ReligionandSocietyinAmerica.pptVIP

Religion and Society in America The Emergence of Modern American Religious Life – Part 1 Week 7 – Lecture 1 The Emergence of Modern American Religious Life – Part 1 Everyday Life in America Changes within the Benevolent Empire Divisions from within Protestant America A Preview of External Threats to Protestant America Everyday Life in America “A strange formlessness marks the half-century which follows the Civil War. The term “postbellum America” lacks the specificity of “antebellum America.” One explanation for the difficulty is that evangelicalism was no longer calling the tune—or more accurately, that fewer people were heeding the call.” Sydney Ahlstrom - A Religious History of the American People Everyday Life in America Historians difficulty in defining terminology for era is reflective of the tremendous changes taking place The “postbellum” 1860 – 1900 Reconstruction: 1865 – 1870, 76, 77 The Gilded Age: 1870 – 1900 Victorian America: 1850s – 1890s The New South: 1877 – 1930s The Progressive Era: 1889 – 1920 The Age of Populism: 1890 - ? Everyday Life in America – “The Gilded Age” (1865 – 1900) The population of the US reaches 39,818,449 in 1870, a 36% increase in numbers since the last census of 1860. During the next three decades, this rate of growth or the percentage of increase over the previous census would fall no lower than 25%. By the opening of the next century, America’s population would reach 79,994,575. The number of Americans living in cities reached nearly 50 percent. Immigrants, mostly from southern, central, and eastern Europe arrive by the millions. Everyday Life in America – “The Gilded Age” (1865 – 1900) The unequal impact of industrialism underlay the emergence of a variety of new social movements. In rapid succession, white workers embarked upon a series of organizing drives: the Knights of Labor in the late 1870s, the American Federation of Labor during the 1890s, the Socialist Party of America in the early 1900s, and the In