Religion - History
New England’s colonial society was based on religious standing. The Puritans grew increasingly intolerant of dissenters who challenged the Puritans’ belief in the connection between religion and government. Rhode Island was founded by dissenters fleeing persecution by Puritans in Massachusetts. The middle colonies were home to multiple religious groups who generally believed in religious tolerance, including Quakers in Pennsylvania, Huguenots and Jews in New York, and Presbyterians in New Jersey. These colonies had more flexible social structures.
The crime of witchcraft was included in laws enacted by the parliament of England during Queen Elizabeth I's reign (1558-1603). Witchcraft and its penalty were thought to be the express law of God as stated in Exodus 22:18 (“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”), Leviticus 20:27 (“A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them”), and Deuteronomy 18: 10 (“There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch” (quotes from the Holy Bible, King James Version).
In each of the New England colonies, witchcraft was a capital crime that involved having some type of relationship with or entertaining Satan. The earliest laws of Connecticut and New Haven colonies, the Blue Laws, make it a capital offense for “any man or woman [to] bee a Witch, that is, hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit, they shall bee put to death.” Although the witchcraft crimes did not require any harm to result from this relationship or entertainment, in practice there had to be harm that warranted the effort and expense of a formal proceeding. In addition to a formal witchcraft charge, allegations of witchcraft were often the bases for civil suits for slander.
The religious persecution that drove settlers from Europe to the British North American colonies sprang from the conviction, held by Protestants and Catholics alike, that uniformity of religion must exist in any given society. This conviction rested on the belief that there was one true religion and that it was the duty of the civil authorities to impose it, forcibly if necessary, in the interest of saving the souls of all citizens. Nonconformists could expect no mercy and might be executed as heretics.
Pious Americans were shocked by Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, part of which was written during the great pamphleteer's imprisonment in Paris during the French Revolution. Although denounced as the "atheist's bible," Paine's work was actually an exposition of a radical kind of deism and made an attempt at critical biblical scholarship that anticipated modern efforts. Paine created a scandal by his sardonic and irreverent tone. Assertions that the virgin birth was "blasphemously obscene" and other similarly provocative observations convinced many readers that the treatise was the entering wedge in the United States of French revolutionary "infidelity."
The Southern colonies had a social structure based on family status and the ownership of land. Large landowners in the eastern lowlands dominated colonial government and society and maintained an allegiance to the Church of England and closer social ties to Britain than did those in the other colonies. In the mountains and valleys further inland, however, society was characterized by small subsistence farmers, hunters, and traders of Scots-Irish and English descent.
The “Great Awakening” was a religious movement that swept both Europe and the colonies during the mid-1700s. It led to the rapid growth of evangelical religions, such as Methodist and Baptist, and challenged the established religious and governmental orders. It laid one of the social foundations for the American Revolution.
The Methodist Circuit rider, ministering to the most remote, inhospitable parts of the nation, was one of the most familiar symbols of the "evangelical empire" in the United States. Tocqueville's impression of American attitudes toward the relation of government and religion was formed on his tour of the United States in the early 1830s during the high tide of evangelicalism: "I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion; for who can read the human heart? but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society."
For centuries, America has stood throughout the world as a beacon of religious diversity and pluralism. People of many faiths, creeds, and backgrounds arrived on American shores in search of protection, freedom, and opportunity. The framers of the Constitution ensured that there shall be no religious test for public office, and they placed religious freedom as the first right listed in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, with its dual protections ensuring that the government shall not take sides in religious matters, and that free religious exercise would be protected.
America has not always lived up to the promise of religious freedom and equal treatment for all. Roman Catholics and Mormons in the 19th century, Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries, and many others have experienced discrimination – and even at times persecution. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, Muslims, as well as individuals perceived to be Muslim, including Sikhs, Hindus, Arabs, Middle Easterners, and South Asians, continue to face discrimination and violence.
The Holiness and Pentecostal movements movements were perhaps the most dynamic religious movements to appear since the Great Revival. Like the early evangelical movement, these were egalitarian and biracial. Members of the Holiness and Pentecostal sects emphasized the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit, relied on biblical primitivism, and disdained material wealth. Churches like the Seventh-Day Adventist, the Assemblies of God, and Church of Christ grew rapidly during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Religion was a major part of the Civil Rights Movement for blacks and for whites. Both proponents and opponents of the Civil Rights Movement understood their stances in religious terms, and both saw themselves as upholding a divinely ordained social order.
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