Religion and Voluntary Organization - Shaping American Social Identity

People of different countries and nations have some features in their social identity by which they can be described. Americans are no exceptions to this fact. In discussing Americans we can refer to 4 elements as those that shape or influence the formation of their social identity. These 4 elements are:

1) Soft power,

2) Democracy and pragmatism,

3) Religion and voluntary organizations, and

4) Uniformity.

In this article I'm going to concentrate on the third element: religion and volunteer organizations. America is "one of the most religious nations in the developed world" *.According to a survey (Baylor survey), the number of those Americans who said they have no religion has doubled since 1990," from 7 percent of the population to 14 percent"." Some sociologists said the jump reflects increasing secularization at the same time that American society is becoming more religious"*. But this survey "found that one in 10 people who picked "no religion" out of 40 choices did something interesting when asked later where they worship: They named a place. Considering that, Baylor researchers say, the percentage of people who are truly unaffiliated is more like 10.8 percent. The difference between 10.8 percent and 14 percent is about 10 million Americans"*. Another interesting thing that most experts agree on is this fact that those who said they had no religion just "didn't want to identify with a political party" *. The influence of religion in Americans' lives is most likely because of the Puritanism of the founders of this nation. They believed that God had given them a mission to save mankind. Thus they involved God in their actions and decisions from the beginning. This belief led to the idea of American Exceptionalism that can be traced from the early years in the history of America till now.

Voluntary organizations in America are also well-known and popular. Actually such activities can be seen even in the beginning years of American history. In other words, voluntary organizations became widespread because if the conditions of living that the first settlers of America faced. When they declared their independence and even before that, they had to encounter many difficulties and hardships. For sure these problems could be overcome by a group better than by an individual. That's why people gathered in voluntary organization. Now let's bring some examples of voluntary organizations and activities in young America:

1736 Benjamin Franklin begins the first volunteer firefighting company.

1775 - 1783 Revolutionary War volunteers organize boycotts of British products and collect funds for the war.

1830's The Great Awakening leads students to community work through religious groups.

1857 First university-based YMCA is founded at the University of Michigan.

1861 - 1865 Ladies' Aid Societies were created to make bandages, shirts, towels, bedclothes, uniforms and tents for the Civil War.

1881 American Red Cross is established by Clara Barton.

1887 First United Way organization is founded in Denver to plan and coordinate local charitable services."**

While Americans now confront fewer problems than their ancestors, they still continue this trend. It has even been increasing. For example by the end of 1960s "about 150 Volunteer Bureaus exist[ed]"**this number actually doubled "to more than300" **by the end of 1970s. To give you a more recent statistics "more than 365 Volunteer Centers" ** existed by the end of 2005 and in this year "Volunteer Centers reach[ed] nearly 188 million people in thousands of communities" **. So if we want to speak about American social identity, we can't ignore religion and voluntary organizations as one of its elements.

*) Quoted from Washingtonpost.com: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091100459.html

**) Quoted from Pointsoflight.org: http://www.pointsoflight.org/downloads/doc/centers/resources/HistoryRevised22206.doc

Marzieh Motahhari, MA student of University of Tehran, Institute of North American studies