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Religion And The Secular In The 1920's

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Wylie McCall History 202 Essay #2 May 15, 2016 Religion and the Secular The 1920’s were a period of dramatic changes. More than half of Americans lived in cities and with the growing affordability of cars; it made people more mobile than ever. It seems generally accepted that while the discipline and its practitioners were once more religious, literacy studies is not a decidedly secular willingness. Secularization refers specifically to the disestablishment of church affiliations with the state. Nativist and white supremacy groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) popularized the separation of church and state. Various groups had encouraged the idea of separation in the early 19th century, but it didn’t make much popular headway until nativist …show more content…

Thomas Jefferson also took a great amount of heat with this topic. His letter to the Danbury Baptists is one of the most well known documents during this time. Jefferson assured that they did not need to fear the establishment of national denomination, and that the First Amendment would protect the church from government control. This is also a topic that is seen much today. Today, Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state” is still seen. It is the clear understanding of the First Amendment for over a century. The Bill of Rights guarantees the separation of church and state. It is prohibited to express the religious beliefs in all public institutions. However, it seems to be powerless to ban God in public schools, since local governments and not congress run public schools. The first big case that undermined the balance between the church and state. In Everson vs Board of Education the Supreme Court, Justice Hugo Black, an FDR appointee and KKK member, led it. This, saying that Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptist was taken out of context during this trial, has upset many. Jefferson believed there was a “wall of separation” in the Constitution that was designed to keep the government from interfering with the church, not a wall to keep free speech out of the public

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