ABSTRACT
The Atlantic world was a dynamic, volatile, churning environment within which change was constant, conflict frequent, and cultural hybridity the rule. Ways of life traditional to one area of the Atlantic were carried to other areas, where in a process of adaptation they joined with local backgrounds to yield new cultural forms. Within that Atlantic world, in a complex and multifaceted cultural environment, religion in America acquired many of its distinctive and lasting features. The Portuguese and Spanish built a strong Atlantic presence during the 1500s, and during that time shipped millions of Africans to their South American and Caribbean colonies. The fact that the American colonies were English colonies meant, first of all, that the colonists in background if not always in active affiliation would be predominantly Protestant. "Puritan Protestantism forms properly the main trunk of the North American church," he declared in his inaugural address as professor of church history in the Mercersburg Theological Seminary.
