Between the accessions of james i in 1603 and William and Mary in 1689, Englishmen planted all the North American colonies (save Georgia), which in 1776 declared themselves to be the United States of America. The religious map of the colonies in 1689 resembled Joseph's coat with its multiple hues and colors. In some colonies the state compelled obedience to one official church; in others it was stripped of all power over its citizens' consciences. There were colonies in which religion was regulated in some places but not in others. And there were colonies in which the brand of religion supported by the state varied from place to place. In still other colonies the state refrained from regulating religion but signaled its intention to do so in the future.

Those colonies settled after the English Civil War of the 1640s benefited from the “new” idea of toleration, which emerged during that conflict. Prewar colonies, on the other hand, were defiantly intolerant, practicing a church–state policy – coercive uniformity – that was more than a thousand years old, traceable as far back as Christianity's ascendency in the Roman Empire in the fourth century a.d.

The traditional, coercive policy was carried to North America in 1607 by the settlers of Virginia. At that time there were three major religious groups in England: Anglicans, Puritans, and Catholics (whose influence had plummeted since 1559).