LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Religion: Native Americans
built 155 days ago
The evidence is controverted concerning precisely what the First Congress intended the two religion provisions to mean. At a minimum, the Establishment Clause prevented the newly created federal government from granting to any denomination the official privileges and status that the Anglican church had in England. On the other hand, clearly the clause was not intended to eliminate religious establishments then existing in several states. And the new federal government gave various supports to religion such as legislative prayers, presidential Thanksgiving proclamations, and religious missions to Native Americans.
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That growth is part of a national trend of college students studying religion more intensely. A report from the American Academy of Religion said the number of religion majors increased 26 percent from 1996 through 2000, and that total enrollment in religion classes rose 15 percent.
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No era of American history better demonstrates the influence of religion on public life than the nineteenth century, particularly the antebellum period. The revival fires of the Second Great Awakening unleashed an unprecedented reforming impulse in the new nation, much of it directed toward the establishment of a millennial kingdom in America. Americans were so steeped in optimism about the perfectibility of individuals and the amelioration of society that they organized benevolent and reform societies--temperance reform, abolitionism, female suffrage, prison reform--with a zealotry unmatched in American history. Religious sensibilities pervaded American culture, often mixing with nationalism and xenophobia--witness the nativist sentiment directed against non-Protestant immigrants, as well as McGuffey's Reader of the nineteenth century, with its unabashed celebration of Protestantism and patriotism.
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Native Americans