First Freedom: The Fight for Religious Liberty Page #4

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in the 1750s,

it left more churches

but not more church-goers.

So somewhat surprisingly

in America

in the mid-18th century,

somewhere around

20% to 30%, at the most,

of European American colonists

had any kind

of significant relationship

with a Christian congregation.

Mitchell:

It was in this era,

a time when evangelism had

ripped through America,

uniting it but then departing,

that a very different kind

of passion began

to take hold of the colonies.

This time

the fervor was political.

It would lead,

in the end, to revolution,

and that revolution,

in turn, would lead

to an unprecedented freedom

of religious faith.

Mitchell:
The founding fathers

would try to unite

13 colonies into a country,

yet unity was,

in a sense, unnatural.

Religion mattered,

and in terms of religion,

America was strikingly diverse.

Butler:
On the Eve

of the revolution,

no single denomination

held a majority.

In fact, the numbers

were very tiny.

Congregationalists were the

largest single denomination.

They comprised only 22%

of all religiously

affiliated colonists.

Next were the presbyterians,

less than that.

Next was the church of england.

Meacham:
There were baptists,

there were quakers,

there were christians

of every kind of denomination,

there were hugely patriotic

Jewish Americans.

You also have a number

of slave religions

that have disappeared.

Bonomi:
Lutherans,

German reform, the Dutch reform.

Robert p. George:

That makes us really unique.

It certainly made us unique

in the 18th century,

where peoplehood

was the result of having

a common ethnic bond

or tribal bond

or national bond or something

along those lines.

No European society looked

like this at all.

In every European society,

there was a dominant group

that by law could claim

the membership

of virtually everyone,

and then there were some

very small minorities.

America turned that topsy-turvy.

Mitchell:
But diversity was

not a recipe for tranquility.

Religious clashes among

the sects were common

and occasionally violent.

The prosperous

and powerful colony

of Virginia was

in a sense typical.

Before the revolution,

the preeminent political voice

was the radical Patrick Henry.

Henry pushed a series

of anti-British resolves

through the house of burgesses

with inflammatory rhetoric,

but Henry's own wife was

not given a Christian burial

because her mental illness

was thought to be

the work of the devil.

True toleration

and religious freedom

were not even up for debate.

Butler:
The church of england

sought through local authorities

to ban the activities of both

presbyterians and baptists.

[Bang bang bang]

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