"In the war society of the South, religion played a leading roll... The Methodist and Presbyterian churches cut themselves away from their Northern brethren and cast their fortunes with the Southern cause... The churches of the South entered so whole heatedly into the cause of the war that they were invariably closed by the Union commanders. Throughout the war many revivals, special prayer meetings, and fasts were held for the success of Southern arms... The army was swept by religious fervor. All regiments departing for the front were consecrated. Many clergymen joined the army as chaplains... ."
Click here to read about the chaplains in the Confederate Army.
At the thirty-fifth annual church congress of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1919) clergy members seemed to agree that Christian leaders were fully complicit in the recently ended war and were guilty of abandoning Christianity for patriotism:
"Christianity has betrayed itself body and soul".
When W.W. II started, Americans went back to church...
In 1900 people wanted to know why men didn't like going to church...
Out of the Mouths of Babes: Girl Evangelists in the Flapper Era
Here is an article concerning the persecution of that Protestant faith so unique to American shores: the Jehovah's Witnesses, a religion that numbered 50,000 world-wide in 1936. The attached article reported on the school expulsions of various assorted young followers for failing to show proper respect to the American flag on campus: "A year ago the first such case, in Pennsylvania, startled the newspapers. 'If you kill me I won't salute!' quavered an eleven year-old schoolboy. He was expelled. Soon after, in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, a teacher was was dismissed for refusing to honor 'the flag of horror and hate.'" Many and myriad are the reasons Roman Catholics and Protestants worship differently - one of them is the idolization of the Virgin Mary.
This article from 1897 outlines the reasoning behind this uniquely Roman Catholic brand of piety that emphasizes the Virgin Mary while numerous other Christian faiths have long held that this extracurricular devotion merely serves to upstage Christ and His message. The column is composed of numerous passages from an open letter written by Pope Leo XIII (1878 – 1903) clarifying the need for the Catholics to understand the importance of the Virgin Mary:
"From all eternity He chose her to become the mother of the Word who was to clothe Himself in human flesh..."
Bertram Goodhue (1869 - 1924) was a popular American architect who was highly praised for his mastery of the Gothic Revival style of architecture, which won him many of the finest commissions that society had to offer any architect during the high-water mark of the WASP ascendancy. This article appeared in The Literary Digest just as his design for St. Thomas Church on New York's Fifth Avenue was nearing completion and he shared with the journalist his insights as to how he designs churches: "Sometimes, of course, the cloistral effect is needed, in a monastery, for instance. And the church must always have solemnity, but not coldness. I have tried in my work to express this quality of invitation, together with sanctity and a degree of magnificence quite undreamed of in my craftsman days." A short article from 1935 reporting on the near-death experience of a British gardener named John Puckering who insisted that when his heart ceased beating for four and a half minutes during the course of a complicated surgery "his soul slipped away, and joined a heavenly company..."
A second article dealing with the same subject can be read here. | 
