By coming together to organize alternative faiths in Massachusetts, the Quakers and the Baptists created unique communities that transcended the institutions around which life in the Bay colony ordinarily revolved. As scholars customarily emphasize, communal life in early New England typically centered on the town and its church. Sectaries defied the familiar patterns of association in turning their backs on these pervasive local institutions to identify with a sect.

Despite occupying a similar legal position in the colony and despite having been treated as similar by many historians, the Quakers and Baptists erected quite dissimilar spiritual communities bound together by equally divergent beliefs. In carving out enclaves within the colony, the Quakers reshaped an existing community, while the Baptists brought together people who had previously been without ties. Far from chance occurrences, these differences reflected the contrasting relationship of each faith to the colony's religious establishment. Rates of participation by men and women in these two sects may indicate gendered attitudes about what constituted a satisfying spiritual life. The distinctive beliefs of the sects – especially their respective views of the process of salvation — were integrally related to the character of their communities. Throughout the colonial period, the interplay between the doctrines and social characteristics of these movements shaped the day-to-day reality of sectarianism.

Initially, the Baptist community was scattered and the Quaker community was concentrated in one region partly because the Baptist faith, unlike that of the Quakers, arose in dialogue with the colonial establishment.