ABSTRACT
The religion of the churches and the religion of the republic existed side by side. Since they were regarded as mutually supportive, the distinction between them often was blurred. Still, the operating assumption was that the nation had its own independent religious vocation. The theoretical basis for distinguishing between the vocation of the nation and the vocation of churches had been developed in the 1640s by English Puritans, who were dismayed that religious differences should result in civil war. Congregationalists were a loose confederation of churches that enjoyed tax-supported status throughout New England in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. At the time of the formation of the new nation, the "three old denominations" of English Dissent, linked to one another by common adherence to the doctrines of the Westminster Confession, were the largest American denominations. In contrast to the Anglicans, they had survived the war with increased prestige, each having been strongly identified with the colonial cause.
