Reference
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American Revolution, religion andAmericans drew upon religion to serve a number of tasks during the Revolutionary War (1775–83). In the process, they established a pattern for interpreting military conflict prominent throughout much of American history. Religion shaped the yearning for revolution and the language by which revolutionary hopes were expressed. In addition, church pulpits provided a ready forum for articulating revolutionary support or opposition. Many Americans also understood the Revolution itself, which drew upon the powerful themes of new birth and freedom from bondage, as a form of religious experience. Finally, the Revolution greatly influenced the development of American civil religion, as continuing generations have looked to their revolutionary birth as a source of national identity and purpose.
The yearning for revolution emerged out of two mainstreams of thought regarding social and political order: Puritanism and the Enlightenment views of liberals like John Locke and radical Whigs, who often combined Protestant dissent with republican political theory. Colonial Americans had come to think right political order was ordained by God, which allowed for the formation of critical views of political power: Power could be unjust. In the Calvinist (see Calvinism) tradition prominent in 17th-century England, humans were not obligated to suffer unjust authority, but rather were capable of modifying existing institutions to make them accord more with the divine will.
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Credo Reference is an easy-to-use tool for starting research. Gather background information on your topic from hundreds of full-text encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, quotations, and subject-specific titles, as well as 500,000+ images and audio files and over 1,000 videos.
Primary Sources
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Religion and the Founding of the American RepublicPrimary source materials from the Library of Congress on religion and the founding of the American republic.
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Colonial ReligionA collection of primary sources on colonial religion from the Digital Public Library of America.
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The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents 1610 to 1791This site contains the entire English translation of the The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, originally compiled and edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites and published by The Burrows BrothersCompany, Cleveland, throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century.
Online Resources
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Anne Bradstreet's Family Plots: Puritanism, Humanism, PosthumanismThis article explores the interface between textuality and materiality—of bodies, things, and places—in Bradstreet's writings, an intersection where Bradstreet resists and revises the spiritual metaphors of the male coterie within which she produced and published her poems, turning them instead toward living engagements with place.
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The political system of the United States of America and congregationalism (puritanism)The political system of the United States of America has derived from a variant (faction) of Protestant Christianity, Congregationalism or Puritanism, which emphasizes the importance of the Old Testament Judaism and the doctrine of predestination (pre-determination). As such, Puritanism played an essential role in the emergence of the American type of democracy and the cruel colonization of the present-day territory of the United States.
Streaming Media
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English Settlement: Episode 2—A Biography of AmericaAs the American character begins to take shape in the early seventeenth century, English settlements develop in New England and Virginia. Their personalities are dramatically different. Professor Miller explores the origins of values, cultures, and economies that have collided in the North and South throughout the American story.
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The Trial of Anne HutchinsonThere was no toleration of religious dissent in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1600s. And there certainly was no room for religious argument for a woman! When Anne Hutchinson shared with others her religious ideas and gathered a following, the governor put her on trial for heresy. Explore the trials, defense, and punishment of the woman sometimes called "America’s first feminist."
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Religious Toleration in Colonial America?Learn the key elements of a broadened approach to the study of history with this fast-moving examination of the origins of religious and racial tolerance in America. Grasp how the assumptions you've long held can differ dramatically from historical reality.
Perspectives
The Founders on Religion
What did the founders of America think about religion? Until now, there has been no reliable and impartial compendium of the founders' own remarks on religious matters that clearly answers the question. This book fills that gap. A lively collection of quotations on everything from the relationship between church and state to the status of women, it is the most comprehensive and trustworthy resource available on this timely topic. The book calls to the witness stand all the usual suspects--George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams--as well as many lesser known but highly influential luminaries, among them Continental Congress President Elias Boudinot, Declaration of Independence signer Charles Carroll, and John Dickinson, "the Pennsylvania Farmer." It also gives voice to two founding "mothers," Abigail Adams and Martha Washington. The founders quoted here ranged from the piously evangelical to the steadfastly unorthodox. Some were such avid students of theology that they were treated as equals by the leading ministers of their day. Others vacillated in their conviction. James Madison's religious beliefs appeared to weaken as he grew older. Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, seemed to warm to religion late in life. This compilation lays out the founders' positions on more than seventy topics, including the afterlife, the death of loved ones, divorce, the raising of children, the reliability of biblical texts, and the nature of Islam and Judaism. Partisans of various stripes have long invoked quotations from the founding fathers to lend credence to their own views on religion and politics. This book, by contrast, is the first of its genre to be grounded in the careful examination of original documents by a professional historian. Conveniently arranged alphabetically by topic, it provides multiple viewpoints and accurate quotations. Readers of all religious persuasions--or of none--will find this book engrossing.
Faithful Bodies
In the seventeenth-century English Atlantic, religious beliefs and practices played a central role in creating racial identity. English Protestantism provided a vocabulary and structure to describe and maintain boundaries between insider and outsider. In this path-breaking study, Heather Miyano Kopelson peels back the layers of conflicting definitions of bodies and competing practices of faith in the puritan Atlantic, demonstrating how the categories of "white," "black," and "Indian" developed alongside religious boundaries between "Christian" and "heathen" and between "Catholic" and "Protestant." Faithful Bodies focuses on three communities of Protestant dissent in the Atlantic World: Bermuda, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. In this "puritan Atlantic," religion determined insider and outsider status: at times Africans and Natives could belong as long as they embraced the Protestant faith, while Irish Catholics and English Quakers remained suspect. Colonists' interactions with indigenous peoples of the Americas and with West Central Africans shaped their understandings of human difference and its acceptable boundaries. Prayer, religious instruction, sexual behavior, and other public and private acts became markers of whether or not blacks and Indians were sinning Christians or godless heathens. As slavery became law, transgressing people of color counted less and less as sinners in English puritans' eyes, even as some of them made Christianity an integral part of their communities. As Kopelson shows, this transformation proceeded unevenly but inexorably during the long seventeenth century.
Strangers and Pilgrims
Margaret Meuse Clay, who barely escaped a public whipping in the 1760s for preaching without a license; "Old Elizabeth," an ex-slave who courageously traveled to the South to preach against slavery in the early nineteenth century; Harriet Livermore, who spoke in front of Congress four times between 1827 and 1844--these are just a few of the extraordinary women profiled in this, the first comprehensive history of female preaching in early America. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Catherine Brekus examines the lives of more than a hundred female preachers--both white and African American--who crisscrossed the country between 1740 and 1845. Outspoken, visionary, and sometimes contentious, these women stepped into the pulpit long before twentieth-century battles over female ordination began. They were charismatic, popular preachers, who spoke to hundreds and even thousands of people at camp and revival meetings, and yet with but a few notable exceptions--such as Sojourner Truth--these women have essentially vanished from our history. Recovering their stories, Brekus shows, forces us to rethink many of our common assumptions about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American culture.
Puritan Family
The Puritans came to New England not merely to save their souls but to establish a "visible" kingdom of God, a society where outward conduct would be according to God's laws. This book discusses the desire of the Puritans to be socially virtuous and their wish to force social virtue upon others.