EXHIBITION OVERVIEW

Encompassing over 200 objects including early American books, manuscripts, letters, prints, paintings, artifacts, and music from the Library’s collections and complemented by loans from other institutions, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic explores the role religion played in the founding of the American colonies, in the shaping of early American life and politics, and in forming the American Republic. The seven sections of the exhibition are on such provocative issues as:

• American as Refuge: The Seventeenth Century looks at the religious persecution in Europe that drove so many to the shores of British North America where these new settlers established colonies often centered on passionate religious convictions;

• Religion in Eighteenth-Century America challenges the notion that religion was in decline during this period concentrating on the nation’s first major religious revival, the Great Awakening, 1740-45;

• Religion and the American Revolution illustrates the contribution of religious leaders and religious ideas to the coming of the War of independence;

• Religion and the Congress of the Confederation examines the policies of America’s first national government toward religion;

• Religion and the State Governments illuminates the policies of the revolutionary state governments toward religion, ranging from disestablishment in Virginia to multiple establishments in New England states;

• Religion and the Federal Government focuses on the status of religion in the new federal government;

• Republican Religion traces the fortunes of religion up to the 1830s, covering in the process what has been called America’s "Golden Age" of Evangelicalism.