Although it eventually emerged secure,
the monarchy managed to survive only by making its peace with the
emerging commercial and industrial forces. These same crises
undermined the authority of the Church as a powerful institution
in society. The nonconformist sects were the stronghold of the
merchant class and spread rapidly in the American colonies.
There, instead of being a check on the commercial spirit, the
Church itself had become dominated by the middle class. Equally
important is the fact that in colonial America the level of
religious life was very low. Most colonists, with the exception
of the original founders who had fled religious persecution, did
not come for religious freedom but for economic advancement. When
some Virginians at the end of the seventeenth century, petitioned
the government to build a college for the training of ministers,
they were told to forget about the cure of souls and instead to
cure tobacco. The result was that the planter class,
unchallenged by any other powerful institutions, was free to
shape a slave system to meet its labor needs.
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