While some of the original factors in "pulling" Europeans to the New World

were as economic as they were anything else, the reason that dominated
many of the earlier and long-lasting settlements was always religious
reasons. While usually a result of religious prosecution, settlers ventured to
America in the name of religion in a variety of ways, from Spanish
missionaries in the sixteenth century to Quakers flocking to Pennsylvania a
century later. Religion permeated most of the early days in the New World,
from Puritan's conformitism to the tax-paid state church in Virginia. Much of
early America's religion-dominated colonies was a result of what was going
on back in England, starting largely with the English Reformation in 1517.
With a wide variety of causes and responses that normally involved pulling
up roots, it's no wonder that a large force behind settlement in America,
even more so than a want to bolster a country's prestige and economy, was
religion.
The first smatterings of religion pushing people from Europe to America
was in the form of missionaries. Spanish friars sought to convert Native
Americans from their heathen ways and help them embrace Christianity
instead, believing God wanted them to save the Native American's souls.
The discovery that the Native Americans would frequently worship their
own gods as well as the Christian God discouraged most missionaries,
leading them to believe the Native Americans were incapable of fully
understanding Christianity, and it was not until after the Chesapeake colony
was successfully thriving on growing tobacco that Spanish missionaries
tried again. While they did not have the prosperity of England's
Chesapeake colony, missionaries from Spain rushed to Florida and New
Mexico. They convinced the Spanish government that the colonies were a
perfect chance to right Native Americans of their sinful ways, and dozens of
friars made their way to America in order to instruct them in religious
beliefs, rituals, and how to live in a "civilized" manner. Missionaries
supervised the building of scores churches, usually using Indian labor, and
as a result of frequent exploitation, Native Americans often revolted,
including one instance where they, under the leadership of Pop,

desecrated churches, killed missionaries, and destroyed other symbols of

Christianity.
With the attempts of Spanish missionaries as largely unsuccessful, it
was not until Martin Luther's Protestant Reformation reached England that
religion truly began to drive people to the New World. As mentioned
previously, most of the colonization of the future began as a result of the
English Reformation. Though there had already been English settlement
previously in that of the Southern colonies, it was the push--beginning with
the English Reformation--that mushroomed colonial settlements and
immigration to America. As a result of Henry VIII's half-hearted reformation
of the Church of England, the English people were divided between those
who wished to return to a Catholic Church, and those who wanted to go "all
the way" Protestant. The forerunning group in Protestizing England came to
be known as Puritans, who, while they did not all share the same ideas and
whose opinions varies on the degree in which to implement those ideas,
shared a common ideology that wished to rid England of the offensive
aspects of Catholicism and focus more on prayer and studying the Bible.
Despite the Puritan's desires, however, the queen and kings following
Henry VIII's were as lukewarm as he was in listening to the Puritan's plans
for reformation.
When Charles I took the throne, the Puritans faced their first real
opponent, who quickly went about in removing Puritan representation and
putting forth anti-Puritan procedures. Puritans, seeing little future for their
movement in England, left for the West Indies, Europe, and the largest
group of all left for America. Puritans quickly set out to build what they
considered a Puritan version of England; their "city upon a hill" would be
built in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where Puritanism dominated, the
belief that all eyes were on their colonial experiment firing their
determination to live by their beliefs. Despite a high mortality rate and the
bitter New England winters, shipload after shipload of settlers flocked to
New England, many times as a result of the Church of England reinforcing
it's anti-Puritanism tactics against a Puritan minister, where then he and his

followers would set sail for the New World. As more and more Puritans
came and the religion went through splinters--such as Thomas Hooker's
clashes with John Winthrop--the settlers spread further away from the
original settlements, creating colonies such as New Hampshire,
Connecticut, and Maine.
Decades later, more colonies appeared in the form of another religious
group--the Quakers. They settled in land granted to the Duke of York, who,
like the Dutch settlers before him, declared a policy of religious tolerance.
The large land grant splintered into three colonies--New York, New Jersey
and Pennsylvania. When a prominent Quaker, William Penn, was asked to
settle a dispute between New Jersey proprietors, he became interested in
the idea of creating a true Quaker colony in the New World. Quakers
quickly hurried to Pennsylvania, many of them from England, Wales, and
Ireland, but other immigrants encouraged to come as well by Quaker
missionaries. William Penn made agreements with the local Native
Americans in terms of purchasing and respecting their claims on land. He
also stated that every settler would be able to exercise their faith, drawing
other sects of Protestantism as well as Catholics. Though Penn dominated
Pennsylvania and Quakerism the Middle Colonies as a whole--in the same
way Puritanism did the New England colonies--the Middle colonies
became an alternative to the Church of England and the rigidity of Puritan
New England.
Into the next century, much of the Puritan's and Quaker's religious
fervor had died out, but the religious revival and the Great Awakening of the
Eighteenth Century lent itself to further unifying America, the variety of
faiths helping to characterize the North American colonies and deepening
the dual identity of British North American colonists. From the Spanish
missionaries of the fifteenth century to the movements to escape religious
prosecution over the following centuries, up into and including the religious
revivals of the 1700s, the New World was forever shaped by people looking
for new ways to spread and practice their faiths, desiring to implement their
love of God into their everyday lives and their politics, pushing them from

the constraints of Europe and pulling them to the New World of freedom
and promise of religious toleration, America.