Early Colonies
This was the "official" and socially dominant church in the colonies of Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas.
What is the Church of England (or the Anglican Church)?
Religious revivals in colonial America tended to divide denominations and congregations into two factions; this name applied to those who took the revivals as signs of God's Providence and pushed for a "converted ministry" who could claim to have had a conversion experience.
What are "New Lights"?
This Protestant theologian's doctrines of God's sovereignty, total depravity, and predestination were the basis for the beliefs of American Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists.and various Reformed denominations.
Who is John Calvin?
This philosophical position, held by many of the Founding Fathers, rejected revelation as a source of divine knowledge, prized observation of the natural world, and put forward the idea of a "clockmaker God" who created, but did not intervene in, the universe.
What is Deism?
This Presbyterian minister and former lawyer, who underwent a personal conversion experience in 1821, stressed individual decisions for Christ, supported a variety of social reform movements, and devised "new measures" for the revivals he led in upstate New York during the 1830s -- such as an "anxious bench" to call out would-be converts in front of their congregations.
Who is Charles Grandison Finney?
This Puritan minister was expelled from Massachusetts and helped found the colony of Rhode Island on the basis of religious toleration.
Who is Roger Williams?
This denomination challenged the Anglican elite of Virginia by preaching without licences and leading revivals near rivers, where they would baptize converts in the open air.
Who are the Baptists?
This group, notable for their pacifism and relatively peaceable relations with Native Americans, played a dominant role in founding the colony of Pennsylvania.
Who are the Quakers?
Thomas Jefferson interpreted this passage of the American constitution as establishing a "wall of separation" between Church and State; others have interpreted it differently.
What is the Establishment Clause?
This region of western New York was so named because of its repeated susceptibility to the "fires" of revival and reform movements such as Mormonism, antimasonry, abolitionism, women's rights, and Finneyite evangelicalism.
What is the "burned-over district"?
Anne Hutchinson's Puritan opponents, in expelling her from Massachusetts, accused her of this form of heresy, literally meaning "against the law."
What is antinomian?
This cross-eyed, hyper-charismatic rock star of American evangelicalism was an Anglican minister who defied his colleagues in the Church of England to lead cross-denominational revivals in the 1740s.
Who is George Whitefield?
This group, founded in England and named for their ecstatic behavior during worship services, were known for their craftsmanship, simple living, commitment to celibacy, and leadership roles for women.
Who are Shakers?
This self-educated scholar of comparative religion wrote an account of the varieties of American beliefs and denominations, including Native American religious practices, in the 1780s.
Who is Hannah Adams?
This founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints published the Book of Mormon at age 24, which purported to be a revelatory history of early America.
Who is Joseph Smith?
This Catholic order, founded by Ignatius of Loyola during the Counter-Reformation, was known for their energetic missionary activities among the Native Americans in New France; they were suppressed in 1763.
Who are the Jesuits?
This Anglican minister, active on the South Carolina frontier in the 1760s, demanded obedience and good behavior from his parishioners, but frequently met with dissent, revivalistic passion, and even, once, a pile of excrement left on his church altar.
Who is Charles Woodmason?
This group, originating in Bohemia in the modern-day Czech Republic, established active missions among Native Americans in Pennsylvania and North Carolina; among their symbols are a lamb and a many-pointed, illuminated star.
Who are the Moravians?
This offshoot of the Congregational Church protested the doctrine of the Trinity, rejected original sin, and insisted that reason and faith were mutually consistent.
What is Unitarianism?
This military veteran of the War of 1812 founded a movement bearing his name on the basis of a prediction that the world would end in 1843; some of his followers later became the Seventh-Day Adventists.
Who is William Miller?
This Congregationalist theologian led revivals in Northampton, Massachusetts, during the 1730s and argued for the importance of emotion, as well as a sense of beauty and harmony, in religious conversion.
Who is Jonathan Edwards?
This evangelical denomination, the most populous of all American denominations in the period coming out the Revolution, was known for its large camp meeting revivals and "circuit rider" missionaries on the American frontier.
Who are Methodists?
This lecturer, poet, and essayist left his Unitarian pulpit to found the Transcendentalist movement, which stressed intuition and taught that divinity pervaded nature and humanity.
Who is Ralph Waldo Emerson?
This French aristocrat traveled to the U.S., witnessed the work of numerous religious denominations and small communities, and theorized the connection between American democracy and religious voluntarism in his book Democracy in America.
Who is Alexis De Tocqueville?