers would separate religion permanently from the defiling influence of politics, and guarantee to the whole people in a solemn manner religious along with civil liberty. The two institutions, Church and State, were not set opposite each other as foes, but side by side as the two different spheres of the social life, in the conviction that each should restrict its jurisdiction to its own immediate concerns, because the attempt of one to rule the other was sure to issue disastrously. The power of the State is consequently, in the United States, reduced to narrower limits than in Europe, where it has control over the Church. The American status of the Church differs from the hierarchical patronage of the State by the Church, from the imperial and papal patronage of the Church by the State, and also from the pre-Constantinian separation and persecution of the Church by the heathen State: hence the United States presents a new phase in the history of the relation of the two powers.
This separation between Church and State is not to be understood as a separation of the nation from. Christianity; for the State represents, in America, only the temporal interests of the people. The independent churches care for the religious and moral
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interests; and the people are religious and Christian as no other, and express their sentiments in different ways-by the voluntary support of
z. Effects their very. numerous churches and sects; upon by benevolent organizations of every Religious kind; by attendance upon church, and Life. regard for the ministry (who are sec ond to none in dignity and in fluence); by a respect for the Sabbath which is not equaled elsewhere, except in Scotland (see Sunday, Observance of); by constant zeal for home and foreign missions; by reverence for the Bible; by a steady stream of edifying books, tracts, and periodicals; and by public morals. Congress nominates chaplains, of different confessions nat urally, and opens every sitting with prayer. The President appoints chaplains for the army and navy. Fast-days have been frequently observed in particular emergencies (see Fast Day): thus in 1849, during the cholera; in 1865, on the assassina tion of President Lincoln; and in 1881, on the death of President Garfield. Thanksgiving Day (q.v.) is yearly celebrated in November in all the states, on the proclamation of the president and the concur rent action of the different governors. Indeed, re ligion has all the more hold upon the American char acter because it is free from political control. No one is forced to make a religious profession; that is a matter of personal conviction and voluntary action.As far as the individual states are concerned, Church and State are now separated; but this .has not been the case from the beginning. Nor is the separation the consequence of independence of England. In some colonies it existed long
3. Attitude prior to that event; so it was (at first) of Some in Maryland, founded in 1634 by the States. Roman Catholic Lord Baltimore; in Rhode Island, settled in 1636 by Baptists under Roger Williams (q.v.), and in Pennsylvania, which William Penn (q.v.) acquired in 1680 from the English crown in payment of a debt, making the region an asylum for his persecuted Quaker coreligionista and all other Christian brethren. Each of these three representatives of Christian toleration adopted it, not in consequence of vague philosophical theories, still less out of religious indifferentism, but because of bitter experience of intolerance and of practical necessity. And this toleration was limited to the different confessions of the Christian faith, and did not apply to infidels or blasphemers, who were excluded from civil rights. In the other and older colonies, Church and State were from the beginning closely connected. In Massachusetts and the other New England colonies, except Rhode Island, the Congregational form of Puritanism was the state religion; and civil rights, in imitation of Jewish theocratic principles, were dependent upon a certain religious adherence. Not only was the Roman Church excluded, but, until the close of the seventeenth century, all Protestants who could not accept the established creed were dealt with as strictly as the Pilgrim fathers had themselves been by the bishops of Old England. Massachusetts banished the Baptist Roger Williams and other Baptists, and the followers of the Antinomian Anne
Hutchinson (see Antinomianism and Antinomian Controversies, II., 2); the Quakers were tried, and condemned to. public scourging, ear-slitting, none-boring, and even (by a vote of twelve to eleven in the Boston Legislature) to the gallows (see Friends, Society of, I., § 3). It should be remarked, however, that the Quakers in New England between 1658 and 1660 had acted fanatically. They had publicly denounced, in the churches and upon the streets, the civil and spiritual authorities. They thus provoked persecution and martyrdom by their impetuous zeal. Four such fanatics (one a woman), who had already been banished as Antinomiatla, obstinately rushed into martyrdom, and were hanged in 1660. But the people were opposed even then to such treatment; and the authorities were obliged to defend their action in a published statement, in which they justified themselves by quotations from the Old Testament and by the English laws against the Roman Catholic Church. The Quakers, thus driven out, found a retreat in Rhode Island until the establishment of Pennsylvania. Gradually the bond between Church and State was in New England relaxed; but in Connecticut it was first broken in 1816, while in Massachusetts the last traces remained until 1833. In Virginia and other southern colonies the Church of England was the State Church, and all other denominations felt the pressure of the. English laws against dissenters. Nevertheless, the latter increased, especially the Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, and, later, the Methodists; and it was from them that the first impulse in Virginia proceeded to separate Church and State. Even before the declaration of independence, the Presbyterians and Baptists presented petitions to the colonial legislature to that intent. The measure found a defender in Thomas Jefferson, who in the interest of free-thinking, not out of any sympathy with the dissenters or out of love for Christianity, favored putting faith and unfaith upon the same political level. Through the exertions of the dissenters, the liberal Episcopalians, and the unbelieving Jefferson, the principle of separation between Church and State was, in Dec., 1776, and, more completely, in 1779, 1785, and the following decade, carried through the Virginia legislature. See Liberty, Religious.
