RELIGION AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION

Among the American community and religion it has established a strong bond that has never broken through the centuries. Faith continues to have an important role in society, and not necessarily for the work of religious denominations together, which indeed are often overtaken by events and actions of individual believers.
Religious pluralism has helped keep up the role of faith in everyday life, resulting in what is commonly called 'American civil religion', where the state also welcomes '' expectations specifically religious, giving way to an aspect of his secularity in order to separate churches.
This intense relationship does nothing but highlight the American paradox of a strongly religious society not willing to give up the presence of faith in the public dimension and a law aimed at finding a balance between the assertion of the separation of the state from churches and respect full religious freedom, understood both as a freedom of the citizen to istutizioni, both of these pressures toward confessional.
Conseguemente, the American state '' has identified the problem of the separation of church and state with the theoretical assumption of 'agnosticism state in religious matters, but started from the pragmatic problem of how to ensure the fullest possible equality and freedom of citizens and denominations before the law, thus establishing the principle of the separation in order to better achieve this goal, but without rejecting the religious values ​​''

This absence of antagonism is revealed in some legal and social particularities in our Europe would certainly be criticized for residues confessionismo.
The influence of religion has had and continues to have in the development of civil and economic power of the US an important place.
The presence of religious lobbies, for example, in the political field is very strong and certainly not raise the sensation that in Europe certain positions taken by the same religious denominations

References:
http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.com/
http://www.enotes.com/homework-help/how-does-religion-affect-social-cultural-changes-468241
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/religion-in-america/