The Influence of Religion on the History of the New World

Abstract

I have given a careful and interested reading to the draft of the chapter on the influence of religion on the history of the New World for the PAIGH project. As it now stands, the draft ought to be discarded and redrafted in its entirety. This essay lacks a conceptual framework which would provide some unity of organization to the considerable amount of illustrative data that such a chapter must of necessity include. What first must be selected are those spheres in which religion has played a major role in the history of the Americas and then to compare and to contrast the various roles that these religious factors have played in the development of Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, and Dutch America. This type of organizational and conceptual framework will give a religious dimension to the central thesis of the whole project, i. e., that the Americas do have a common history, without distorting the often dissimilar impact that religious considerations have had on the historical development of the New World.