History of Religious Freedom, the Colonial Period

The struggle is real.  Many liberal thinkers in our country, including many in the law making and judicial branches of our government, have interpreted the oft touted separation of church and state (which is never mentioned in the Constitution, by the way) in ways that threaten the "soul conscience" so envisioned by Roger  Williams and other religious thinkers of the Colonial Period

Between 1680 and 1760 Anglicanism and Congregationalism, an offshoot of the English Puritan movement, established themselves as the main organized denominations in the majority of the colonies. As the seventeenth and eighteenth century passed on, however, the Protestant wing of Christianity constantly gave birth to new movements, such as the Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, Unitarians and many more, sometimes referred to as “Dissenters.” [1]

We discussed Roger Williams, considered by many to be the father of the Baptist Church (although he later left it) and his role in religious freedom in America in yesterday's post.  Today, I'd like to study two other religious philosophers of this time who were influential in establishing diversity of religious belief in Colonial America:

William Penn

William Penn was born in England in 1644, son of a wealthy real estate baron, Sir William Penn.  In1681, King Charles II, in order to pay a debt owed to Penn's father, gave Penn a land grant in America which encompassed the current states of Pennsylvania and Delaware (the two states separated in 1704.) Penn emigrated to America and set up the city of Philadelphia on the upper Delaware River. 

Penn was a Quaker and a pacifist.  He struggled with the concepts of peace and war.  He would avoid war at all cost, but he also was an early proponent of the colonies uniting as an independent nation.  A Wikipedia article on his life states the following:

As one of the earlier supporters of colonial unification, Penn wrote and urged for a union of all the English colonies in what was to become the United States of America. The democratic principles that he set forth in the Pennsylvania Frame of Government served as an inspiration for the United States Constitution.[2]

Anne Hutchinson

Anne Hutchinson was born in England in 1591.  By 1636, she was living in the Colony of Massachusetts.  A mother of 15 children, she was a great religious philosopher and Puritan "counselor" to many. Her ideas conflicted in many ways with the Puritan clergy of the day.  She was tried and convicted as an apostate and, like Roger Williams, she was evicted from the colony.  With the help of Williams, she and her followers established the community of Portsmouth.  She held weekly meetings for women in her home to discuss the tenets of Christian theology.

When the Colony of Massachusetts threatened to take over Rhode Island and Delaware, Anne and her children fled to the Dutch-held Colony of New Amsterdam in an area that is now the Bronx in New York City.  She wanted to be away from the reach of the Puritan authorities in Boston.

Here is what Wikipedia says about her role in the development of Religious Freedom in America:

Hutchinson is a key figure in the development of religious freedom in England's American colonies and the history of women in ministry, challenging the authority of the ministers. She is honored by Massachusetts with a State House monument calling her a "courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration." She has been called the most famous—or infamous—English woman in colonial American history. [3]

We sometimes spend so much time on the Puritans in early America, but there were many others who contributed to the rich diversity of the colonies.  The signers of the Declaration of Independence represented the following faiths:

• Anglican/Episcopal
• Presbyterian
• Methodist
• Congregational
• Quakers
• Dutch Reformed
• Lutheran
• Catholic
• Unitarian
• Calvinist
• Huguenot

Two of them, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, although they affiliated to some degree with the Episcopal Church, considered themselves to be Diests - those who believe firmly in God, but who do not strictly affiliate with any given denomination. Only in a nation this religiously diverse could the miracle of liberty come to pass.  I am eternally grateful that it did on July 4, 1776!

 

Sources

[1]https://www.facinghistory.org/nobigotry/religion-colonial-america-trends-regulations-and-beliefs
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Penn
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Hutchinson

Religious Freedom - Roger Williams

I'd like to discuss some of the early colonial leaders whose views on religion and government shaped the thinking of the Founding Fathers.  One of these men was Roger Williams.

Williams was born around 1603 in London, England.  He was a Puritan and emigrated to America to live in the Massachusetts colony.  His ideas on religious freedom clashed strongly with those other Puritans, most of whom had become as intolerant of others as had the Anglicans been intolerant of the Puritans in England.  He was banished from Massachusetts because he believed that the state should not dictate a man or woman's worship.  People should be free to worship as they see fit, which he called "liberty of conscience" or "liberty of the soul."  His philosophy has been called the forerunner of Jeffersonian Democracy and was certainly a precursor to, not only the Declaration of Independence, but to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

He also spoke out against the colonists seizing land from the Native Americans.  When he founded the colony of Rhode Island, he purchased land from the Narragansett Indians for that purpose.  His colony became what he called a "lively experiment" in tolerance (although he, himself, was intolerant of the Quaker movement.)  He was a staunch scholar of the King James Bible and is commonly regarded as the original founder of the Baptist Church in America.

