Colonial America presented the greatest diversity of organized churches of any land on Earth.  The reason for such diversity was clear:  While 16th and 17th-century Europe was torn by theological dissension and wars, the vast trans-Atlantic colonies had offered a natural refuge for all the persecuted minorities, and at one time or another, every one of these groups had taken advantage of this offer.

By the 1770s, the largest single denomination were the Congregationalists, who traced their descent from the Puritans of early Massachusetts; all but a few of their more than 650 meeting houses, in fact, were still in New England.  The Presbyterians, latecomers to America during the massive Scotch-Irish migration of the 18th century, had meanwhile become the second largest denomination, with nearly 550 churches, most of them in the Middle Colonies.  The Baptists, founded in Rhode Island by Roger Williams, had since spread in every direction, until their 500 congregations had made them the third largest church in America.

The Church of England, the Anglican Church, was the oldest in America, and ranked fourth in membership.  Introduced by the settlers at Jamestown, Anglicanism had acquired followers throughout the colonies, though its principal base was the South, which held more than half its 480 churches.  The Methodists, who had just opened their first chapel in New York in 1767, were as yet merely a movement within Anglicanism, dedicated to preaching the Gospel to the humbler classes.  And the last of the major sects, the Society of Friends, the Quakers, had begun with William Penn’s Pennsylvania, but had meanwhile extended as far as North Carolina, Delaware, New Jersey, and Rhode Island with nearly 300 meeting places. These five denominations accounted for four-fifths of all Christian places of worship in America.

Among the German settlers in Pennsylvania there was a rich variety of sects all their own;  there were the Lutherans, the German Reformed Church, and the Moravians, who also had some offshoot congregations in the backcountry of the South.  In the interior of Pennsylvania, living mostly to themselves, were Pietist groups like the Dunkards, who sometimes were also called German Baptists;  there were the Mennonites and their Amish brothers, and the recently founded Shakers.  Surviving from New Netherland days, the Dutch Reformed Church still claimed about 120 churches in New York. Roman Catholics constituted an insignificant minority in the colonies, with its fifty churches centered mainly in Maryland. And beyond the pale of Christendom, some Jewish synagogues had lately come into being in Charleston, New York, Philadelphia, and Newport, its members mostly of Spanish and Portuguese blood.

In spite of such bewildering variety of religious organization, most church members held a few common theological ideas based on the Bible.  About 6,000 years earlier, in this nearly universal view, God had created Adam and Eve, the first mortals, together with the world in which they and their descendants were to live. In punishment for disobeying His commands, He then expelled them from the Garden of Eden and cursed all mankind with the original sin.  But through the crucifixion and mediation of Jesus, the son of God, they might escape everlasting damnation and attain salvation in an afterlife by becoming members of the true church.  God himself daily judged the actions of man and sought ceaselessly to save their souls from the blandishments of Satan.

Within this larger consensus there were minor theological differences. The mass of the churchgoers adhered to a modified  Calvinist doctrine; when John Calvin had preached unconditional predestination – that is, the Lord had “totally irrespective of human merit” foreordained certain elect persons to eternal bliss, and all others – the reprobate – to eternal torment.  But Puritan divines softened this stringent dogma by suggesting that those not initially elect might still achieve that status through righteous conduct and God’s saving grace.  In any case, the original Calvinist doctrine could not long have withstood the stubborn optimism and self-reliance of the American colonists.  This same Calvinism also applied to the Presbyterians, the Baptists, the Anglicans, and the Dutch Reformed.  Their essential differences came in other matters.

Of the principal religious bodies, the Quakers stood farthest from the Calvinist position.  The Friends sought God not in the Scriptures alone, but also in the dictates of the heart, relying primarily on their Inner Light to guide their steps in holiness.  Therefore they spurned all formal worship and clergy, allowing every member to speak out in meetings as the spirit moved them.  They, of course, refused to take oaths and, together with the Pietist sects, declined to bear arms and wore plain dress to symbolize Christian humility.

The most striking difference between the other groups appeared in other respects – in their organizational structure and their relationship with the secular governments.  Aside from the highly individualistic Quakers, there were three types of organizations.  At one extreme end stood the Congregationalists, who delegated complete authority to each of their individual congregations;  each governed itself, elected its own preachers and other officers, and conducted its affairs as it saw fit.  Interchurch conferences, or synods, were held from time to time, but they served mainly in an advisory capacity.  The Baptists, who had separated from the Congregationalists in a minor doctrinal dispute, followed the same system.

At the opposite end stood the Anglicans, or Episcopalians, who, when established as the Church of England after Henry VIII’s break with Rome, had modeled their organization on the Roman Catholic Church, though they eliminated the Pope and replaced him with the Archbishop of Canterbury as their spiritual leader.  Theirs was a system of centralized authority in which the bishops decided everything of importance for the lower clergy or the laity.  The colonies had originally come under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, who alone could ordain their ministers.  Distance, however, quickly weakened the bishop’s control over the colonial parishes so much that they acquired a dominance over church affairs unknown at home.  Virginians, especially, not only managed the church property, but soon appointed and dismissed parsons as well.  Accordingly they often came close to congregational self-government.

Halfway between these two systems lay the Presbyterians.  Unlike the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians, as they had done in Scotland, held to a common church government under the authority of synods of lay and ministerial members.  Unlike the Episcopalians, they rejected a graded clergy. placing them all on equal footing.  The Dutch and German Reformed Churches also followed this plans.

Paradoxically, the two sects that varied the most in internal structure were also the two most alike in their relationship with the civil authorities.  Both the Anglicans and the Congregationalists found a church-state connection perfectly natural, and each was so situated in certain colonies as to bring it about.  Anglicanism thus became the legally established church throughout the South, as well as in four southern counties of New York, with its revenues arising from the taxation of all the inhabitants regardless of religious affiliation – the very same system they had already known in England.  In Massachusetts, the Congregationalists at first held a comparable position, with even the suffrage being confined to church members, but at Britain’s insistence this voting restriction was gradually abolished, opening the way for the Quakers, Episcopalians, and Baptists to divert taxes to their own faiths.  Congregationalism was also established along similar lines in Connecticut and New Hampshire, and as late as 1776, nine of the thirteen colonies still provided financial support for one or more religious denominations.