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The Churches as Moral Courts of the Frontier1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

William W. Sweet
William W. Sweet
Affiliation:
The University of Chicago
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Extract

We Americans have been inclined to over-idealize the frontier period of our history, and have been perhaps too ready to resent any implication of unwonted moral laxity among the pioneers. It is now universally known that the great majority of the people who colonized the Atlantic seaboard came from the lower stratum of European society, and only a comparatively few represented the best in education and culture. Throughout the entire colonial period, at least until the colonial Awakenings, the great mass of the lower classes were little influenced by organized religion, and only a very small proportion of the total population of the thirteen colonies were members of the colonial churches. At the end of the colonial period there were undoubtedly more unchurched people in North America, in proportion to the population, than were to be found in any other land in Christendom.

Type
Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , March 1933 , pp. 3 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1933

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References

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