Includes bibliographical references and index.

Objects of Decision: Religion in Early America tells the story of faith in the United States in the colonial period and the early republic. This lavishly illustrated showcase of early American religious objects, a companion value to a Smithsonian National Museum of American History exhibition, explores how these diverse treasures--along with key houses of worship, influential religious figures, and seminal writings--shaped the citizens, communities, laws, and traditions of the newborn country. From the 1630s to the 1840s, a dizzying range of religious traditions vied for adherents, acceptance, and a prominent place in the public square. The original thirteen states were home to three thousand churches and more than a dozen Christian denominations, including Angligans, Baptists, Catholics, Congregationalists, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Quakers, as well as a variety of other faiths, including Judaism, Islam, traditional African practices, and Native American beliefs, and the number of faiths blossomed as the country's borders expanded. Existing side by side, sometimes in conflict and sometimes finding common ground, these traditions contributed to America's reputation as a place where--in theory if not always in practice--all are free to believe and worship as they choose. More than 150 color illustrations of key places, people, and artifacts of American faith--including an 1802 Revere and Son church bell from Maine, the Jefferson Bible, George Washington's christening robe, a Torah scroll that weathered the Revolution, and the only known religous text written by an enslaved African Muslim--demonstrate how the treatment and practice of religion in American have changed over time. Objects of Decision emphasizes that religion can be understood through the objects, both rare and everyday, around which Americans of every generation have organized their communities, centered their faith, and built their nation.--,dust jacket.