Ferris, The First Thanksgiving

Most Americans believed that knowledge of God came direct to them through the study of the Holy Writ. They read the Bible for themselves, assiduously, daily. Virtually every humble cabin in Massachusetts colony had its own Bible. Adults read it alone, silently. It was also read aloud among families, as well as in church, during Sunday morning service, which lasted from eight till twelve (there was more Bible-reading in the afternoon). Many families had a regular course of Bible-reading which meant that they covered the entire text of the Old Testament in the course of each year. Every striking episode was familiar to them, and its meaning and significance earnestly discussed; many they knew by heart. The language and lilt of the Bible in its various translations, but particularly in the magnificent new King James version, passed into the common tongue and script. On Sunday the minister took his congregation through key passages, in carefully attended sermons which rarely lasted less than an hour. But authority lay in the Bible, not the minister, and in the last resort every man and woman decided 'in the light which Almighty God gave them' what the Bible meant.
This direct apprehension of the word of God was a formula for religious excitement and exaltation, for all felt themselves in a close, daily, and fruitful relationship with the deity. It explains why New England religion was so powerful a force in people's lives and of such direct and continuing assistance in building a new society from nothing. They were colonists for God, planting in His name.