Colonies In 1600s

England wanted to establish their colonies. Religious conflict, moreover, disrupted England in mid-century, after King VIII let go of the relationship with the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s, then launching the English Protestant Reformation. Christian religious groups played an influential role in each of the British colonies, and most attempted to enforce strict religious observance through both colony governments and local town rules.
In Europe, Catholic and Protestant nations often persecuted or forbade each other's religions, and British colonists frequently maintained restrictions against Catholics. In Great Britain, the Protestant Anglican church had split into bitter divisions among traditional Anglicans and the reforming Puritans, contributing to an English civil war in the 1600s. In the British colonies, differences among Puritan and Anglican remained. Between 1680 and 1760 Anglicanism and Congregationalism, an offshoot of the English Puritan movement, established themselves as the main organized denominations in the majority of the colonies. As the seventeenth and eighteenth century passed on, however, the Protestant wing of Christianity constantly gave birth to new movements, such as the Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, Unitarians and many more, sometimes referred to as “Dissenters.” In communities where

They burned with pious zeal to see the Church of England wholly de-catholicized. The most devout Puritans, including those who eventually settled New England, believed that only “visible saints” should be admitted to church membership. But the Church of England enrolled all the king’s subjects, which meant that the “saints” had to share pews and communion rails with the “damned.” Appalled by this unholy fraternizing, a tiny group of dedicated Puritans, known as Separatists, vowed to break away entirely from the Church of