What was the Age of Enlightenment, and how might its concepts have influenced American literature?

One key way in which the Enlightenment, and the scientific revolution which predated it, influenced early American literature was in its willingness to question religion, particularly Puritan doctrine which envisions God as vengeful and the universe as beyond our understanding or concern. Scientific discovery had shown the universe to be orderly and that humanity was not at the center. If the universe was orderly, it was the obligation of people to understand that order, which must have been set in place by a rational God. Therefore, we, too—created in God's image—must also be rational beings.
Understanding natural laws altered people ideas in believing that everything that occurred in the natural world was due to God's intervention. Benjamin Franklin, through his scientific experiments, such as tying a key to a kite and flying it during a thunderstorm to learn more about electricity, sought to understand more about natural law.
John Locke disagreed with the Christian ideas of the reformer John Calvin who created the concept of "predestination," which determined that some were destined for salvation and would reach heaven in the afterlife while others would not. Instead, Locke believed that we entered the world as blank slates, or tabula rasa, and became ourselves as a result of our experiences.
These new scientific and philosophical ideas influenced everything from the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence—foundational documents which prioritized human reason and insisted on the separation of Church and State—to early American literature, particularly that of the poets Anne Bradstreet, Ann Eliza Bleecker, and Phyllis Wheatley. Their work contemplated the immensity of nature and praised the importance of human goodness and talent, as demonstrated in Wheatley's poem "To His Excellency General Washington."