Religion: Meant To Unite Us, Set to Divide Us

Political party affiliation is deeply rooted in historical religious denominations.

Religious beliefs have been a source of social disputes and political conflicts throughout history. The United States is no exception. Although the nation’s founders sought to separate church and state, religion has always found its way into American politics.

Americans are actually more religious than other western countries. For instance, more than half of American adults (56%) believe in a Biblical God compared to only 27% in Western Europe.

U.S. adults are more religious than Western Europeans (source: PEW Research Center)

In the earlier decades, even as late as the 1840s, upwards of 95% of Americans were Protestants. The Irish-Catholic immigration in the nineteenth century brought large numbers of Catholics to the United States. Between 1820 and 1930, nearly 4.5 million Irish arrived in America. In the 1840s, they constituted nearly half of all immigrants to the US [source].

The Irish became the unskilled, marginal workers of America. They worked in construction, canals, railroads, mines, and mills, and found a natural home with the Democratic Party, buoyed by the social services that helped them make it to the next day. Native Protestants, concerned with the influx of immigrants, often regarded them as less than civilized…