Book contents
- Frontmatter
- SECTION I THE POSTWAR RELIGIOUS WORLD, 1945 AND FOLLOWING
- 1 Dangerous and Promising Times: American Religion in the Postwar Years
- 2 Public Religion in Canada from Mackenzie King to Trudeau: Entering the Age of Pluralism, 1945–1982
- 3 Religion in Mexico, 1945–2010
- 4 American Judaism in the Postwar Period
- 5 Suburbanization and Religion
- 6 The Postwar Religious World, 1945 and Following: The Case of Asian Religions in the United States
- SECTION II CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES IN TRANSITIONAL TIMES
- SECTION III THE WORLD’s RELIGIONS IN AMERICA
- SECTION IV RELIGIOUS AND CULTURAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA
- SECTION V NEW AND CONTINUING RELIGIOUS REALITIES IN AMERICA
- SECTION VI CONCLUDING ESSAYS
- Index
- References
5 - Suburbanization and Religion
from SECTION I - THE POSTWAR RELIGIOUS WORLD, 1945 AND FOLLOWING
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2012
- Frontmatter
- SECTION I THE POSTWAR RELIGIOUS WORLD, 1945 AND FOLLOWING
- 1 Dangerous and Promising Times: American Religion in the Postwar Years
- 2 Public Religion in Canada from Mackenzie King to Trudeau: Entering the Age of Pluralism, 1945–1982
- 3 Religion in Mexico, 1945–2010
- 4 American Judaism in the Postwar Period
- 5 Suburbanization and Religion
- 6 The Postwar Religious World, 1945 and Following: The Case of Asian Religions in the United States
- SECTION II CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES IN TRANSITIONAL TIMES
- SECTION III THE WORLD’s RELIGIONS IN AMERICA
- SECTION IV RELIGIOUS AND CULTURAL CONFLICT IN AMERICA
- SECTION V NEW AND CONTINUING RELIGIOUS REALITIES IN AMERICA
- SECTION VI CONCLUDING ESSAYS
- Index
- References
Summary
Over the course of the twentieth century the social process of suburbanization affected the practice of American religious life in ways both obvious and subtle. The translocation of where Americans worshipped transformed the way they worshipped. As pervasive as suburbs later became in American life, their emergence at the end of the nineteenth century owed to a confluence of factors that made these new communities a unique development in Western history. The word “suburban” literally denotes being “below the city,” as in outside the citys walls and its protection. In traditional European civilization the suburbs were a residential location for the poor with inferior services. As a result of rapid late nineteenth-century improvements in communication and transportation, suburbs in the United States emerged as desirable residential enclaves connected to, but set apart from, more crowded and dirty cities. Since then suburbs in American life have been alternately viewed as refuges for the wealthy, signs of what is wrong with the culture at large, and, increasingly, simply the way Americans live.
Suburbanization in the American context has been a social movement of both desire and necessity with far-reaching, often misunderstood ramifications for religion. The history of religion in suburbs is one of small beginnings in which suburban churches were, from the viewpoint of their denominations and sister churches in the cities, insignificant, and synagogues were virtually nonexistent. What began almost as an afterthought on the American religious landscape came to be one of religion’s areas of greatest strength by the middle decades of the twentieth century.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Religions in America , pp. 106 - 125Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009