ABSTRACT
From 1660 to 1745, commentators on the New World wrote in unprecedented numbers about their impressions of the American landscape through a prism of religion and theology. The situation is further complicated by an examination of the difference between organised theological belief and more popular occult practices. In Carolina the Lords Proprietors tried to make Anglicanism the established religion, much to the dismay of dissenters in the colony. The symbolic representation of North America as God's plantation is a feature in many ministers' writings. The series of revivals, known collectively as the 'Great Awakening', changed the religious interpretation of the landscape and contributed to the development of a unique identity among American settlers. A few years later George Whitefield arrived from England and turned these local awakenings into an inter-colonial event. William Seward, a gentleman who accompanied, promoted and financed George Whitefield on his travels in America wrote another pragmatic narrative.
