African American Beliefs

The puritans were an English group of reformed protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who wanted to purify the Church of England from its Catholic practices. Puritanism believed “that it was necessary to be in a covenant relationship with God in order to redeem one from one’s sinful condition, that God had chosen to reveal salvation through preaching, and that the Holy Spirit was the energizing instrument of salvation” (Encyclopedia Britannica). They helped shape the American Dream by trying to make everything and everyone be the same. This need to purify the English Church pushed people to branch off and create different movements as a repercussion (Encyclopedia Britannica). I am not a very religious person but I believe that everyone
The realist depiction in art of contemporary life drawed attention to everyday conditions. Frederick Douglass’s autobiography played a big part of exposing the truth behind one of America’s darkest times and how it impacted millions of people (narrative). This movement opened the eyes of millions of people didn’t understand how it felt to be broken mind, body and spirit. But African Americans didn’t have to be a slave to understand the impact of something as little as someone’s skin color. De Bois never experienced how life was like as a slave but he lived through the time that followed a time period that affected his race greatly (narrative). This helped shape the American Dream by exposing that not everything is as it seems and that freedom of the body is just as important as freedom of the mind. I was very interested in reading about Douglass’s journey from slavery to a “free man” and the truth about how bad slavery really was in America. I believe that this was the most impactful movements out of all the ones we
Modernism was a philosophical movement that arose from wide-scale and far reaching transformations in western society. This helped the American Dream by opening a door into a world where everyone pretended that their lives were wonderful and perfect. Many Fitzgerald's works illustrated this couple that looked perfect and put together on the outside but behind close doors, they were a mess and falling apart (his biography). Hemingway’s “A Clean Well-Lighted Place” does a great job of explaining that everything is not what it seems and something may look one way but on the inside (“A Clean Well-Lighted Place”). This is an important movement because it showed that humans are all the same when you look past the outside and we all deal with similar