State and Church

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 364.

TEXT 3

What do you think?

Discussion.

· are the major differences between religious life in the US and your own country?

· is at the center of religious life in the US: the church or the individual?

· is America now living through a period of religion revival?

Looking at religion in the U.S., we are faced with a typically American contradiction. From its very beginnings as a nation, Americans have been extremely careful to separate church and state, religion and government.

The Constitution, specifically the First Amendment, forbids the government to give special favors to any religion or to hinder the free practice of any religion. As a result, there are no church taxes in the United States, nor is there an official state church or a state-supported religion.

There are no legal or official religious holidays. Christmas, for example, is an important religious holiday for Christians. However, Congress cannot proclaim it, or any other religious observance, to be an official or legal holiday. To do so would violate the Constitution.

There are no political parties in the United States that have "Christian" in their names.

There is no longer even the assumption that America is, or should be, "a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant" (WASP) nation.

Yet, surveys show that religion continues to be quite important to many Americans, especially when compared with people in other countries.