Religion Timeline

By dt2555

  • Jamestown Founded

    The settlers at Jamestown were members of the Anglican faith, the official Church of England.

  • Pietism

    17th and 18th-century German movement in the Lutheran Church stressing personal piety and devotion. (First Lutheran in date below)

  • Lutherans

    Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestant Christianity which identifies with the theology of Martin Luther. Came from Germany and Scandinavia.

  • Separatists

    a term usually applied to describe the attitudes or motivations of those seeking independence or "separation" of their land or region from the country that governs them.

  • Pilgrims at Plymouth

    Separatists from the Anglican Church.

  • Mass Bay Colony Religion

    Puritans who did not tolerate freedom of religion.

  • Puritans

    Individuals who wanted to purify the church. Prevalent in mass bay colony.

  • Predestination/Calvinism

    The Calvinist doctrine that God has foreordained some people to be saved and some to be damned.

  • John Winthrop

    Led a group of English Puritans to the New World, joined the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629 and was elected their governor on April 8, 1630. Between 1639 and 1648 he was voted out of governorship and re-elected a total of 12 times. Wrote "A Model for Christian Charity."

  • Maryland Colony

    John Baltimore English Catholic Charter

  • Catholicism

    Catholicism is the traditions and beliefs of Catholic Churches. It refers to their theology, liturgy, ethics and spirituality. The term usually refers to churches, both western and eastern, that are in full communion with the Holy See. The Catholic Church is the main and earliest form of Christianity. Founded in America with the Maryland Colony.

  • Roger Williams/Founding of Rhode Island

    He was an English theologian, a notable proponent of religious toleration and the separation of church and state, and an advocate for fair dealings with Native Americans. In 1644, he received a charter creating the colony of Rhode Island, named for the principal island in Narragansett Bay. He is credited for originating either the first or second Baptist church established in America.

  • Anne Hutchinson

    Devout Puritan who was tried at a Mass Bay court for questioning church teachings. Said God spoke to her and exiled to Rhode Island.

  • Toleration Act of 1649

    The Maryland Toleration Act, also known as the Act Concerning Religion, was a law mandating religious tolerance for Trinitarian Christians.

  • Quakers

    aka Society of Friends; a radical Protestant sect; wanted to restore the simplicity and spirituality of early Christianity. Pennsylvania was a refuge for them.

  • William Penn

    An English real estate entrepreneur, he was giving a large piece of the American land from James II of England. He was a early advocate of democracy and religious freedom, he was also one of the few colonies to have good relations with the Indians, making several successful treaties

  • Salem Witch Trials

    The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. The trials resulted in the executions of twenty people, fourteen of them women, and all but one by hanging. Five others (including two infant children) died in prison. Shows dangers of isolationism, fanaticism, and lapses of due progress. Killed theocracy in america.

  • The Enlightenment

    An eighteenth-century movement in Western philosophy. It was an age of optimism, tempered by the realistic recognition of the sad state of the human condition and the need for major reforms. It was less a set of ideas than it was a set of attitudes. At its core was a critical questioning of traditional institutions, customs, and morals. Some classifications of this period also include 17th-century philosophy, which is typically known as the Age of Reason.

  • Southern Baptist

    Overwhelmingly large numbers of blacks, it originally supported freedom for slaves, but was later used as a justification of slavery.

  • First Great Awakening

    The First Great Awakening was a time of religious fervor during the 1730s and 1740s. The movement arose in reaction to the rise of skepticism and the waning of religious faith brought about by the Enlightenment. Protestant ministers held revivals throughout the English colonies in America, stressing the need for individuals to repent and urging a personal understanding of truth.

  • Jonathan Edwards

    He was an American theologian and Congregational clergyman, whose sermons stirred the religious revival, called the Great Awakening. He is known for his "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God " sermon. Calvinist

  • John Wesley

    English missionary who preached in Georgia; later returned to England and founded the Methodist church

  • George Whitefield

    Evangelical preacher who traveled throughout the colonies during the 1st Great Awakening, while setting off a surge of religious enthusiasm. His different preaching style garnered an emotional response, helping to create Evangelicalism

  • Presbyterian

    a follower of Calvinism as taught in the Presbyterian Church. First convention held 1789 by John Witherspoon, signer of Dec of Indep

  • Mother Ann and Shakers

    Had a vision that she was an incarnation of Christ & that Adam & Eve had been banished from the Garden of Eden because of their sexual lust; four years later she led a band of eight followers to America where they established a church near Albany, New York; because of the ecstatic dances that were part of their worship, the sect became known as "Shaking Quakers" or "Shakers"; when she died in 1784, the Shakers venerated her as the second coming of Christ

  • Methodism

    Methodism, or the Methodist movement, [nb 1] is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity which derive their inspiration from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother Charles Wesley were also significant leaders in the movement. Lay movement. Led by Francis Ashbury in 1770s.

  • Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom

    Written by Jefferson, it functioned as a precursor to the Constitution.

  • Protestant Episcopal Church

    New name for the Anglican Church after it was disestablished and de-Anglicized in Virginia and elsewhere.

