Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Editor's Introduction
- SECTION I BACKGROUND ON RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS – PRE-1500S
- SECTION II RELIGIONS IN THE POST-COLUMBIAN NEW WORLD – 1500–1680S
- SECTION III RELIGIOUS PATTERNS IN COLONIAL AMERICA – 1680S–1730S
- SECTION IV RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY IN BRITISH AMERICA – 1730S–1790
- SECTION V AMERICAN RELIGIONS IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
- SECTION VI THEMATIC ESSAYS
- 32 Religious Thought: The Pre-Columbian Era to 1790
- 33 Piety and Practice in North America to 1800
- 34 Sacred Music in Colonial America
- 35 Religious Architecture
- 36 Religion and Visuality in America: Material Economies of the Sacred
- 37 Religion and Race
- 38 Religions and Families in America: Historical Traditions and Present Positions
- 39 Religious History
- Index
- References
32 - Religious Thought: The Pre-Columbian Era to 1790
from SECTION VI - THEMATIC ESSAYS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Editor's Introduction
- SECTION I BACKGROUND ON RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS – PRE-1500S
- SECTION II RELIGIONS IN THE POST-COLUMBIAN NEW WORLD – 1500–1680S
- SECTION III RELIGIOUS PATTERNS IN COLONIAL AMERICA – 1680S–1730S
- SECTION IV RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY IN BRITISH AMERICA – 1730S–1790
- SECTION V AMERICAN RELIGIONS IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
- SECTION VI THEMATIC ESSAYS
- 32 Religious Thought: The Pre-Columbian Era to 1790
- 33 Piety and Practice in North America to 1800
- 34 Sacred Music in Colonial America
- 35 Religious Architecture
- 36 Religion and Visuality in America: Material Economies of the Sacred
- 37 Religion and Race
- 38 Religions and Families in America: Historical Traditions and Present Positions
- 39 Religious History
- Index
- References
Summary
A large number of early Americans thought often about religion. Until the 1770s, the most frequently published and reprinted books in the American colonies were sermons and religious treatises. But the colonists – and the Native Americans who preceded them – also differed about religion. It divided them. The most prolific producers of formal theology were the Calvinist clergy of New England, but Christian alternatives could be found among Catholics, Anglicans, Swedish and German Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Moravians, Baptists, Dutch Reformed, Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, Universalists, Gortonites, Rogerines, Shakers, and an assortment of even smaller groups like the Ephrata utopians or the Society of the Woman in the Wilderness. But Christian thought was far from the sole option. Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews, although lacking rabbis, preserved ancient traditions and practices along with many of the ideas embedded within them. Deists dispensed with notions of a special biblical revelation. Africans, most enslaved, some free, imported not only African traditional religions but also Christian and Muslim ideas; and more than 250 Native American societies interpreted their ritual practices and ethical injunctions with a vast collection of narratives and beliefs. Americans could also be eclectic, combining inherited traditions with strands of esoteric and metaphysical ideas that had different origins. The realm of religious thought was turbulent.
The diversity registered conflicting interpretations of scripture, opposing assessments of the authority of tradition, differing views about the value of primitive precedents, controversies about ritual, disputes over ethics, and incompatible attitudes toward the broader culture.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Religions in America , pp. 661 - 685Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000