ABSTRACT
This exploration of the first two centuries of American religious history has examined the relationship between the sociopolitical environment, gender politics, and a particular kind of religion. The environment was British North America: colonies founded by English settlers who displaced the native inhabitants through negotiation, warfare, and, inadvertently but most effectively, disease. Having established prosperous, secure settler communities, the expanding colonies wearied of their colonial status and, through declaration and war, freed themselves from British rule. The new nation constructed a constitutional republic and expanded popular participation in the government. While the society and its customs came directly out of village practice and the common law, this proto-English community was transformed by the people’s distance from England, the rigors and opportunities of the constantly moving frontier, their contact with the native population, and their importation and exploitation of Africans.