Eventually, he fell away from Baptist ideals and became what he called a "seeker."  To quote from www.history.com:

His lifelong search for a closer personal union with God forged his beliefs and ideas. Rejecting the moderate theology of Puritanism, Williams embraced the radical tenets of separatism, turned briefly to Baptist principles, but ultimately declared that Christ’s true church could not be known among men until Christ himself returned to establish it. From his reading of the New Testament, in which Christ had commanded religious truth and error to coexist in every nation until the end of the world, Williams concluded that liberty of conscience–”soul liberty” as he called it–was necessary because no one could know for certain which form of religion was the true one God had intended.[1]

He understood far beyond the philosophies of his time that Christ could not restore His true church until there existed a government of freedom that allowed, as part of it's codified laws, "soul freedom," what we call today freedom of religion or religious liberty.

He died in 1683 and his death caused little stir.  It was only with the coming of the search for independence in the 1700s that people looked back at William's philosophies and their influences on such men as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

Of interest to me as a Latter-day Saint is our belief that our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution are divinely inspired documents developed by great men under the direction of "Divine Providence."  As I have presented earlier regarding God's hand in the discovery and colonization of America, I firmly believe that God blessed America from before the beginning as the place where His true church could be restored, as Roger Williams hoped for.  We further believe that is exactly what happened when a young New  York farm boy walked into a grove of trees on his father's farm to pray and ask God which church he should join.  Young Joseph experienced a true theophany that day and, over the next ten years, he became the Prophet of Restoration through whom Jesus Christ restored His true church to the earth in April of 1830.  Although it was 147 years too late for Roger Williams, I personally believe that he knows it now and that he was one of those divinely inspired men God sent to till the soil of liberty so that this nation could become the fertile ground in which God could plant the seed of His Restored Gospel.

What saddens me is that our society, particularly those who are the most socially and politically liberal, have taken the idea of freedom of religion protected by First Amendment rights and turned it into freedom from religion.  Church and state should be separate so that the state does not dictate a "state religion" as was predominant in Europe until the last century.  It should never be construed to mean that the state has the right to dictate that there be no religion at all.  Our very rule of law was derived from British Common Law which, in turn, came out of the soil of Judeo-Christian ethics.

Religious freedom is under attack all over the world.  Men of all faiths are coming together in a united effort to preserve what Roger Williams described as "soul liberty."

For further information on the role of religious freedom, check out the following site for dozens of links on the topic, including ways that we, as individuals, can help to preserve this God-given and unalienable right of liberty: 

https://www.lds.org/search?q=religious+freedome&lang=eng&domains=all

Sources

[1] http://www.history.com/topics/roger-Williams
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Williams
[3] https://www.lds.org/search?q=religious+freedome&lang=eng&domains=all 

© Gebara Education, July 3, 2017 All rights reserved

The American Covenant - The Pilgrims

The American Covenant - The Mayflower Compact

In Europe in the 17^th Century, the Protestant Reformation was in full swing.  Martin Luther is widely acknowledged to have started the Reformation with his 1517 work The Ninety-Five Theses.  It was not considered to have been accepted and completed (although I’m not sure it will ever be completed) around 1648 with the conclusion of the Thirty-Years’ War.

The full history of the Christian faith going back to the Apostolic Fathers is beyond the scope of this paper.  Sufficient to say, until the earliest days of the reformation, Western Europe was Roman Catholic. 

Following Luther, there were other sects formed.  Whole countries became identified with certain faiths.  For example, if you were German or Austrian, you were most likely to be Lutheran.  If you were British, you were most likely to be of the Church of England (the Anglican Church was created when King Henry the Eighth broke contract with Rome in 1529.)  Today, the Episcopalians, Methodists, and Presbyterians all have come from these Anglican roots.

There were other sects arising which took umbrage with these Protestant beliefs.  Such groups as the Anabaptists in Germany and the Puritans in England were persecuted and often imprisoned for their beliefs. (You may want to read the history of the English translations of the Bible by reading “400 Years of the King James Bible at https://www.lds.org/ensign/2011/08/400-years-of-the-king-james-bible?lang=eng)

The Puritans or Separatists were among those who were severely persecuted in England.  They were extremely conservative and found the Anglican Church to be too similar to the Catholic Church.  A group of them fled to Holland where they lived for many years.  But the problem was that there was no place in all of Europe that did not have a “state religion” which implied persecution for any who did not affiliate with whatever that state’s religion was.  The only place where they could freely practice their faith was in a new land.

They applied for and received a grant from the Virginia Company to go to America.  The original plan was that they would settle somewhere in Virginia as had the immigrants from Jamestown.  During the course of their voyage, they were blown off course and landed far north of Virginia in what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts.  Because they were outside of the area of the original Virginia Company grant, they realized that they were in a totally different situation that called for them to organize themselves in a body politic for the purpose of self-government and freedom.

