Looking back on America's War for Independence from the perspective of 1818, former president John Adams commented that the "Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People." Adams's idea was that establishing the United States was more than just a matter of military victories or even establishing new political institutions. Rather, the experience of revolution went much deeper, and this era involved significant changes in how the American people looked at their world. This was as true for religion in the revolutionary era as for politics or society. As Adams added, the colonists' revolution included a "Change in their Religious Sentiments of their Duties and Obligations." In religion as in politics and society, Americans in this period struggled to balance new ideas and new institutions against the ways that had served them at least since the beginning of European settlement more than 150 years earlier. People.....
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