A large number of early Americans thought often about religion. Until the 1770s, the most frequently published and reprinted books in the American colonies were sermons and religious treatises. But the colonists – and the Native Americans who preceded them – also differed about religion. It divided them. The most prolific producers of formal theology were the Calvinist clergy of New England, but Christian alternatives could be found among Catholics, Anglicans, Swedish and German Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Moravians, Baptists, Dutch Reformed, Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, Universalists, Gortonites, Rogerines, Shakers, and an assortment of even smaller groups like the Ephrata utopians or the Society of the Woman in the Wilderness. But Christian thought was far from the sole option. Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews, although lacking rabbis, preserved ancient traditions and practices along with many of the ideas embedded within them. Deists dispensed with notions of a special biblical revelation. Africans, most enslaved, some free, imported not only African traditional religions but also Christian and Muslim ideas; and more than 250 Native American societies interpreted their ritual practices and ethical injunctions with a vast collection of narratives and beliefs. Americans could also be eclectic, combining inherited traditions with strands of esoteric and metaphysical ideas that had different origins. The realm of religious thought was turbulent.

The diversity registered conflicting interpretations of scripture, opposing assessments of the authority of tradition, differing views about the value of primitive precedents, controversies about ritual, disputes over ethics, and incompatible attitudes toward the broader culture.