America is a religious country without being a religiously-controlled country. The Constitution protects religion from government interference and also from having the government select any one religion as a preferred religion. Christianity in its many denominations is the major religion in the United States, but there are many minority religions that thrive and that serve communities ranging from the relatively large to the very small. Some of these religions have been imported from other parts of the world, and some have developed here as individuals and groups seek a way to express their spirituality when they are disappointed in the existing religions. Some groups brought their religion with them and have made it part of the ethnic community they have built here. Some of these groups have also encountered discrimination and intolerance at various times in their American lives, but all in all, America is very tolerant of different religious beliefs and expressions.
Vincent N. Parrillo notes how successive waves of immigration to the United States changed the country from what had been an almost exclusively Protestant country to one with three major faiths: Catholic, Jewish, Protestant. The Catholic population has been increased by subsequent immigration from Latin America and the Philippines. African immigrants have added to the Muslim population. The Jewish population is actually declining, while there are increases among Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs (Parrillo 544).
Buddhism has been gaining converts in the West in recent years, and a number of reasons have been offered for this trend. This age has been described as an age of agnosticism, and it might be argued that Buddhism, or the outlook of Buddhists on man and the universe, is becoming more and more widely accepted as the ideal worldview. Many of these ideas are indeed accepted even among people who have no formal knowledge of Buddhism. For instance, some see t...