Religion is an essential and complex facet of the American psyche. He plays a key role in supporting the ideal of American exceptionalism, from independence to the present day. Religion also plays a role in national identification through the “Americanization” of religion. The emergence of transcendentalism, cults, evangelical sects, and Christian Zionism were all the result of both the “Americanization” of the faith and American exceptionalism. The importance of religion to America as a nation means that religion enjoys certain freedoms that make it difficult to pass laws regulating it. The First and Fourteenth Amendments essentially protect the establishment of any religion and the freedom to exercise that religion, while creating a distinctly separate church and state. The religious freedom granted in these amendments has changed over time, but not dramatically. Transcendentalism was the first distinctively American spiritual philosophy. It emerged in the late 1820s as a radically democratic response to religion following the suppression of state religion. He rejected many of the constructs of modern America in the industrial age and encouraged man to be socially conscious, promoting opposition to slavery and support for women's suffrage. It is because of the religious freedoms granted to Americans in the First Amendment that a religious movement like this can emerge. Transcendentalism helped express many of the ideals so valued in modern America. Through his 1855 version of “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman embodies the American national from a transcendentalist perspective. The notion of what it means to be American is expressed through the recurring image of the leaf in the middle of a paper......by Paul Thomas Anderson, United States of America, Annapurna Pictures, 2012Van Schaick versus Church of Scientology, 535F. Supplement. 1125 (D. Mass, 1982). Jean G. Zorn, “Cults and the Ideology of Individualism in First Amendment Discourse,” Journal of Law and Religion, 7, 2, (1989), p. 494-495. Jean G. Zorn, “Cults and ideology of individuality” p. 500-501. Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Spirit, (Michigan: Wm. B Berdmans Publishing Co., 1994) p. 4.Roe v Wade, 410 US 113 (1973) Paul Boyer, ed. Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer, “The Evangelical Resurgence in 1970s American Protestantism,” in Rightward Bound, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008.) p. 41. Paul Boyer, “The evangelical resurgence in American Protestantism of the 1970s”, p, 47. Paul Boyer, “The evangelical resurgence in American Protestantism of the 1970s”, p.,49.