The church was not only the meeting place for the movement in the South, it also was the center of the movement in that it served as the symbol of the movement. That is to say that the church represented the freedom that the movement participants sought.

globalization transforms the generic ‘religion’ into a world-system of competing and conflicting religions. This process of institutional specialization has transformed local, diverse and fragmented cultural practices into recognizable systems of religion.

During the 1950s, nationwide church membership grew at a faster rate than the population, from 57 percent of the U.S. population in 1950 to 63.3 percent in 1960. “Religion flourished in the ’50s for several reasons, partly because of the ever-expanding spiritual marketplace,” Ellwood said.

More than 95% of Americans identified as Christian in the 1950s, and 80% did so as recently as eight years ago. While the 5% of the population who identify with a non-Christian faith is higher than it was decades ago, it has not shown significant change over the past eight years.

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leader Charles Martel

Though the two main sects within Islam, Sunni and Shia, agree on most of the fundamental beliefs and practices of Islam, a bitter split between the two goes back some 14 centuries. The divide originated with a dispute over who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad as leader of the Islamic faith he introduced.

Rashidun Caliphate

The original split between Sunnis and Shiites occurred soon after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, in the year 632. “There was a dispute in the community of Muslims in present-day Saudi Arabia over the question of succession,” says Augustus Norton, author of Hezbollah: A Short History.

Jihad, according to Islamic law The Arabic term jihad literally means a “struggle” or “striving.” This term appears in the Quran in different contexts and can include various forms of nonviolent struggles: for instance, the struggle to become a better person.