NEW WORLD FAITHS, Religion in Colonial America
For reading a book, Please sign in to your account.
loginColonial America has always seemed an especially religious place. This identity derives from accounts of Spanish and French missions in the Caribbean, California, and Canada, of Puritans entertaining American Indians at Thanksgiving, and of Quakers establishing a tolerant society in Pennsylvania. In fact, the religious vitality of early America stretched far beyond these typical and sometimes mythical scenes. From the early 1600s to the American Revolution, colonial North America and the Caribbean teemed with an abundance of religions. The Spanish and French sought to conquer natives with missions and arms alike. American Indians and enslaved Africans transformed their own traditional religious practices, often under diffi cult circum-stances. In Britain’s mainland colonies, Philadelphia emerged as a capital of American Protestantism, and new church buildings and new religious patterns, including revivals, utterly trans-formed the pre-Revolutionary spiritual landscape.