  • Bill of rights

    Freedom of religion

  • Second Great Awakening

    A series of religious revivals starting in 1801, based on Methodism and Baptism. Stressed a religious philosophy of salvation through good deeds and tolerance for all Protestant sects. The revivals attracted women, Blacks, and Native Americans. It also had an effect on moral movements such as prison reform, the temperance movement, and moral reasoning against slavery.

  • Cane Ridge Camp Meeting

    A religious revival and a part of the second Great Awakening took place in Cane Ridge, KY, in the summer of 1801. A group of Evangelical ministers presided over the nations first "camp meeting". An extraordinary revival that lasted several days and impressed everyone involved. It was the beginning of the church trying to "harvest" new members.

  • African Methodist Episcopal Church

    Richard Allen founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1816 as first independent black run Protestant church in US. It was founded because white churches were segregated. AME Church was active in the promotion of abolition and the founding of educational institution for free blacks.

  • Joseph Smith (mormonism)

    Founded the Mormon religion after reporting that he was visited by an angel; the plates, when deciphered, brought about the Church of Latter Day Saints and the Book of Mormon; he ran into opposition from Ohio, Illinois, and Missouri when he attempted to spread the Mormon beliefs, but was killed. Smith's establishment of the Mormon faith started a movement within America of values including no drinking, gambling, and an unorthodox view of marriage.
    -polygamy delayed admittance of state

  • New lights/old lights of the Great Awakening

    old lights were simply orthodox members of the clergy who believed that the new ways of revivals and emotional preaching were unnecessary; new lights were the more modern-thinking members of the clergy who strongly believed in the Great Awakening New lights: Johnathan edwards, George Whitfield

  • Transcendentalism

    A philosophy pioneered by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the 1830's and 1840's, in which each person has direct communication with God and Nature, and there is no need for organized churches. It incorporated the ideas that mind goes beyond matter, intuition is valuable, that each soul is part of the Great Spirit, and each person is part of a reality where only the invisible is truly real. Promoted individualism, self-reliance, and freedom from social constraints, and emphasized emotions.

  • Nativism

    An anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic feeling that arose in the 1840's and 1850's in response to the influx of Irish Catholics.

  • Brigham Young

    The successor to the Mormons after the death of Joseph Smith. He was responsible for the survival of the sect and its establishment in Utah, thereby populating the would-be state.

  • Archbishop John Hughes

    In the United States, the leading Catholic prelate, Archbishop John Hughes of New York, taking his cue from the pope, attacked abolitionists, Free-soilers, and various Protestant reform movements as akin to the Red Republicanism of Europe. In a widely publicized address titled "The Decline of Protestantism and Its Causes," predicted catholic majority.

  • Charles Darwin

    English naturalists who wrote Origin of Species; thought higher forms of life evolved from lower forms through mutation and adaptation; came up with the theory of natural selection

  • William Miller

    An American Baptist preacher who is credited with the beginning of the Adventism movement (a religion part of the Second Great Awakening that is similar to modern day Conservative Protestants)

  • YMCA

    Young Men's and Women's Christian Association. It combined physical education with religious teachings.

  • Women's Christian Temperance Union

    The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was an active temperance organization that was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far-reaching reform strategies based on applied Christianity."

  • Dwight Moody

    This man, part of the social gospel movement, proclaimed the gospel of kindness and forgiveness, and adapted the old-time religion to the facts of city life and founded an institute.

  • Foreign Mission

    Protestant foreign missions overseas peaked around 1915, mostly to Asia, some to Africa and Middle East. Sent married couples and unmarried women, provided services such as medical care and education to help convert them.

  • Scopes Trial

    1925- a highly publicized trial where John Thomas Scopes violated a Tennessee state law by teaching evolution in high school. Scopes was prosecuted by William Jennings Bryan and defended by Clarence Darrow; Scopes was convicted but the verdict was later. Displayed the fundamentalism prevalent in rural areas at the time

  • Nation of Islam

    The Nation of Islam, abbreviated as NOI, is an African American political and religious movement, founded in Detroit, Michigan, United States, by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad on July 4, 1930.Its stated goals are to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African Americans in the United States and all of humanity.

  • Minersville School District v. Gobitis

    Students are required to salute the flag despite religious beliefs (1940)

  • Everson v. Board of Education

    Maintained that although public funds could be used to bus children to parochial schools, the wall separating church and state must be kept high and strong.

  • Southern Christian Leadership Conference

    Aimed to mobilize the vast power of the black churches on behalf of black rights.
    Southern Christian Leadership Conference, founded by MLK, which taught that civil rights could be achieved through nonviolent protests.

  • Billy Graham

    One of the most popular evangelical ministers of the era. Star of the first televised "crusades" for religious revival. He believed that all doubts about the literal interpretation of the bible were traps set by Satan. He supported Republicans and a large increase to money in the military.

  • Torcaso v. Watkins

    Was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court reaffirmed that the United States Constitution prohibits States and the Federal Government from requiring any kind of religious test for public office, in the specific case, as a notary public.

  • Fourth Great Awakening

    Evangelical church membership soared
    - Startling combination of events sparked an evangelical revival.

  • McDaniel v. Paty

    was a United States Supreme Court case that struck down the last remaining state restriction against religious ministers holding elected office.