The Charm Of Faith And The Strength Of Social Capital: The Two Pillars Of American Religious Charitable Organizations

American society is a unique culture entity. Besides the most developed capital economy and the impressive individualism, American social culture has strong characters on religion and philanthropy. Like other parts of American social culture, both of them which American is proud of become important to define self-identity of American society. And the most typical consolidation of these two factors is American religious charity.The earliest immigration from British where was dominated by Puritanism brought the seeds of religion and philanthropy to North America, and these seeds began to grow within the process of American civilization. During the very early time, under the control of religion, religious philanthropy emphasized on religion much more than social service. However, because of the mature of civil society and the diversity in American faith super market, the domination of religion began to fade in many social fields. Following this trend, religious philanthropy gradually separated from churches, and became the professional charity organizations focusing more on social caring service. But still they have contact with religion from faith to interaction with church. Nowadays, religious charity can be found all around America.How can religious charity survive and develop in American society? I will try to discuss this task in this thesis to inspire further research. The assumption of mine is there are two factors to support American religious charity. One is the spiritual power of faith in philanthropy, and the other is the outstanding ability to get social capital of religious charity.This thesis will include six parts: the introduction, the four-part main body and the conclusion. The introduction will recount to the origin of this topic, the related academic discourse. The first chapter will define what American religious charity is, and brief the history of American religious philanthropy. The second chapter will analyze spiritual contact between faith and philanthropy, which is the faith power to promote religious charity. And the third chapter will unfold the strength of religious charity in social network and inter-trust using social capital theory as a tool. The forth chapter will refer to the challenge and opportunities faced by religious under globalization. At last there will be a conclusion to summarize.