If you had to present at a school assembly and tell the gathered high school students what the spiritual significance was of this time period...

I
would title this piece something like "Competing Protestant Churches in the Antebellum
Republic."

was a powerful determinant of the distinct regional cultures
that dominated American life between independence and the Civil War. On the right wing, we find
the Anglican Episcopacy favoring a national church, a social and priestly hierarchy, compulsory
church taxes, and formal liturgical worship centered on ritual. It dominated Virginia and later
found favor with much of the Anglo-American social aristocracy, regardless of regional
origin.

Next on the continuum were Presbyterians, who...