ABSTRACT
The American South's religious history, has, however, been defined more by discontinuity and diversity than by continuity and conformity. Since the sixteenth century, the South has served as a site of religious interchange and innovation. European colonists encountered a new religious landscape in the Southeast dominated by the religious beliefs of Southeastern Indians. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European immigration and the Atlantic slave trade contributed to dramatic changes in religious practices among Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans in the "Atlantic South". The early South comprised a remarkably diverse assortment of religious beliefs and practices. A key shaper of slaves' religious practices was African religious beliefs and practices. The religious practices of slaves were not only influenced by evangelical Protestantism and African traditional religious beliefs, but also by a diverse set of beliefs ranging from Catholicism to Islam. Transformations in African Americans' religious practices reshaped the South's religious practices.
