Numerous websites offer resources for use by both students and teachers in courses on religion in American life.
Especially helpful in identifying materials that can be used in the classroom are the Wabash Center's website (www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu) and the website for California State University at Chico's Religion and Public Education Resource Center (www.csuchico.edu/rs/rperc).
In addition to discussing its own initiatives, the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis, has links to several dozen other resource centers that concentrate on one or more aspects of American religious life. See www.iupui.edu/~raac.
Especially germane to the theme of this textbook is the work of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University and its efforts to map the extent of religious pluralism in contemporary America. See www.pluralism.org.
Several sites offer demographic information and other factual material oriented to contemporary America, particularly with regard to trends in affiliation, growth and decline of particular groups and movements, and other survey information. Among them are the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (www.pewforum.org), the American Religious Identification Survey (www.americanreligionsurvey-aris.org), and the Hartford Institute for Religion Research (www.hirr.hartsem.edu). Students will find two sections of this last website particularly helpful, "Fast Facts" and "Quick Questions".
The various centers linked to the website of the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture noted above include several that focus on particular traditions or denominations, such as the Cushwa Center at Notre Dame that emphasizes American Roman Catholic topics (www.nd.edu/~cushwa). Also see www.ajhs.org, the website of the American Jewish Historical Society, for materials relating to the Jewish experience in the U.S. In addition, African American religious life is the focus of materials identified at http://northstar.vassar.edu.
The interplay of religion and public life, a key element in a pluralistic culture, informs the work of the Leonard Greenberg Center for Religion and Public Life at Trinity College, Hartford, CT. See www.trincoll.edu/Academics/AcademicResources/values/greenbergcenter.
For more information on Islam in the US, please see the following sites:
www.islamfortoday.com – A very informative site, although last updated in 2007. For more particular information about the US, based on US government statistics, see www.islamfortoday.com/historyusa4.htm
www.islam101.com/history/population2_usa.html - A useful site on the nature of late 20th and early 21st century Islam in the US. It is part of a larger website found at http://islam101.net/
www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/islam_in_the_us - Contains some valuable material on Islam in the US