The focus of the Williamsburg Charter Survey is a subject of abiding interest and importance, the place of religion in public life. The reality it portrays is enormously complex. To understand more fully even this preliminary review of the survey findings, it is appropriate to set the issues in a slightly wider context.

At the heart of the church-state relationship in America is the reality of pluralism. How do expressions of religious conviction remain free of state interference while its adherents press specific and often conflicting interests? The tensions this dynamic creates are as visible and as politically consequential today as they were at the drafting of the Bill of Rights two hundred years ago. Indeed, the tensions may be even greater today because of the changing face of pluralism.

The story is as complex as it is interesting. It involves many actors and many subplots but the overall pattern of change is clear. In the early years of American colonial life, New England was the center of intellectual and cultural activity where a vibrant Puritanism prevailed. The Evangelical and Calvinistic pietism of the Puritans spilled out of New England into the lower colonies with the First Great Awakening in the 1740s.