FAITH and LITERACY
Liberty Ordained by God

Free from religious persecution in America, colonial churches thrived, including Congregational, Presbyterian, Baptist, Anglican, Dutch or German Reformed, Lutheran, Catholic, and also Quaker meetinghouses and Jewish synagogues. Rebels and Patriots considered American Anglicans (the Church of England) to be a dangerous enemy, while many Loyalists to the King believed that the Revolution was a religious quarrel caused by Presbyterians and Congregationalists.

In order to read the Bible, literacy was common in the upper and middle classes. Grammar schools, private tutoring, and the few colonial colleges were well attended by males, yet women were rarely encouraged to learn more than basic reading and writing. Issues of the day were distributed via newspapers, pamphlets or broadsides tacked up in public squares. Town criers would broadcast breaking news from a street corner.
Spelling was creative, and colonists didn't worry much about tenses, singulars or plurals, or punctuation. The following sentence is an example: "The fellows acke and panes was very bad!"