Chapter Outlines

Jon Butler
"Religion in Colonial America"
Religion in American Life: A Short History

Chapter 1:

• Introduction: Four Vignetts: 
  • Native American
  • Huguenot
  • slave
  • revival experience
• The complicated nature of religion in Europe and America
• Religion in 17th century England
• Magic
• Dominance of institutionalized religion in European society
• What the new world meant to Catholics, Protestants and Jews
• The nature of African religion
• Religion of the Native American
• Conclusion

Chapter 2: Catholic missions to America, 17th - 18th century

• Spanish and Portuguese missionary work among Native Americans
  • Dominicans
  • Franciscans
• French missionary work among Native Americans
  • Jesuit in the Caribbean
  • Jesuits in Canada
  • French missionaries in Louisiana Territory

Chapter 3: Religion in the first English colonies - New England and the Chesapeake

• Introduction:
  • Puritans in Massachusetts
  • Church of England in Virginia
  • Catholics in Maryland
• Puritans
  • Religion in New England after 1666
  • Magic and the Salem witch trials
• Religion in the Chesapeake (Maryland and Virginia)

Chapter 4: Early diversity

• Introduction: some statistics
• Huguenots: Protestants from France
• German speaking immigrants
  • Lutherans
  • the Reformed church
  • sectarians (Brethren, Moravian)
• Jews
• Methodists from England
• Growth among Quakers
• English Baptists and Scotch Presbyterians
• Splintering of groups
• Magical practices and witches
• conclusion

Chapter 5: Native American and African American religion

• Introduction: insights from burial sites
• Native American religion
  • interaction with Puritans in New England
  • interaction with Catholic Jesuit missionaries
  • interaction with other Christian missionaries
  • response to missionary work
• African Americans (slaves)
  • efforts to Christianize slaves
  • African rites that survived
  • post 1760 - interaction with Baptists and Methodists

Chapter 6: Expansion and the Great Awakening

• Expansion of congregations
  • 1680 - 1710
  • 1710 - 1770
• Administrative councils and denominational institutions develop
• Church architecture
• Revivalism
  • George Whitefield
  • Jonathan Edwards
  • Characteristics of the Great Awakening
• Women's roles in religion

Chapter 7: Revolution and the first amendment

• Introduction: The first amendment
• The "Bishop Question"
• The Whig party
• Clergy speak for and against revolution
• millennialism
• the effect of the revolution on various denominations
• post war religious resurgence
• the first amendment and "establishment" debates