Soon after the close of the War of Independence (1783), and the adoption of the national constitution by the several states, the connection between Church and State in Maryland, New York, and South Carolina, and the other colonies where the English Episcopal Church was the predominant State Church, was broken, and complete religious freedom proclaimed. Last of all, and only very gradually, did the New England states, where Puritanism was deeply rooted in the mass of the people, adopt the new order of things. Now the principle of entire separation is universally operative. Only among the Mormons (q.v.) in Utah are Church and State combined. But the Mormons are powerless to prevent other sects coming among them; more than 150 churches other than Mormon are found in the state, twenty-five of them in Salt Lake City.
III. Voluntary System of Church Support: There is in the United States no obligatory baptism or
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confirmation. There are, on the contrary, thousands of grown persons who have not been baptized; but there are comparatively few who hold themselves entirely aloof from all church attendance and from all contributions for religious purposes. And the churches independent of State control are more particular as to the conduct and beliefs of their members than State churches are; so that the churches of America are more faithful to their avowed principles than the mother churches in Europe. The different churches are, almost without exception, dependent entirely upon voluntary subscriptions and contributions. The most prominent exceptions are Trinity Church (Episcopalian) and the Collegiate Church (Reformed Dutch), both in New York City, which have inherited property from the colonial period. But, speaking generally, the churches look to their membership for the means to carry on their work and for support of their ministers. The theological seminaries are the foundations of churches or individuals. The minister's salary is paid by the pewrents or collections. Voluntary payments support Bible, tract, and other societies, and send out colporteurs and missionaries in city and country. It is considered a general duty and privilege to support religion as a necessary and useful element of society. The average salary of ministers in the United States is about $800; of theological professors, $1,500. A few ministers in large cities receive from $5,000 to $15,000. The voluntary system has its drawbacks, especially in the new congregations formed of immigrants who are accustomed to the European system of State support. But, on the other hand, it promotes liberality and individual enterprise; and the result is a yearly increase in churches, ministers, and ecclesiastical organizations of all sorts, while the old are maintained with vigor. On the average, it is said, each minister serves a thousand souls; but, of course, there is great disproportion. This free, self-regulated, and self-supported Christianity and church existence is one of the most characteristic features, and one of the greatest glories, of the United States, and constitutes a new leaf in church history; but it has its antecedents in the first three centuries and in the history of dissenters and free churches in Europe.
IV. Leading Denominations: For denominational history and statistics see the articles on the denominations in this work. Almost all American denominations are of European origin; but those which in Europe are divided by geographical and political boundaries are in the United States found thrown together. In England there are as many sects as in the United States; but all Christians outside the Church of England are classed together as dissenters. In America, there being no State Church, there can be no dissenters. Churches of many denominations are found in all the large cities. Thus in the city of New York, which has a population of 4,766,883, there are 1,600 congregations, of different nationalities and creeds, each of which has its church or regular place of meeting. This is one church to 2,090 of the population. Twenty-five years ago the ratio was one church to 2,413.
