Introduction
Popular culture is commonly defined as the totality of ideas, attitudes, perspectives, and other features shared among the people in a particular culture that and often take shape through informal consensus in the society. Throughout American history, there has been evidence of different cultural traits that make it unique from other cultures. Its culture is highly westernized and diversified. It was largely influenced by European culture during the colonial period.
The Americans have a unique way of handling their day to day life, which significantly describes their culture. The Americans value individualism and view the world as in-animate and limitless. They aim at self-improvement and hard work to better their future (Carr-Ruffino, 2009). “The role of concepts and ideas in American life is to provide direction for purposeful activity” (Carr-Ruffino, 2009). The Americans embrace a culture where thinking and way of life are guided by facts.
American culture is also characterized by risk-taking. Since they value achievement, they use money, technology, art, and all other available resources to achieve high status in life. American culture is also a youth culture, and they value maintaining their youth as they associate it with beauty and strength (Carr-Ruffino, 2009).
Americans are also friendly and informal. They prefer a casual relationship and maintain a few deeply committed ones. They maintain personal boundary (usually arm’s length) which, when crossed, often leads to violation of privacy. They also believe in fair play and are also fairly generous compared to most cultures of the world.
Religious trends in the American culture
In the 80s, many aspects of the traditional narrative of the American history were found wanting by scholars; religious history had for long highlighted only the views for men especially the white (Goff and Harvey, 2004).
However, the past decade saw scholars overcoming this misconception as they searched into the traditional settings from which the stories were told and highlighted various issues that had earlier been ignored. Roles of women and other ethnicities in religion were unveiled, and the dominant narrative of the cultural hegemony of the Protestants whose ideas played out against the backdrop of America was demolished (Goff and Harvey).
In America, different religions adopted different ideas about God. Some of the religions do not perceive God as a Singular supreme being and instead embrace the idea that there are many gods or no God at all. Theological beliefs among the Americans commonly stem from formal theologies which are derived by people with advanced theology training and often depict high regard for logical consistency.
Others may originate from popular theology which is generated by ordinary people in their day to day lives or civil theology that is commonly applied by political leaders to relate political events to sacred practices in times of social upheaval (Goff and Harvey, 2004). Whether formally or informally generated, American theology has significantly influenced the Americans’ lifestyle.
The Americans freedom of religion is protected by the constitution; religious groups use persuasion, brainwash, and other forms of proselytization to attract converts. Contemporary America features numerous religious ideologies and denominations, which gives people a wide variety of religion orientations to choose from. However, a considerable part of the Americans is leaning more towards secularism as their way of life, consequently reducing the popularity of religion among the population.
Reference List
Carr-Ruffino, N. (2009). Diversity success strategies. New York: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Goff, P & Harvey, P. (2004). Themes in religion and American Culture. North Carolina: UNC Press books.