Historians on America's Christian Roots
A Religious History of the American People , Sydney E Ahlstrom, David D. Hall, Yale University Press, 1992. Ahlstrom explains that Christianity and religion factored heavily the development of both Tory and Patriot sentiment, but increasingly aligned with the Patriots and "powerfully" engendered that sentiment: "The years of mounting crisis found the churches implicated on both sides of every issue under debate, but in general they became increasingly identified with the Patriot tide of opinion and contributed powerfully to its rise ." (p. 361). "In the South, however, the Anglican laity joined the Patriot cause and furnished much of its leadership. All in all, the Protestant disposition of the American people, regardless of how secularized their Puritanism had become, involved their viewing the king and English rule with suspicion." (ibid.) "Enlightenment motifs continued to prevail [after the military phase of the Revolution] but more tha