There was therefore a strong tension between the inherited Catholic-style orthodoxy with which the newly independent Church of England had begun its institutional life and the reforming zeal Calvinist-influenced clergy and laity now brought to church life. This particular form of compounded unsettlement – division between the Church of England and Rome, plus division between and among the factions within the Church of England – would not only shape English and British history for years to come but lie at the heart of the distinctive shape that American religion would assume a century or more
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