Evangelicalism, also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide interdenominational movement within Protestant Christianity that puts primary emphasis on evangelization. The word evangelic comes from the Greek word for 'good news'. The Gospel story of the salvation from sin is considered "the good news". The process of personal conversion involves complete surrender to Jesus Christ. The conversion process is authoritatively guided by the Bible, the God in Christianity's revelation to humanity. Critics of the conceptualization of evangelicalism argue that it is too broad, too diverse, or too ill-defined to be adequately seen as a movement or a single movement.
Religious humanism or ethical humanism is an integration of humanist philosophy with congregational rites and community activity that center on human needs, interests, and abilities. Religious humanists set themselves apart from secular humanists by characterizing the nontheistic humanist life stance as a non-supernatural "religion" and structuring their organization around a congregational model.
The temperance movement is a social movement promoting temperance or total abstinence from consumption of alcoholic beverages. Participants in the movement typically criticize alcohol intoxication or promote teetotalism, and its leaders emphasize alcohol's negative effects on people's health, personalities, and family lives. Typically the movement promotes alcohol education and it also demands the passage of new laws against the sale of alcohol: either regulations on the availability of alcohol, or the prohibition of it.
The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an international temperance organization. It was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far-reaching reform strategies based on applied Christianity." It plays an influential role in the temperance movement. Originating among women in the United States Prohibition movement, the organization supported the 18th Amendment and was also influential in social reform issues that came to prominence in the progressive era.
Nonconformists were Protestant Christians who did not "conform" to the governance and usages of the established church in England, and in Wales until 1914, the Church of England.
The Third Great Awakening refers to a historical period proposed by William G. McLoughlin that was marked by religious activism in American history and spans the late 1850s to the early 20th century. It influenced pietistic Protestant denominations and had a strong element of social activism. It gathered strength from the postmillennial belief that the Second Coming of Christ would occur after mankind had reformed the entire Earth. It was affiliated with the Social Gospel movement, which applied Christianity to social issues and gained its force from the awakening, as did the worldwide missionary movement. New groupings emerged, such as the Holiness movement and Nazarene and Pentecostal movements, and also Jehovah's Witnesses, Spiritualism, Theosophy, Thelema, and Christian Science. The era saw the adoption of a number of moral causes, such as the abolition of slavery and prohibition.
A Christian denomination is a distinct religious body within Christianity that comprises all church congregations of the same kind, identifiable by traits such as a name, particular history, organization, leadership, theological doctrine, worship style and, sometimes, a founder. It is a secular and neutral term, generally used to denote any established Christian church. Unlike a cult or sect, a denomination is usually seen as part of the Christian religious mainstream. Most Christian denominations refer to themselves as churches, whereas some newer ones tend to interchangeably use the terms churches, assemblies, fellowships, etc. Divisions between one group and another are defined by authority and doctrine; issues such as the nature of Jesus, the authority of apostolic succession, biblical hermeneutics, theology, ecclesiology, eschatology, and papal primacy may separate one denomination from another. Groups of denominations—often sharing broadly similar beliefs, practices, and historical ties—are sometimes known as "branches of Christianity". These branches differ in many ways, especially through differences in practices and belief.
Religion in the United States began with the religions and spiritual practices of Native Americans. Later, religion also played a role in the founding of some colonies, as many colonists, such as the Puritans, came to escape religious persecution. Historians debate how much influence religion, specifically Christianity and more specifically Protestantism, had on the American Revolution. Many of the Founding Fathers were active in a local Protestant church; some of them had deist sentiments, such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington. Some researchers and authors have referred to the United States as a "Protestant nation" or "founded on Protestant principles," specifically emphasizing its Calvinist heritage. Others stress the secular character of the American Revolution and note the secular character of the nation's founding documents.
Liberal Christianity, also known as liberal theology and historically as Christian Modernism, is a movement that interprets Christian teaching by prioritizing modern knowledge, science and ethics. It emphasizes the importance of reason and experience over doctrinal authority. Liberal Christians view their theology as an alternative to both atheistic rationalism and theologies based on traditional interpretations of external authority, such as the Bible or sacred tradition.
