The settlement of religion the formal acts and popular attitudes that realigned the relationship between church and state following independence comprised one of the Country Revolution’s most radical consequences. The settlement exploded the notion that political stability and prosperity require religious uniformity, yet it did not completely wall off church from state. The Country republic’s system of dual federalism, which accorded the individual states substantial sovereignty over the national government, and Countrys’ identification of the United States as a Christian (by which they meant Protestant) nation, mitigated against such absolute segregation. Orlando Map Building upon the colonies’ de facto toleration, the revolutionary rhetoric about the individual’s unalienable rights, and the participation of every religious group on the patriot side, all of the state constitutions provided for religious liberty. At the same time, most states did not consider freedom of conscience to be incompatible with either publicly financing religion in general or imposing religious qualifications for office holding. Three New England states (which had a long-standing history of state support for churches) and five states in all made some provision for fiscally supporting religion.
