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By 1740, there were 423 Congregational churches in colonial America—33.7 percent of all churches. [42] Nevertheless, at the start of the 18th century, many believed that New England had become a morally degenerate society more focused on worldly gain than religious piety.
Protestants discontented with the Church of England formed the earliest religious settlements in North America. Monsignor John Tracy Ellis wrote that a "universal anti-Catholic bias was brought to Jamestown in 1607 and vigorously cultivated in all the thirteen colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia." [2]
Today, New England is the least religious part of the U.S. In 2009, less than half of those polled in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont claimed that religion was an important part of their daily lives. Southernmost New England in Connecticut is among the ten least religious states, 53 percent, of those polled claimed that it was. [8]
In the early 17th century, thousands of English Puritans settled in North America, almost all in New England.Puritans were intensely devout members of the Church of England who believed that the Church of England was insufficiently reformed, retaining too much of its Roman Catholic doctrinal roots, and who therefore opposed royal ecclesiastical policy.
The Colonial Period of American History: The Settlements, volume 2 (1936) pp 67–194, by leading scholar; Atwater, Edward Elias (1881). History of the Colony of New Haven to Its Absorption into Connecticut. author. to 1664; Berkin, Carol (1996). First Generations: Women in Colonial America. New York, NY: Hill and Wang. ISBN 978-0-8090-1606-8.
The American People in Colonial New England (1973), excerpts from primary sources; online; Dwight, Timothy. Travels Through New England and New York (circa 1800) 4 vol. (1969) online; McPhetres, S. A. A political manual for the campaign of 1868, for use in the New England, states, containing the population and latest election returns of every town
The churches in New England had fallen into a "staid and routine formalism in which experiential faith had been a reality to only a scattered few." [38] In response to these trends, ministers influenced by New England Puritanism, Scots-Irish Presbyterianism, and European Pietism began calling for a revival of religion and piety. [39]
Anglican chaplain Robert Hunt was among the first group of English colonists, arriving in 1607. In 1619, the Church of England was formally established as the official religion in the colony, and would remain so until it was disestablished shortly after the American Revolution. [4]