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The Maryland Toleration Act, also known as the Act Concerning Religion, was the first law in North America requiring religious tolerance for Christians. It was passed on April 21, 1649, by the assembly of the Maryland colony , in St. Mary's City in St. Mary's County, Maryland.
The colony was further augmented by Presbyterian Scotch-Irish in 1683, but the most important addition was the coming of the French Huguenots upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, who settled on the Cooper River, and were later admitted to the political rights of the colony. In 1697 religious liberty was accorded to all "except Papists".
King James I and Charles I made some efforts to reconcile the Puritan clergy who had been alienated by the lack of change in the Church of England.Puritans embraced Calvinism (Reformed theology) with its opposition to ritual and an emphasis on preaching, a growing sabbatarianism, and preference for a presbyterian system of church polity, as opposed to the episcopal polity of the Church of ...
Roger Williams, who preached religious tolerance, separation of church and state, and a complete break with the Church of England, was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and founded Rhode Island Colony, which became a haven for other religious refugees from the Puritan community. Some migrants who came to Colonial America were in search ...
In the American colonies the First Great Awakening was a wave of religious enthusiasm among Protestants that swept the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American Christianity. It resulted from preaching that deeply affected listeners (already church members) with a sense of personal guilt and salvation by ...
Beginning in the 1620s and 1630s, colonial New England was settled by Puritans who believed that they were obligated to build a holy society in covenant with God. The covenant was the foundation for Puritan convictions concerning personal salvation, the church, social cohesion and political authority. [2]
The colony's laws were based on a hybrid of English common law and religious law as laid out in the Bible. [39] The colonial authorities were deeply influenced by Calvinist theology, and were convinced that democracy was the form of government mandated by God. [42] [43] The colony offered nearly all adult males potential citizenship.
The colony was captured by the Dutch in 1655 and merged into New Netherland, with most of the colonists remaining. Years later, the entire New Netherland colony was incorporated into England's colonial holdings. The colony of New Sweden introduced Lutheranism to America in the form of some of the continent's oldest European churches. [40]