Religion and the American Revolution

Katherine Carté (who previously published as Katherine Carté Engel) is associate professor of history at Southern Methodist University, with affiliations in the Religious Studies department.
For more information about Katherine Carté, visit the Author Page.

“Carté’s book is valuable to anyone who wants to understand the role of established religion in the British Empire and the reasons why established religion was abandoned after the war… carefully researched, clearly written, and interesting to read.” – Journal of the American Revolution

"Perhaps the most extensive study of public religion across the British Empire in the Revolutionary era. . . . Religion and the American Revolution will stand as an important touchstone for historians of the American Revolution and historians of eighteenth-century religion” --H-Early-America

“A timely Atlantic story [and] . . . a reorientation of how we should think about the nation’s founding.” -- Society for U.S. Intellectual History

“This book marks the full maturity of Atlantic history brought to bear on a subject of perennial interest: the place of religion in the American War of Independence. By focusing on ‘British imperial protestantism,’ Carté illuminates institutional religious life before, during, and after the Revolution on both sides of the Atlantic. It is simply a terrific book, a scholarly landmark that should decisively shape research on the subject for a very long time to come.”--Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame

“An important contribution both to the history of religion in America and to the new literature on the imperial dimensions of the American Revolution. Carté carefully reconstructs the colonial transatlantic interconnections among protestants and reveals how the Revolution transformed protestantism in America.”--Andrew O’Shaughnessy, University of Virginia

“Was the United States founded as a ‘protestant nation’? Carté takes on one of the most enduring narratives in American history and decisively shows that Anglo-America’s protestant order did not survive the Revolution and its violent dismantling of empire. A strikingly fresh interpretation of the politics of church and state in an era of revolutionary change.”--Susan Juster, University of Michigan