ABSTRACT
This chapter opens with an explanation as to why attempts to establish a British Protestant empire in North America were delayed and almost immediately ran afoul, not only of resistance from native inhabitants, but also of an unanticipated struggle with dissent and religious diversity. It then addresses the first of the great religious revivals that would periodically mark the course of American history and which, in the eighteenth century, in combination with the growing religious diversity of the British colonies, began the transformation of the thirteen British colonies into something distinctly American.
