Terms:  creation stories, identity, mythopoeic, Wounded Knee, St. Augustine (1565), noble savage or BPM ("beautiful people myth").

1. Explain the religio-cultural clash between Europeans and Native Americans.    
   Because culture, tradition and religion were one and the same for Native Americans, there were as many religions as there were separate peoples and societies among them.  In fact there were about 550 different Indian societies and distinct languages that have been identified in North America.  So whereas Indians thought every people had its sacred stories and rituals on which to base its worldview, whites, on the other hand, saw their religion as the universal truth for all mankind.  Whites thought their religion transcended culture, even though they couldn’t separate religion from European culture.  Whites saw their mission as civilizing the “heathen” (getting them to conform to European manners and customs) as well as converting them to Christianity.
   
2. Discuss the common characteristics in Native American religions.
   In class, we talked about the common characteristics of primal religions in general, whether those of pre-Columbian America, Africa, Australian aborigines, or modern day New Age religions.  They are: 1)   local and insular; 2) embrace a pre-scientific worldview; 3) deal with practical matters of survival: crops, family, health, hunting, etc.; 4) emphasize magical techniques: attempt to coerce spiritual power rather than pray to it [may discuss ritual techniques such as magic, shamanism, purification, sacrifice, and funeral rites]
   
3. What effect has the conquest of Europeans had on Native American religion?
   Discuss examples of the threefold response:  1) to keep up the practices of their traditional religions but add to them elements derived from Christianity; 2) form a variety of new religious practices and movements (cf. the ghost dance and peyotism); 3) convert to various denominational forms of Christianity. 

STUDY GUIDE FOR COLONIAL AMERICA

1. Discuss the basic ideas of the Westminster Confession.  [base your answer on the class discussion of TULIP]
   
2. Why was the colonial American scene so religiously diverse, as opposed to the French and Spanish domains?
   1. Economic advantage gained by policy of toleration (could recruit dissidents)
   2. English Reformation & Glorious Revolution (Act of Toleration 1689)
    
3. Explain why the laity was so important in colonial American churches?
   
4. Describe the popular religious beliefs of the colonies, given that most of the colonists belonged to NO church.
   Astrology; magic; prophecy; fortune telling; divination and supernatural healing; beliefs in mermaids, rattlesnakes that can hypnotize persons with their eyes, and sinister disappearing black dogs; witchcraft:.

STUDY GUIDE FOR GREAT AWAKENING
Terms:  George Whitefield, "open air" meetings, Jonathan Edwards, "sensationalism," New England Theology, Arminianism, Old Calvinists, Methodists (John Wesley), evangelicalism, enthusiasm.

1. Discuss the causes of the Great Awakening.
   Building on a number of local revivals, George Whitefield began a number of tours throughout the colonies that fueled fires of religious revival that were to change the American religious scene for ever. [mention "open air" preaching, Jonathan Edwards concept of "sensationalism" and the printing press-Whitefield's journal and Edward's account of the Northampton revival]
   
2. Discuss the results of the Great Awakening.
   1) Institutional results:  increased membership in the churches, the increase in charitable projects, the enhanced role of laity, incorporation of blacks within the Christian community, remarkable success of Baptist and Methodist itinerants in the conversion of blacks, an impulse to higher education that created more colleges.     
   2) Theological results: A reaction against the traditional Calvinist theology in New England so that  three camps emerged:  the Edwardseans, the Arminians, and the middle-of-the-roaders or "Old Calvinists."                                                          
   3) Ecumenical results:   the concept of denominationalism, whereby the Protestant churches were able to get beyond their diversity of outward ecclesiastical forms and acknowledge a Christian unity that allowed them to create a whole system of voluntary societies devoted to missions.

STUDY GUIDE FOR the American Revolution
1. "Even Thomas Jefferson did not believe that democracy 'would be practicable beyond the extent of a New England township'" (Hudson 108).  What do you think Jefferson meant when he used the word "democracy."  Do you agree or disagree with Jefferson?
Being a plantation owner, Jefferson thought the rural life of the farmer was the ideal and that urban life did not create the necessary virtues for democracy (independence and self-reliance, love of the land, etc.).  Jefferson, therefore, was for a weak central government with most important decisions made on the local level like New England town meetings.

