RELIGION-THE COLONIAL PERIOD. The re ligious life of the United States has been pro foundly affected by the fact that the period of the early settlement of this continent coincided with the great religious struggles in Europe of the seventeenth century. It was the reform within the Catholic Church, following the great Pro testant schism, that started the Orders of that Church on their proselyting erusades, which from New Spain in the Southwest and New France in the North, extended into territory now embraced within the United States. The divisions among the Protestants themselves re sulted in the planting of most of the English colonies, and determined that their future de velopment should lie along the line of multi plicity of sects, with extreme local independence. Puritanism, within and without the Established Church. was the prevailing influence among these colonists. In Virginia its intlueneewas overthrown soon after the Cavalier immigration of the Crom wellian era. Maryland, settled under Catholic leadership, always retained a dominant Puritan element- in its population. The same was true of the and later of Georgia, although, as in almost all the Southern colonies, the official class belonged to the Church of England. In New England for more than half a century the Puritans, outside of Rhode Island. consti tuted a veritable theocracy, in which citizenship was synonymous with church membership. Those settlers who passed from New England to the other colonies usually bore with them a modified form of Puritanism, which reappeared in the early Presbyterian development of the middle colonies, and in the development farther south. The religious influence of the early Dutch settlers of New York was never very strong, and before the colony passed into English control it was known as a most mixed sectarian centre. In New Jersey and Pennsylvania the Quaker ele ment. although early abdicating political control, continued to be the leading social factor.
Throughout the colonial period the Puritans exercised almost undisputed religious sway in New England, while members of the Established Church nominally did the same for the Southern colonies. In the middle colonies no one sect ac
quired a hegemony. Here the diversified Eng lish sects were quickly joined by Huguenots from France. Palatines, Salzburgers, and Moravians from Germany, Covenanters from Scotland, and the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. To a much more limited extent many of these immigrants settled in the Carolinas and Georgia, but their chief irruption into the South was by the way of the Appalachian highlands. In this early sectarian diversity the middle colonies, more than those of any other section, were most typieal of the succeeding development of the whole country. During the first century and a quarter of settle ment there was naturally little of common re ligious experiences in the colonies. Some con scientious attempts were made to convert the Indians. of which the most important was the work of 'The President and Society for the Prop agation of the Gospel in New England.' The 'Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,' a Church of England organiza tion. founded in 1701, did an important. work in the middle and southern colonies. The most im portant religious experience of the eighteenth cen tury was the 'Great Awakening,' centring about 1740. which profoundly affected all of the col onies. led to an extension of ehurch-building, the founding of Princeton College as the result of a great Presbyterian development in the middle colonies, and the firm establishment of Baptist preeminence in the South. Beeause of some un wise practices not wholly avoidable, dissensions were introduced among the existing sects, yet the movement as a whole was most beneficial, not merely because it stamped upon American church life a strong evangelistic and missionary character, but because it led the way to the later establishment of full religions toleration. The later part of the colonial period was character ized by the rapid development of Presbyterianism, the formal establishment of the Reformed and Lutheran ehurches among the Germans. and the beginning of .Methodism—all within the middle and southern colonies. See CONGREGA TIONALISM.