In the seventeenth century religion was central to people's lives and an essential component of the intellectual landscape. Anne Conway was no exception in this regard. Discussion of religious matters is a dominant theme in her letters, and the centrality of religion to her philosophy is beyond question, as the very title of her treatise makes plain. In this chapter I shall discuss her religious life from her early years until the period just prior to her encounter with Quakerism and kabbalism. After examining personal aspects of religion, this chapter will discuss the currents of non-conformist, millenialist and patristic theology which she encountered. One further aspect of Anne Conway's investigations of religion, her response to Islam, will be discussed in a later chapter, in relation to her brother John.

The fusion of theology and philosophy which Anne Conway achieves in her treatise entails a radical revision of her early view that philosophy is incompatible with Christianity. Writing to her father-in-law in 1651, she delivered herself of the opinion ‘that Philosophy is fitted for the Religion of the Heathen and that it cannot agree with Christian Religion’. By the time she wrote her Principles, however, she had found a way of reconciling religion and philosophy without compromising her Christian piety. This may be explained in part by the fact that her formal training in philosophy was predicated on the compatibilist position that philosophy was the handmaid of religion.