Reply #11: Thsi looks like a pretty good timeline and yes, the religious have always tried to have a big

[notadmblnd]

influence. Here are a few excerpts and I'll post the link when I'm done.

April 29, 1607 At Cape Henry, Virginia, the first Anglican (Episcopal) church in the American colonies was established.

September 16, 1620 The Mayflower left Plymouth, England with 102 Pilgrims aboard. The ship would arrive at Provincetown on November 21st and then at Plymouth on December 26th.

March 05, 1623 The Virginia colony enacted the first American temperance law.

September 06, 1628 Puritan colonists landed at Salem and started the Massachusetts Bay Colony

June 30, 1629 Samuel Skelton was elected the first pastor of Salem, Massachusetts. The church covenant created by Skelton made his congregation the first non-separating congregational Puritan Church in New England.

February 05, 1631 Roger Williams first arrived in North America. He would soon question the rigid religious policies in the Massachusetts colony, leading to his being banished to Rhode Island five years later. There he would create the first Baptist church in America.

May 18, 1631 The General Court of the Massachusetts issued the decree that "no man shall be admitted to the body politic but such as are members of some of the churches within the limits" of the colony.

October 09, 1635 Roger Williams was banished from Massachusetts. Williams had argued against civil punishments for religious crimes and, as a result of his expulsion from the colony, he founded the town of Providence and the new colony of Rhode Island, specifically as a place of refuge for those seeking religious freedom.

September 08, 1636 Harvard College (later University) was founded by the Massachusetts Puritans at New Towne. It was the first institution of higher learning established in North America, and was originally created to train future ministers.

March 22, 1638 Religious dissident Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony as punishment for heresy.

May 03, 1675 Massachusetts passed a law that required church doors to be locked during services - evidently to keep people from leaving before the long sermons were finished.

May 11, 1682 After two years, two key laws were repealed by the General Court of Massachusetts: one which prohibited people from observing Christmas and another that set capital punishment for Quakers who returned to the colony after being banished.

February 29, 1692 The Salem Witch Trials began when Tituba, the female slave of the Reverend Samuel Parris, Sarah Goode, and Sarah Osborne were all arrested and accused of witchcraft.

December 12, 1712 The colony of South Carolina passed a "Sunday Law" which required everyone to attend church each Sunday and to refrain from both skilled labor and traveling by horse or wagon beyond what was absolutely necessary. Violators received a fine and/or a two hours in the village stocks.

This next one supports what I was saying in my OP:

July 08, 1741 Jonathan Edwards preached his classic sermon, 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,' a key step in the beginning of New England's Great Awakening.
June 22, 1750 Jonathan Edwards was dismissed from his post as minister of the Congregational church in Northampton, MA. He had been there fore 23 years, but his ultra-conservative theology never wavered and over time both it and his inflexibility on administrative matters had become too much for the congregation.

December 25, 1789 During the first Christmas under America's new Constitution, the Congress was in session. This fact may seem odd today, but at the time Christmas was no t a major Christian holiday. As a matter of fact, Christmas had a bad reputation among many Christians as a time of un-Christian excess and partying. Between 1659 and 1681, celebrating Christmas was actually illegal in Boston and anti-Christmas sentiment in the North prevented the day from becoming a national holiday until 1870.

it gos on and on.. but you can clearly see the influence

http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/religion/blrel_amrel_chron.htm