Religion in Present America

After doing a little research about curretn day religion, I learned that religion plays a much more important role than I would have thought.  I learend many interesting facts: some that backup my knowledge of religion, and some that present new material.  Although I previously knew that Christianity is the biggest religion in the U.S., I didn't know which sects are bigger.  I learned that teh Evangelical sect has the largest percent of the U.S. population, totaling in at 26.3%.  Catholicism comes in second with 23.9% of the U.S.  And protestantism is third with 18.1%.  Although only three sects of Christianity, these three cover just over 2/3 of the population.  Many people from the Evangelical sect come from the midwest, while many people from the Ctholic sect come from the northeast.

Coming from a family who has grown and takes pride in being Jewish, I found it interesting that there are really a very little amount in the U.S.  The most heavily concentrated places with Jews are in New York, New Jersey and Florida.  In addition, Maryland has the fourth highest percent in the U.S.  44 other states, didn't even have .1% of the population as Jewish.

One more interesting fact that I learned is that there are many people that are unaffiliated, or atheist.  Alsmost throughout the entire U.S., the percent of unaffiliated people is distributed evenly.  It is interesting to see that many people don't have religous views.

Jefferson and Hamilton

I agree with the statement “We [contemporary America] worship Jefferson, but we have become Hamilton’s America”.  Hamilton and Jefferson, two people with loads of importance during the late 1700’s and the early 19^th century, are crucial to America’s past history.  The two men set the foundation of what has now became of the United States.  Both men had some ideas and theories that they agreed on, but there were a large amount of ideas that only one of the two men agreed to.  One prominent theme that both men shared was their hatred towards one another.  This, is very important to know in order to fully understand what the statement means.

            “We [contemporary America] worship Jefferson”.  This part of the statement says that we, the United States, praise and admire Jefferson.  We like Jefferson for many reasons.  First, Jefferson is the author of the Declaration of Independence. I know that this can be said in many instances, but without him, we would truly be different then we are today.  He made us into what we currently are.  This is the most significant reason that contemporary America worships Jefferson.  Another reason why some people worship Jefferson is because of his firm beliefs in agriculture.  Many people are starting to learn the effects of eating produce that is infected with pesticides and other hormones.  They are switching back to local farming and eating fresh food.  These two reasons, and a variety of others, are why we worship Jefferson.

 

“But we have become Hamilton’s America”.  This second half of the statement simply says that although we praise Jefferson, we abide and follow the rules of Hamilton.  Alexander Hamilton was man with self confidence.  He was proud of whom he was, and he has a strong passion in the work that he did.  Although his self confidence could be a positive thing and helped him accomplish some of his goals, it was usually a quality that ended up hurting him.  Hamilton would be conveyed as cocky or arrogant.  This would lead to many people disliking him and not respecting him. This is the reason why we do not worship Hamilton.  Although Hamilton may have been an arrogant man, he did come up with many good and interesting ideas.  Some of his good ideas are a central banking system and manufacturing.  This is why we have become Hamilton’s America.

 

So overall, we worship Jefferson.  He was a very smart man with good intentions on truly helping the United States develop into a unified country.  It wasn’t that his ideas and ways were bad, it just was that Hamilton’s ideas and ways were far superior. And this is why we are Hamilton’s America.