Why Is Religion Important In America

Religion in America has been important since the very first settlers crossed the Atlantic Ocean. While religion itself is obviously very important in society, it is the symbolic power of religion that truly helped make America into the democracy that it is today. Religion served as a symbol to the American people throughout history. The separation of church and state represented a break from the past. This divide of religion and government also enforced the idea that the power belonged to the people, opposed to a higher power being in control. Finally, the religious diversity has been symbolic of the greater diversity and acceptance in America.

The importance of religious freedom in America when it was first established was as a way cleaving American colonists’ past of religious persecution from their future with the new nation of the United States of America. Many colonists were either, or were descendants of, Protestants escaping the punishment that would be placed on them for defying the Church of England, the crown supported religion in Great Britain. By putting the idea of religious freedom in first the Declaration of Indepence,
The majority of the countries in the eastern hemisphere, England, France, and China, for example, used an ideology known as the divine right of kings. This essentially meant that the rulers had authority do to God giving to them, or allowing them to have it, due to worthiness or bloodline. God was the one who truly held the power in the country, according to this doctrine. In American, the power came from the people. There was no need for a state sponsor religion because the power of the president, or any elected official, came from the citizens of nation. God might have been viewed as needed in relation to morality, but it was unnecessary for him to be a symbol supporting the democratic