RELIGIOUS CENSUS OF THE UNITED STATES
SHOWING PROPORTION OF THE POPULATION REPORTED AS PROTESTANT, ROMAN CATHOLIC, AND "ALL OTHER" CHURCH MEMBERS, AND PROPORTION NOT REPORTED AS CHURCH MEMBERS FOR EACH STATE AND TERRITORY. PUBLISHED BY THE UNITED STATES CENSUS BUREAU
The hordes of barbarians which overwhelmed Rome have left a mark on Europe that can never be forgotten. The size and vigor of the movement made a profound impression which history cannot outgrow, and yet Genseric, one of the greatest of their leaders, never had more than 80,000 warriors in his palmiest days.
There have been great successive waves of immigration into China and India from the plains and the mountains of the north and east, but so far as we have knowledge of the numbers they dwindle into comparative insignificance when measured by this greatest of all invasions.
The numbers involved in the Norman Conquest of England would hardly make a ripple on the sea of races and populations crowding to American shores.
The Crusades stand out as epoch-making and unparalleled up to that time in the number of nations disturbed. They covered a period of more than a century and a half and involved several millions of people, but more men, women, and children from other lands have come to the United States and Canada in the last six years than swept across the face of Europe in a century and a half in the Crusades.
To assimilate and Christianize these multitudes is one of the supreme tests of the reality of our faith and the vitality of our national life.
The glory of immigration is fourfold:
1. God has written much history in terms of migratory peoples. It is the impatient, unsatisfied, vigorous peoples that have made the history of the world. If the meaning of the past is correctly interpreted, then the blending of these races together on a Christian basis into one united people is America's superlative opportunity to make history.
2. Immigration is compelling America to study the languages, the history, the achievements, the religions, and the characteristics of these multitudes of people. Such study is imperative in order that America may adequately bear to the incoming millions the deepest message of her religion and her Western institutions. This fact in itself furnishes an intellectual and moral task of transcendent importance. On this continent the modern gift of tongues must be given if America fails not her Christ.