The American denominations may be divided into three groups: (1) the Evangelical churches;
'United Statesi.e., those which stand upon the principles of the' Reformation theology, and accept the Bible as the sole guide of faith and life, and the confessions of the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries as a rule of public teaching. They embrace the great majority of the Christian population, and exert the strongest influence upon society. The Protestant Episcopal Church is the oldest, dating from 160?, the year of the settlement of , Virginia; next come the Congregationalists, from the landing of the Pilgrims (1620); then the Reformed (Dutch), from 1628, the year of the formation of the first congregation in New York City. The first prominent Baptist in America was Roger Williams (q.v.), the founder of Rhode Island, 3636. The Quakers date from 1680; and the Methodists, from 1766. The German churches, in their organized state, date from the middle of the last century. Among them the Lutheran Church is by far the largest and most influential; then come the German Reformed, the Evangelical United, and the Moravians. A considerable number of Germans belong to the different branches of the Methodist Church, which also sends missionaries to Germany. _ (2) The Roman Catholic Church was a century ago inconsiderable, but, through the enormous immigration, now outnumbers any other single denomination. Yet it does not keep pace with the Roman Catholic migration, which is reported to form more than one-half of the fatal immigration to the United States. The emigration from Ireland is predominantly, that from Germany largely, and that from southern Europe almost exclusively Roman Catholic. (3) A third class consists of those denominations which reject the doctrines of the ecumenical creeds and the confessions of the Reformation churches, and strike out in new paths. Among these are the Unitarians, whose headquarters are in Boston and Cambridge, who are distinguished by high literary and social culture and active philanthropy; the Universalists, who teach as one of the three articles of their creed the ultimate restoration of all men to holiness and happiness; and the Swedenborgians, who believe in the divine mission of the great Swedish seer, and accept his revelations of the spirit-world.
V. Theological Education: This differs with the different denominations. It is carried on in Theological Seminaries (q.v.), endowed and supported by free gifts. Each denomination of importance has one or more, and in all there are 150. The faculties number from one to seventeen professors, and the number of students.ranges from four to more than 300. The libraries (see Theological Libraries) comprise from a few hundred to over 100,000 volumes. The course of instruction lasts three or four years. Greater stress is laid upon practical gifts and moral and .religious character than upon the ministerial training-schools of State churches.
VL Development: Something of the growth of American religious sentiment under the voluntary system may be seen in the fact that, while in the year 1800 Evangelical church-membership embraced one in fourteen of the-population, in the year 1909 it included one in four. Evangelical communicants
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One of the most significant developments of applied Christianity is seen in the disposition of the churches to ally themselves with the struggles of the working classes against the tyranny of capital. For many years, and unconsciously on their part, the churches had allowed barriers to grow up between themselves and the laboring masses. Not that sympathy was wanting, but that it seemed to lack the means of adequate expression. It is today one of the most hopeful signs of the times that the leading ecclesiastical bodies of the United States, under a quickened sense of Christian brotherhood, not only pass resolutions of sympathy with the working classes, but invite the leaders of labor to plead their cause before the great national councils and conferences of these bodies, and in several instances employ secretaries of labor to cooperate with their working brethren for the betterment of their condition.
VII. Statistics: The figures in the following tables have been compiled chiefly from the year-book
| Denominations. | Ministers. | Churches. | Members. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adventists (7 bodies) | 1,198 | 2,676 | 94, 441 |
| Armenian Church | 73 | 73 | 19,889 |
| Bahais | . . . | 24 | 1,280 |
| Baptist. (14 bodies) | 41,390 | 56,750 | 5,620,498 |
| Brethren (Dunkers, 4 bodies) | 3,477 | 1,155 | 120,597 |
