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From Coercion to Persuasion: Another Look at the Rise of Religious Liberty and the Emergence of Denominationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Sidney E. Mead
Sidney E. Mead
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

So far as religious affairs are concerned, the colonial period of our history begins with the planting of the first permanent English colony in 1607, guided by the intention to perpetuate in the new land the religious patterns to which the mother country had grown accustomed. Chief of these for our purposes was uniformity enforced by the civil power. The period culminates just 180 years later with the complete rejection of this central intention in the provisions for national religious freedom in the Constitution (1787) and First Amendment (1791).

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , December 1956 , pp. 317 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1956

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References

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47. In a previous article in this Journal (December 1954) I discussed the nature of the denominational organization and the almost complete triumph of denominationalism during the first half of the nineteenth century.