United States People

A

History of Religion in the United States

Native Americans had many religious beliefs, but most groups believed in a world of spirits (see Native American Religions). These spirits inhabited plants and animals, mountains and rivers, and tribes, clans, and individuals. The spirits might require prayer, sacrifices, dances and songs, or thanks. Every major event—killing game, planting corn, or acquiring an adult name—required interaction with the spirit world. There were benevolent spirits and protective spirits, as well as trickster spirits who caused sickness and misfortune. Native Americans did not believe that people were superior to the natural world, but held that people had to protect and maintain the spirits in their environment. Certain men and women were given the task of memorizing the religious heritage of the group. From a European point of view, these religions were merely superstitions and had to be eliminated. By the end of the 19th century, most Native Americans belonged to one of the Christian sects. In the 20th century, tribal groups are concerned with preserving and reinvigorating their spiritual traditions.

A

1

Religion in the Colonies

One of the stated purposes of European colonization was to spread Christianity. The charter of the London Company, formed in 1606 to establish colonies in the New World, called for English settlers to convert native peoples to the Anglican faith (see the Church of England). The goal was not only to strengthen the Church of England, but also to counter the influence of Catholic Spain and France. Catholic missionaries were actively trying to convert Native Americans in the southwest and far west of the territory that is now the United States, as well as in neighboring Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. In truth, some of the earliest colonists were too busy looking for land or gold or seeking profits from tobacco to pay much attention to making converts. The conflict between the search for wealth and spiritual interests continued beyond the colonial period. The fact that Native Americans were not Christian became a convenient excuse for white settlers to seize their land.

A1

a

Northern Colonies

During the 17th century, New England became a religious refuge for Protestant followers of John Calvin, whose beliefs differed from those of the Church of England. One such group, the Pilgrims, established the Plymouth Colony in 1620 to escape persecution in England. The Puritans, another Calvinist sect, arrived nine years later in Massachusetts. The Puritans eventually absorbed the Pilgrims and spread into Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, upstate New York, and eastern Ohio. The religious freedom these pioneers sought for themselves, however, was not extended to others. They allowed only Puritan churches, which were supported by taxes, and only church members had political rights. Advocates of other beliefs were punished, sometimes harshly.

This emphasis on conformity led some members to break away and move to new colonies. Roger Williams, a Puritan clergyman, founded the colony of Rhode Island after being expelled from Massachusetts in 1635 because he disagreed with the colonial government. There he established the principles of separation of church and state, religious toleration for all, and freedom of religious expression. After 1680 Puritans were forced by changes in English law to tolerate other Christian churches in their midst, but taxes still went to the established church. Massachusetts did not achieve separation of church and state until 1833, the last state in the union to do so.

---

---

A1

b

Southern Colonies

In the southern colonies, brothers Cecilius and Leonard Calvert established a refuge in Maryland in the 1630s for Roman Catholics persecuted in England. The Calvert family declared freedom of religion for all Christians in their colony. In the rest of the colonial south, the Anglican Church was established by law. In general, however, southern colonists provided minimal support for their churches, which were often without ministers. After the middle of the 18th century, Baptist and Methodist ministers converted large numbers of settlers to their denominations, particularly the poorer ones and slaves.

The slaves the southern settlers brought into the colonies were usually non-Christian, although a few had been baptized as Roman Catholic. Colonists felt free to enslave Africans because they were not Christians. For the first century of slavery, from the early 17th century to the early 18th century, most Southern states made it a crime to baptize slaves, because slaveholders feared they would have to free slaves if they became their brothers and sisters in Christ.

In the first half of the 18th century, missionaries from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts were able to baptize some slaves as Anglicans. Many slaves, however, became Baptists or Methodists rather than Anglicans like their owners. Because Baptists and Methodists did not insist on the freeing of slaves, plantation owners were persuaded to change laws forbidding the Christianization of slaves. Special Bibles written for slaves stressed obedience. Slaves created hymns and a theology of freedom, however, to counter the proslavery lessons of white preachers. Over time, separate black religions developed among slaves that combined some elements of African practice with Baptist and Methodist theology.

A1

c

Middle Colonies

The first Europeans to settle in the middle colonies (Delaware, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) during the 17th century were Dutch and Swedish Lutherans. Quaker William Penn provided for full religious freedom in Pennsylvania after he was granted a colony there in 1681, although Catholics and Jews could not vote. Calvinists, Jews, Moravians, German Lutherans, and Roman Catholics quickly followed the Quakers to Pennsylvania because of its religious freedom (see Calvinism, Moravian Church, Society of Friends). New York provided for locally established churches, with each town voting on which church its tax money would support. There was limited religious freedom in New Jersey.

The wider toleration in the middle colonies promoted the free expression of a variety of religious and nonreligious beliefs and practices, a social order thought to be impossible among Europeans who were used to centuries of religious warfare. This toleration encouraged both ethnic and religious diversity. These colonies provided a model for the later religious tradition of the United States—a slow realization that the freedom to express one’s own faith depended on granting that same liberty to others.

Freedom of religion helped produce religious revivals that transformed the American religious landscape. The First Great Awakening began among the Presbyterians in New Jersey and western Massachusetts, and with the newer denominations of Baptists and Methodists in the 1730s. This period of heightened concern with salvation lasted until the eve of the American Revolution in the 1760s. In individual congregations, in colleges, and in mass outdoor meetings, revivalists preached that all could be born again and saved, and that anyone could preach, not just an educated elite. The Great Awakening was instrumental in converting slaves as well as free people.

The Great Awakening set the stage for the American Revolution by undermining faith in traditional authority, particularly the authority of the Church of England and the king, who was head of the church. In the early days of the movement, working men, women, and African Americans took prominent roles as Bible teachers and prayer group leaders. Working men, in particular, acquired leadership experience that propelled them into political roles during and after the American Revolution.