His wrath towards you burns like fire... The Great Awakening

The Great Awakening was a religious revival that took place in the 1730s and the 1740s. Heresies, such as believing free will deciding a person's chance at salvation, made the churches conform to some beliefs. So starting in Northampton, Massachusetts by a fiery preacher named Jonathan Edwards, religion was brought back to the colonies by fear, especially with Edwards. His most famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", was well known for frightening the audience with vivid descriptions of Hell. Another preacher named George Whitefield affected his audience using his booming voice. This preacher made Edwards cry along with many others.

If you think about it, the Great Awakening was the beginning of the separation of church and state. In the beginning of the colonial times, the whole community was a religious body before it was a governmental body. The governmental body was built around the religious values, and, like most protestant leaders believed, the whole point of a government was to enforce the rules of God. Before the Awakening there was the concept of being a visible saint, and the large concept of predestination.

However, it was at this point in colonial history where the protestant religions began to realize that religion was something that was going on in their hearts instead of through public sacraments and events. This revival in the churches across the colonies made the inhabitants more loyal to their individual preachers and less loyal to their denominations (as you can see today in many protestant religions). The individual churches didn't need the authority of the state much anymore. By doing this the churches became less affiliated with the government and thus developing the separation of church and state.