According to scholars at About American History.com, the men of the company, which included both Puritans and non-Puritans, met and created what was called the Mayflower Compact, perhaps the foundational document in American history.  I quote:
This document was the initial governing document for the Plymouth Colony. It was signed on November 11, 1620 while the settlers were still aboard the Mayflower before disembarking while anchored in Provincetown Harbor.

The Mayflower Compact was the foundational document for the Plymouth Colony. The fact that it was a covenant whereby the settlers would subordinate their rights to follow laws passed by the government to ensure protection and survival made it a unique document. As previously stated, it set a precedent and was indeed an influential document for the founting fathers as they created the US Constitution.
Here is the full text of the Mayflower Compact:

Mayflower Compact

In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are under-written, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, etc.

Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine our selves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the eleventh of November [New Style, November 21], in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord, King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Dom. 1620

In this contract, they affirm their common lineage as subjects of King James, but they also state that they undertook this venture “for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian Faith."  That the Puritans prospered in America and, as a result, began to persecute others who believed differently, is a story for another day.  The point I wish to make is that, like their contemporaries in the Jamestown colony, they considered themselves under divine contract to Jesus Christ and His gospel, however they understood that gospel to be.

From the very beginning, the American Covenant with the Lord is clearly stated as the ideal if not always lived.  America hit a lot of bumps along the way, but from the start, this country tried always to put God first.

Sources Researched

http://americanhistory.about.com/od/colonialamerica/a/may_compact.htm

 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ _Reformation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation#Austria
https://www.lds.org/ensign/2011/08/400-years-of-the-king-james-bible?lang=eng
 http://www.pilgrimhallmuseum.org/mayflower_compact_text.htm

© Gebara Education July 2, 2017  All rights reserved

  

The American Covenant - Jamestown

Dedication of a New Land - Jamestown

    

The year was 1606.  King James had been on the throne of England for 3 years since the death of his predecessor, Queen Elizabeth I.  James had issued the proclamation that eventually led to the King James Bible.  Scholars were already at work translating the Old Testament from the original Hebrew and the New Testament from the Greek.
Around this time, King James had received a petition from an expeditionary group which called itself the Virginia Company, so named after Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen. 

James called upon one of his chief advisors, the Reverent Hakluyt to help in the writing of the group's charter. The Reverent Hakluyt was able to convince the king and his colleagues in the Virginia Company to make Christianity and world evangelism a key objective of this new colony.

King James chartered the group, stating that the primary mission of the company was evangelistic.  He said:
We greatly commend and graciously accept their desires for the furtherance of so noble a work, which may, by the providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the glory of His Divine Majesty, . . .[1]

On December 20, 1606, the company set sail for America with their admonition first and foremost, to create a Christian colony on those distant shores.  Reverent Hakluyt was too old to travel so he sent another Anglican (Church of England) priest in his stead, the Reverent Robert Hunt.  I quote from an account of this landing:
The settlers landed on the shores of Virginia on April 26, 1607. Before permitting the colonists to continue inland, Rev. Hunt required that every person wait before God in a time of personal examination and cleansing.

Three days later, on April 29, 1607, the expedition, led by Parson Hunt, went ashore to dedicate the continent to the glory of God. . . . As the party landed on the wind-swept shore they erected [a] seven-foot oak cross in the sand.[2]

All of the settlers then knelt in the sand as Reverent Hunt offered a formal dedicatory prayer for the new colony.  He raised his hands in supplication to heaven and consecrated the entire continent to the “glory of God” proclaiming that from this content the Gospel of Jesus Christ would go forth into the entire world.  

A few years ago a writer was visiting Colonial Williamsburg for a look at how those early Virginia settlements would have looked.  One of the first places he visited was the church.  He went to the pulpit to look at the 100 year old Bible that was there, a gift from the King of England to President Theodore Roosevelt.  The Bible was not there.  He finally asked the guide where it was and she said it had been moved into a little side room.  He was appalled that the symbol of the entire Virginia expedition, a King James Bible, should be removed from its place of honor and relegated to a tiny room away from the Nave.  He asked, literally and figuratively, “Where has the Bible gone?”  I would invite interested parties to read his entire work at https://www.ucg.org/the-good-news/400-years-after-jamestown-where-did-the-bible-go

Where has the Bible gone?  Our former President declared during his first week in office that “America is no longer a Christian nation.”  He couldn’t have been more wrong!  Speak out about the role of Jesus Christ and His gospel in the founding of this nation.  The Bible has been gone from the public view for far too long. 

---

[1]http://www1.cbn.com/churchandministry/faith-of-our-fathers%3A-spirituality-in-jamestown

[2] Ibid.

© Gebara Education July 2, 2017  All rights reserved