Some Significant Factors in American Church History

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American religious history has been largely the work of amateurs and neglected by the trained historians. But it is only common sense which suggests that the total life of the nation cannot be adequately or truthfully portrayed unless the religious forces are given their due of recognition. This paper points out four significant factors in American church history. The first is that the colonial churches were established by religious radicals. On coming to America the colonists left behind them the restraining influences of high civil and church officials, and thus America became a fruitful field for religious experiment. Numerous sects, each contending for the right to live, were the result, and the natural outcome was religious liberty and the separation of church and state. A second factor is the parallels between American political and religious history, showing that the same general conditions determined the trend in both church and nation. Another factor is that of the frontier, which developed a distinct type of revivalism and such institutions as the camp-meeting and the small denominational college, and supplied that appeal to the heroic which has been the driving force of much of the missionary enterprise. The last factor noticed is that of negro slavery, which was responsible for the largest and most significant schisms and for the creating of other conditions distinctively peculiar to America.