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Religion in the United States: Notes Toward a New Classification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Julia Mitchell Corbett
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Extract

How one should classsify religious groups in the United States is a persistent question. The necessity for some sort of classification system is obvious: the vast diversity of religion in the United States requires that we be able to bring order out of what would otherwise be sheer chaos. At the same time, the pluralism that raises the issue in the first place makes the development of an adequate method of classification difficult. Both the historic Judeo-Christian mainstream and the alternatives to it that have emerged throughout our history must be given their due in a way that obscures the importance of neither one.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , Winter 1993 , pp. 91 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 1993

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References

Notes

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