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15 - The Middle Colonies, 1680–1730

from SECTION III - RELIGIOUS PATTERNS IN COLONIAL AMERICA – 1680S–1730S

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2012

Thomas Hamm
Affiliation:
Earlham College
Stephen J. Stein
Affiliation:
Indiana University, Bloomington
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Summary

More than a generation ago Carl Bridenbaugh, summing up the religious experience of the colonists on the Hudson and the Delaware, wrote, “In a region of so many nationalities – Dutch, Swedes, Finns, French, Germans, English – toleration was vital.” In contrast to the colonies to the north and south, which were largely ethnically homogeneous before 1730, with powerful established churches, Congregationalism in New England and Anglicanism in the South, the Middle Colonies – for the purposes of this essay New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware – presented a diverse array of faiths and peoples. All of the following found homes there: Dutch and German Reformed; French Huguenots; Swedish and German Lutherans; Scottish, Irish, and English Presbyterians; Welsh and English Baptists; English Congregationalists; and German, English, and Welsh Quakers, not to mention a variety of other sects. Roman Catholics also achieved grudging toleration there, and by 1730 most of North America's tiny Jewish population lived in New York. Living near them, of course, were Native Americans whose religious relationship with Europeans was often uneasy. And arriving involuntarily were growing numbers of enslaved Africans, who would be a source of both missionary labor and uneasy conscience for some of their European neighbors.

This essay presents an overview of the diversity of the religious experience of the inhabitants of the Middle Colonies between 1680 and 1730, largely in terms of denominations broadly defined. It examines not only “high” matters of theology and leadership, but also elements of faith closer to the experience of the masses of worshippers. In a world in which political leadership was firmly in male hands, it looks at how these religious groups incorporated women into their communities.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

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References

Balmer, Randall. A Perfect Babel of Confusion: Dutch Religion and English Culture in the Middle Colonies. New York, 1989.
Bonomi, Patricia U.Under the Cope of Heaven: Religion, Society, and Politics in Colonial America. New York, 1986.
Bronner, Edwin B.William Penn's “Holy Experiment”: The Founding of Pennsylvania, 1681–1701. New York, 1962.
Butler, Jon. The Huguenots in America: A Refugee People in a New World Society. Cambridge, MA, 1983.
Butler, Jon. Power, Authority, and the Origins of American Denominational Order: The English Churches in the Delaware Valley, 1680–1730. Philadelphia, 1978.
Frost, J. William. A Perfect Freedom: Religious Liberty in Pennsylvania. New York, 1990.
Hodges, Graham Russell. Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613–1863. Chapel Hill, 1999.
Landsman, Ned C.Scotland and Its First American Colony, 1683–1765. Princeton, 1985.
Larson, Rebecca. Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700–1775. New York, 1999.
Roeber, A. G. “‘The Origin of Whatever Is Not English among Us’: The Dutch-Speaking and German-Speaking Peoples of Colonial British America,” in Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan, eds., Strangers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire. Chapel Hill, 1991.

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