Quaker views on women have always been considered progressive in their own time, and in the late 19th century this tendency bore fruit in the prominence of Quaker women in the American women's rights movement.
Quakers are people who belong to the Religious Society of Friends, a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations. Members refer to each other as Friends after John 15:14 in the Bible, and originally, others referred to them as Quakers because the founder of the movement, George Fox, told a judge to quake "before the authority of God". The Friends are generally united by a belief in each human's ability to be guided by the inward light to "make the witness of God" known to everyone. Quakers have traditionally professed a priesthood of all believers inspired by the First Epistle of Peter. They include those with evangelical, holiness, liberal, and traditional Quaker understandings of Christianity, as well as Nontheist Quakers. To differing extents, the Friends avoid creeds and hierarchical structures. In 2017, there were an estimated 377,557 adult Quakers, 49% of them in Africa followed by 22% in North America.
Christianity is the predominant religion in Europe. Christianity has been practiced in Europe since the first century, and a number of the Pauline Epistles were addressed to Christians living in Greece, as well as other parts of the Roman Empire.
In French literature, the moralists were a tradition of secular writers who described "personal, social and political conduct", typically through maxims. The tradition is associated with the salons of the Ancien Régime from the 16th through the 18th centuries. The tradition begins with the Essais of Michel de Montaigne (1580), but its heyday was the late 17th century.
Christianity was introduced to North America as it was colonized by Europeans beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Spanish, French, and British brought Roman Catholicism to the colonies of New Spain, New France and Maryland respectively, while Northern European peoples introduced Protestantism to Massachusetts Bay Colony, New Netherland, Virginia colony, Carolina Colony, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Lower Canada. Among Protestants, adherents to Anglicanism, Methodism, the Baptist Church, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, Lutheranism, Quakerism, Mennonite and the Moravian Church were the first to settle in the US, spreading their faith in the new country.
Christianity was introduced with the first European settlers beginning in the 16th and 17th centuries. Colonists from Northern Europe introduced Protestantism in its Anglican and Reformed forms to Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts Bay Colony, New Netherland, Virginia Colony, and Carolina Colony. The first arrivals were adherents to Anglicanism, Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, Methodism, the Baptist Church, Calvinism, Lutheranism, Quakerism, Anabaptism and the Moravian Church from British, German, Dutch, and Nordic stock. America began as a significant Protestant majority nation. Significant minorities of Roman Catholics and Jews did not arise until the period between 1880 and 1910.
In the United States, the temperance movement, which sought to curb the consumption of alcohol, had a large influence on American politics and American society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, culminating in the prohibition of alcohol, through the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, from 1920 to 1933. Today, there are organizations that continue to promote the cause of temperance.
The temperance movement in the United Kingdom was a social movement that campaigned against the recreational use and sale of alcohol, and promoted total abstinence (teetotalism). In the 19th century, high levels of alcohol consumption and drunkenness were seen by social reformers as a danger to society's wellbeing, leading to social issues such as poverty, child neglect, immorality and economic decline. Temperance societies began to be formed in the 1830s to campaign against alcohol. Specific groups were created over periods of time dedicated to the different aspects of drinking. For example, in 1847, the Band of Hope was created to persuade children not to start drinking alcohol. Most of these temperance groups were aimed at the working class. Temperance was also supported by some religious groups, particularly the Nonconformist Churches. Although the temperance movement met with local success in parts of Britain, it failed to impose national prohibition, and disappeared as a significant force following the Second World War.
Although some Enlightenment philosophers opposed slavery, it was Christian activists, attracted by strong religious elements, who initiated and organized an abolitionist movement. Throughout Europe and the United States, Christians, Christian faith movements or "non-conformist" believers within established churches, were to be found at the forefront of the abolitionist movements.
In the United States, ethnocultural politics or ethnoreligious politics refers to the pattern of certain cultural groups or religious denominations to vote heavily for one party. Groups can be based on ethnicity, race or religion or on overlapping categories. In the Southern United States, race was the determining factor. Each of the two major parties was a coalition of ethnoreligious groups in the Second Party System (1830s–1850s) and also in the Third Party System (1850s–1890s).