2. Besides the obvious economic and political causes of the American Revolution, there was fear generated by "Anglican aggressiveness."  Explicate.
    The very nature of Anglicanism caused problems for the American revolutionaries:  1) the fact that Anglican priests, at their ordination, swore allegiance to the King of England as head of the church; 2) the fact that the Book of Common Prayer offered prayers for the monarch, beseeching God "to be his defender and keeper, giving him victory over all his enemies," who in 1776 were American soldiers.
    Then the Anglican Church in America began to aggressively promote the Church of England:  1) Anglican ministers were attempting to proselytize Protestant Dissenters to the Church of England; 2) the S.P.G. was attempting to establish an American episcopate which would be support by taxes on the Americans.

3. Describe the deist contribution to early America.
    Probably 52 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were Masons (deists), as well as a majority of the members of the Continental Congress.  Deism was a rational approach to religion that rejected the supernatural in nature, but did believe in a Creator whose hand could be seen working in history.  John Toland's Christianity Not Mysterious (1696) summed up the basic assumptions of this rational religion called deism.
    This fact does not minimize influence of the Baptists, Quakers and others who were heirs of the Calvinist (Reformed) leaders' development of justification for resistance and rebellion.  For example, John Witherspoon, the most important "political parson" of the Revolutionary period, represented New Jersey in the Continental Congress from 1776 to 1782, in which capacity he signed the Declaration of Independence and served on more than one hundred committees. 
    On the other hand, the deists, who were influenced by Enlightenment ("Age of Reason") beliefs in "natural rights" of liberty, equality and property, had an enormous impact on ensuring that these ideas became important elements in the founding documents of the American republic.  Thomas Paine was one of the important deists whose name would fall into infamy, despite the fact that his work Common Sense was a contributing factor in the creating the tide of yearning for independence from Britain that would lead to the eventual formation of the American republic.  This was a result of the printing of his Age of Reason that outlined his problems with Christianity and stated his deist faith.
    In addition, although Locke's political views were largely influenced by concepts that had long been developed in Calvinist political theory, it is his work Treatises on Government (1690) that would be a major influence on Thomas Jefferson's writing of the Declaration of Independence.

4. The first amendment to the Constitution reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...."  Discuss the evolution of just what that means in America (what it meant then; what it means now).
Separation of church and state in the beginning just meant the separation of institutions.  It's doubtful that anyone at the beginning of this country envisioned a separation of religion and politics.  Because of the European experience of the immigrants that founded this country, they just wanted to make sure that no ecclesiastical institutions could be "established," i.e., have state support, patronage or privilege.  Nor did they want state interference with the churches.  So it could be said that they meant to establish freedom of religious belief or unbelief, not freedom from religion.  Individuals should be free to believe whatever they wanted.

Today, because of the pluralism of modern America the situation has changed.  Increasingly, many Americans are insisting on freedom from religion in the public sphere.  The relevant parts of the constitution dealing with this issue are:  Article Six (prohibiting religious requirements for holding public office), the First Amendment (the government should have a neutral stance toward religion), and  the Fourteenth Amendment (forbidding the states to interfere with the privileges of their citizens, including religious freedom).  The Supreme Court has determined, though, that the free exercise of religion deserves no special protection, as long as the law applies to nonreligious groups also.  This has allowed for the restriction of any unpopular religious practice that might contravene the regular laws of the nation or that might cause injury to persons.

5. Explain what is meant by the "invisible institution" and then describe the distinctive elements of black Christianity, particularly black preaching and ritual.
    Out of the 12 million slaves brought to America, about 2 million ended up in the colonies.  Slave owners were reluctant to Christianize the slaves for fear it would eventually lead to their manumission.  Many of the slaves were originally Muslims or practitioners of  traditional African religions, but as a result of the Great Awakening and the activity of the Baptists and Methodists, many became Christian.  They would develop their own style of preaching (the "chanted sermon") and a unique style of worship ("communal songs").  Their form of worship was often dictated by the slave masters, so what is know as the "invisible institution" appeared on plantations where slaves would meet in the woods at evening or engage in secret sessions in the cabin of one of the slaves, or even break out in spontaneous hymn sings.