Entries - Entry Category: Faiths and Denominations - Starting with R

Jews have followed the teachings of a unique religion for centuries: Judaism. Reform Judaism is a modern Jewish denomination emphasizing religious values reflected in modern civic engagement. As Central European Jews began immigrating to the United States in the eighteenth century, Reform Judaism quickly became the Judaism-of-choice among many Jewish Americans. Seeking to uphold rights of all individual citizens and pursuits of justice, Reform Judaism has become the largest Jewish denomination in the United States. By end of the nineteenth century, Jewish Arkansans had begun responding to a multitude of social issues related to Jim Crow laws, religious intolerance, and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) communities. Reform Jewish ethics are embraced by many Jewish Arkansans actively …

Quakers in Arkansas, though small in number, have played an important role in education and race relations, providing teachers and schools for African Americans after the Civil War and organizing interracial programs during the school integration crisis. The Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers, began in England during the religious ferment of the 1600s through the ministry of George Fox. Quakers believed that all people could develop a personal relationship with God without the intervention of traditional priests or rituals. They worshiped in silence until led to speak by the spirit. They developed testimonies of peace, simplicity, equality, and integrity. Friends’ local congregations are called Monthly Meetings and may affiliate with Quarterly and Yearly Meetings based on both …

Roman Catholicism is the oldest form of Christianity in the state, yet it has remained the faith of a minority of the population. Catholicism first arrived in Arkansas via Spanish explorers and a French Jesuit missionary, and there were a few Catholics living at Arkansas Post during the French and Spanish colonial era of the eighteenth century. Once Arkansas became attached to the American Union by the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the area underwent a demographic and religious metamorphosis. A wave of Anglo-American Protestants migrated to the region so that, by 1850, Catholics made up approximately one percent of the total population of the state. The great European migration to the United States between 1840 and 1920, which contained millions …