tive Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and Greek Orthodox banded together to address the problem of child and adult pornography. In 1988, orthodox activists from every religious group in America protested together against abortion in what was called Operation Rescue. Before the second half of this century, cooperation among various religious groups was unheard of to this extent. But in the latter part of the twentieth century, alliances have formed across denominational lines. Specifically, the shift has been for each religion to experience a split between the orthodox and progressive believers within their own religious faith. In conjunction with this, the more progressively minded have supported each other across religions in spite of a few differences in beliefs (Wolfe, 1991).Many things were happening in America to bring about this shift from the traditional way of life to the progressive attitudes of some of the members of American society. Such as: increased crime, labor and public health problems, poverty, political instability, and the weakening of the credibility of religious faith. Many people from the Jewish, Protestant, and Catholic faiths sought to form new moral ideals to deal with the changing social circumstances. To start with, the Social Gospel movement in Protestantism rejected the individualistic view of sin and lack of personal morals as the cause of human difficulties. Instead, they focused on the problems with social and economic institutions (Lecture notes, 7-7-99). The Americanist movement in Catholicism aimed at integrating the American Catholic Church into the mainstream of modern American society. To accomplish this, the Americanists tried to phase out the inessential aspects of Roman tradition in order to present the Catholic Church in a more positive light towards a Protestant society. Along the same line they tried to Americanize the foreigners in the church by teaching them American customs and th...
