ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores both the diversity and common elements among the many Native American religions. It focuses on British colonization and the origins of what would become the dominant religious force for centuries in the United States – the Protestant establishment. The book shows how in religious, and in political and economic, terms, British colonization was an extension of the English Reformation, both in its extension of that reformation and in the dissent it caused among colonists. It also explores the Great Awakening's impact on the generation of the American Revolution, relating New Light theology, millennial thought, and evangelical rhetoric to the growing disenchantment with what an increasing number of Americans saw as British immorality and corruption. The book examines the historical process by which disestablishment and the free exercise of religion were gradually realized at the state and national levels.
