DAVID SEHAT
America is one of the few countries where formal religious affiliation and church going has increased in the last centuries. Religiosity has decreased throughout Europe and most of the rest of the world. In 1776 however, compared to the rest of the world, religiosity in the American Colonies was very sparce, especially since a number of the colonies had been founded by religious sects to obtain religious freedom. Ironically, America has become a more religious nation in large part because it did NOT have an established religion and all were free to worship or not as they saw fit. No other nation has spawned as many new religions in modern times. Mormonism, Evangelicals, Christian Science are just a few. There was room and freedom for new religions to arise.
David Sehat is an American academic. He is a professor of American intellectual and cultural history at Georgia State University. He was the 2017-18 John G. Winant Visiting Professor of American Government at the Rothermere American Institute and Balliol College, Oxford. He is the author of two books. He won the Organization of American Historians's 2012 Frederick Jackson Turner Award for The Myth of American Religious Freedom.
