Although religion may not have played a central part in national history during the nineteenth century, its impact on everyday life was considerable. Churchgoing, proselytizing, the Bible and its teachings, activities deriving from church societies and the like, all loomed large in the lives of many Americans. The extent of all this activity is demonstrated in the mass of published and unpublished material relating to religious matters that has survived in libraries, record offices, and elsewhere.

There are many aspects of local religious history to which community historians may with profit turn their attention. At the most local level they may wish to investigate the history of an individual church, congregation, or parish, and this need not be a mere antiquarian exercise. Such a study could well embrace an account of the foundation of a church or the establishment of a parish, presbytery, and so on. It could include such topics as the size of the congregation and its social and ethnic composition, and the administrative and organizational structure of the local unit and its relationship with superior echelons of the denomination to which it belonged, or perhaps with a supervising missionary society.