ABSTRACT
When and where does one begin a basic survey of religion in America? As we saw in the previous chapter, there’s no one answer to this question. Popular narratives often start with the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock or the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution. Today, most scholars base the origins of American religious history in the times and places that preceded the European colonization of North America. That’s why this chapter opens with the religious worlds of Native Americans and Africans, those who would be most affected by the disruptive consequences of colonialism. We then reflect upon circumstances in Europe that fueled the imperial ambitions of Spain, France, and England to colonize what they conceived as a “New World,” a chief factor being the Protestant Reformation. The cultural collision of Native American, African, and European religions in colonial America demonstrates the range of Catholic and Protestant responses to life during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By the eighteenth century, we see how a brand of Protestantism known as evangelicalism surfaced and ultimately permeated the British colonies along the Atlantic coast, in many ways contributing to the gradual formation of a national identity with deep roots in Christianity and continued ties to Native American and African peoples.
