It has been fairly argued that religion in America has undergone or, at the very least, is currently in a process of undergoing a third "disestablishment"--that is, a change in the relationship of its religious institutions to it culture (Hammond 516). In this view, the first disestablishment occurred at the founding of the country, when no specific preference for one Protestant church over another was distinguished as the "state religion"; the second having occurred in the interim between the two world wars of this century, at which time "the genuine religious pluralism in American culture and the correlative loss by Protestantism of its favored status" became apparent (Hammond 516-517). McCarthy and his colleagues see the "second disestablishment" in the retreat from the influence of religion in public education (and possibly government in general), and a resurgence in private religious instruction (xvii).
According to Hammond's thesis, the current (or, third) disestablishment recognizes that a fundamental change in the church-culture relationship in American society has taken place
whereby persons are seen to be free to choose not only which religion will be theirs but also whether to choose any at all. It is the changeover of the church from being "inherited," and to some extent therefore involuntary, to being completely a matter of individual choice (517).
This may seem odd in light of the concept of religious freedom as it is commonly taught to school children when they first encounter the colonization and founding of America.
If one were to ask most any elementary school student whose education had eclipsed early American history, "Why did the Pilgrims come to the 'new world'?" the typical answer might be something such as: "to have freedom of religion," or, "to have their own church." In reality, however, the "new world" provided an opportunity for the assorted Protestant religions to have their own ...