Robert Bruce Mullin (A World History of Christianity, North America) says that the North American colonies were founded as part of the great outpouring of religious excitement associated with the Reformation era. Of the religious traditions brought from England in the seventeenth century, the Puritan experience was to have the most far-reaching effects. They saw the Church of England as incompletely reformed in a number of areas. Colonial Anglicanism, for its part, discarded the emphasis on theology and emphasised reason, balance, human freedom and morality.
The Great Awakening brought about both religious and political changes in the middle of the eighteenth century. An important effect here was known as Pietism, with an emphais on piety and a zeal for missionary activity.
Slavery had existed in English-speaking America since 1619, but already in the eighteenth century many were finding themselves uneasy with the institution. Quakers led the way in attacking it, and some theologians such as Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803) also criticized the practice. By the end of the eighteenth century there was an increasing consensus, in both the North and the South, that slavery was in some ways a blot upon the republic.
Southerners saw the institution of slavery as their 'peculiar institution' and as a foundation for their distinctive way of life. Southern religious figures claimed that slavery was a positive good and a Christian institution. Northerners found this a difficult argument to counter, as a close reading of Scripture demonstrated that the biblical authors seemed to accept slavery as an institution and nowhere explicitly condemned it, and this theological question became a troubling aspect of the American crisis. The Presbyterian theologian Chades Hodge insisted, "nothing is obligatory upon the conscience but what [the Bible] enjoins; nothing can be sin but what it condemns." If there had been an emphasis on human freedom, this emphasis by now excluded those held in slavery.
The eighteenth century was also the time of the Enlightenment, a time when old religious certainties were being questioned. Several of the Founding Fathers appear to have rejected Christianity in favour of Deism, belief in a God who, having created the world, took no further interest in it. Thomas Jefferson went as far as to produce the "Jefferson Bible", which contained the biblical moral teachings, but rejected all talk of miracles and the divinity of Jesus. Humanists had become too closely associated with the French Revolution, and in its aftermath, Enlightenment thought became seen as inappropriate. Deism became unfashionable.
Late nineteenth century American Protestants seemed to take the question of evolution remarkably in their stride, but the era of the First World War brought about a dramatic reveral, with evolution seen as undergirding a naturalistic world-view, and undermining the idea of a Christian democracy. Throughout the early 1920s a number of southern state legislatures began to pass legislation banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. In 1921, the Tennessee law was challenged in the now-famous Scopes Trial. Nevertheless, the United States remains the principal region of opposition to the concept of evolution.
Many Puritans did not like the new ideas,so the Presbyterians split the groups into "old lights",people who disagreed with the revivals,and "new lights",people who favored them.
hoho
Most of the early colonists were colonists because of religion. They were not colonists first and religionists second. They were religionists first and that resulted in their becoming colonists.
The first religion that was recorded in Delaware was brought by the Swedish colonists. This first religion in 1631 in Delaware was recorded as being Catholic.
The majority of colonists who came to America for religious freedom. Most of the Plymouth colonists practiced the Quaker religion.
Muslims believed in Islam ....
Yes, religion is what fueled them to want to convert others. Take Nigeria for example: British "colonists" were concerned with spreading Christianity among tribes of the Igbo. That is how colonists first impacted the populations they colonized- by establishing the more powerful religions at the time and converting those with what seemed to be uncivilized beliefs.
Iran is first I believe, then India.
When the American colonists arrived here from Britain, two major rights were important to them. The first right was freedom of speech, and the second was freedom of religion.
If you are not sure what you believe, I would ask why you believe you need a religion at all. Not being sure what you believe means you are probably agnostic, and need do nothing to remain an agnostic. If you have no conviction that there is a deity or controlling spirit, then you could look at what you really do believe already. Do not join a religion or cult unless you genuinely believe the teachings of that religion or cult. Do some research first and then choose a religion that makes the most sense to you.
No. Judaism is the first known monotheistic religion.
Depending on what religion you are i believe. For Christians it was Adam and Eve, and so on...
Christianity. Catholicism was the first ever sect of Christianity.