1607–1791

Religious Diversity in the American Colonies and the Road to the First Amendment

From the 17th century, North American colonies developed different religious patterns. In Virginia, founded in 1607, the planters' Anglican church prevailed. In Lord Baltimore's Maryland the 1649 Act of Toleration protected Christians of various confessions. In New England Puritan congregationalism took hold (the Mayflower Compact, Plymouth, Massachusetts). There disputes over infant baptism produced the "half-way covenant", and the 1692 Salem "witch" hysteria ended with twenty executions.

Banished from Massachusetts, Roger Williams founded Providence and the colony of Rhode Island (1631–1644) on liberty of conscience. His church became America's first Baptist church. In England the Baptists (General and Particular) emerged as a Puritan offshoot and adopted the London Confessions (1644–1742).

William Penn, having become a Quaker, received Pennsylvania from the crown (1681) and founded a colony of full religious freedom. Quakers were the first in America to officially condemn slavery (1758).

John Eliot's mission among Native Americans began in 1646. It comprised fourteen Christian villages and produced a Bible translation into Massachusett. King Philip's War (1675–1676) nearly destroyed it.

After the War of Independence (from 1775) the Anglican church's position weakened. Jefferson's Virginia Statute (1785–1786) together with the First Amendment (1791) established the separation of church and state and freedom of worship. The very concept of a "denomination" as a voluntary religious body took hold.