| Brethren (Plymouth, 4 bodies) | . . . | 403 | 10,566 |
| Brethren (River, 3 bodies) | 216 | 111 | 4,569 |
| Buddhists (2 bodies) | 15 | 74 | 3,165 |
| Catholic Apostolic (2 bodies) | 33 | 24 | 4,927 |
| Christadelphians | . . . | 70 | 1,412 |
| Christian Catholic Church in  Zion—Dowie |
35 | 17 | 5,865 |
| Christian Israelite Church | . . . | 5 | 78 |
| Christian Union | 295 | 217 | 13,905 |
| Christians (Christian Connection) | 1,011 | 1,379 | 110,117 |
| Church of Christ Scientist | 2,208 | 1,104 | 114,089 |
| Church of God and Saints of  Christ (colored) |
75 | 48 | 1,823 |
| Churches of God, General Eldership | 509 | 595 | 41,475 |
| Churches of the Living God  (colored) (3 bodies) |
101 | 68 | 4,276 |
| Church of the New Jerusalem (2 bodies) | 132 | 152 | 9,314 |
| Communistic Societies (2 bodies) | . . . | 22 | 2,272 |
| Congregationalists | 6,033 | 6,033 | 735,563 |
| Disciples of Christ (2 bodies) | 8,163 | 12,590 | 1,417,462 |
| Eastern Orthodox Churches  (Greek, Russian, Servian, Syrian,  Rumanian, Bulgarian, 6 bodies) |
116 | 419 | 132,006 |
| Evangelical Bodies (2) | 1,715 | 2,803 | 213,121 |
| Evangelistic Associations (14 bodies) | 356 | 182 | 10,842 |
| Free Christian Zion Church of  Christ (colored) |
20 | 15 | 1,835 |
| Friends (4 bodies) | 1,479 | 1,147 | 113,772 |
| German Evangelical Protestant  (2 bodies) |
59 | 66 | 34,704 |
| German Evangelical Synod | 1,024 | 1,314 | 236,647 |
| Independent Churches | . . . | 874 | 47,673 |
| International Apostolic Holiness Union | 178 | 74 | 2,774 |
| Jewish Congregations | 1,084 | 1,769 | . . . |
| Latter Day Saints (2 bodies) | 1,774 | 1,184 | 256,647 |
| Lutherans (23 bodies and  independent churches) |
8,738 | 13,936 | 2,273,691 |
| Mennonites (14 bodies) | 1,006 | 604 | 54,798 |
| Methodists (15 bodies) | 40,187 | 61,038 | 6,114,780 |
| Moravians (2 bodies) | 128 | 132 | 17,926 |
| Non-sectarian Churches of Bible Faith | 50 | 204 | 6,396 |
| Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene | 545 | 470 | 20,501 |
| Polish National Church | 24 | 24 | 15,473 |
| Presbyterians (12 bodies) | 13,492 | 16,570 | 1,940,835 |
| Protestant Episcopal Church | 5,174 | 7,897 | 928,202 |
| Reformed Bodies (4) | 2,106 | 2,654 | 451,282 |
| Reformed Catholic Church | 10 | 5 | 1,250 |
| Reformed Episcopal Church | 84 | 81 | 9,682 |
| Roman Catholic Church | 17,194 | 13,461 | 12,425,946 |
| Salvationists (3 bodies) | 3,391 | 785 | 25,538 |
| Schwenkfelders | 5 | 8 | 725 |
| Social Brethren | 15 | 17 | 1,262 |
| Society of Ethical Culture | . . . | 5 | 2,040 |
| Spiritualists | 185 | 455 | 35,056 |
| Swedish Evangelical (2 bodies) | 495 | 408 | 27,712 |
| Temple Society | 3 | 3 | 376 |
| Theosophical Societies (4 bodies) | . . . | 85 | 2,336 |
| Unitarians | 540 | 503 | 70,542 |
| United Brethren (2 bodies) | 2,500 | 4,478 | 310,815 |
| Universalists | 673 | 882 | 52,751 |
| Vedanta Society | . . . | 4 | 340 |
| Totals | 169,350 | 218,146 | 34,177,827 |
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It should be remembered that the total of membership represents solely the registered membership of the various religious organizations. It makes no account of Protestant children under about fifteen years of age, of Mormon children under eight years of age, of Roman Catholic children under nine years of age. It is exclusive of the entire Jewish
population and of the great number of persons identified with Protestant churches, as attendants on their services and contributing to their support, but who are net enrolled in their membership.
Bibliography: The articles in this work on the various denominations and religious agencies, and the literature under them; The American Church History Series, 13 vols., New York, 1893-97, especially vols. i. and siii.; The Stories of the Churches,. ib. 1904 sqq.; United States Census: Special Reports, Religious Bodies, 2 vols., Washington, D. C., 1910; R. Baird, Religion in the United States of America, Glasgow, 1844; L. F. Bittinger, German Religious Life in Colonial Times, Philadelphia, 1907; N. U. Wellington, Historic Churches of America, New York, 1907; M. I. J. Griffin, Catholics and the American Revolution, vol. i., Ridley Park, Pa., 1907; W.. H. Allison, Inaentory of Unpublished Material for American Religious History in Protestant Church Archives and Other Repositories, Washington, D. C., 1910; F. J. Zwierlein, Religion in New Netherland . . . 1B,f3-1684, New York, 1910; Susan A. Ranlett, Some Memory Days of the Church in America, Milwaukee, 1911.
1 1: The Period of Settlement.
2 2. Development Since 1776.
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