Migration to the Americas
- When
- 1607–1750 AD
- Where
- North America
- Kind
- Migration
Puritans, Quakers, Catholics and Anabaptists carried their divisions across the Atlantic, where the absence of an established church let them multiply.
Emigration carried European divisions across the Atlantic and then changed them. Puritans went to Massachusetts and promptly established a church of their own; Catholics to Maryland; Quakers to Pennsylvania, where William Penn's charter granted liberty of conscience; Anabaptists to the same colony from 1683. What was different was that no single body could establish itself over the whole territory, so churches had to survive by persuasion rather than by law. That produced both the voluntary, competitive religious culture of the United States and, eventually, the constitutional refusal to establish any church at all.
Bodies it bears on
Party to it
Who stands here
- George Fox
1624–1691
Quakers took his refusal of oaths, war and rank across the Atlantic
Either side of it
The whole timeline, from the apostolic communities to the present.