the history of religious liberty in colonial america

8/20/2019 The History of Religious Liberty in Colonial America

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LIBERTY BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

A HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN COLONIAL AMERICA

A PAPER

SUBMITTED TO DR. DAVID L. GOZAIN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT

OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE COURSE

HISTORY OF BAPTISTSCHHI 694

BY

BRIAN DOUGLAS AUNKST

MORRISON, COLORADO

MARCH 8, 2013


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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

BACKGROUND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

John Smyth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Thomas Helwys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

AMERICAN COLONIES: FOUR APPROACHES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Virginia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

New England . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Roger Williams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

John Clarke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

New York, New Jersey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

THE RISE OF RELIGIOUS TOLERATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Act of Toleration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

The Enlightenment and the Great Awakening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

John Locke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

LIBERTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

John Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Isaac Backus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Thomas Jefferson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

James Madison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17


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John Leland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

The First Amendment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21


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INTRODUCTION

Many American colonies were settled by those seeking freedom to exercise their

religious beliefs, which was denied them in Europe. However, those same seekers of religious

freedom became the persecutors of others who did not share their beliefs. Nevertheless, small

dissident religious groups survived this state-sanctioned persecution, as did their idea of Church-

State separation. Religious freedom was not inevitable, nor was it accomplished easily. On the

contrary, the journey to religious freedom was long and arduous and, like most difficult treks,

had to be achieved gradually. The Baptists were among the significant pioneers in this unfolding

odyssey; their fundamental belief in religious liberty eventually culminated in the First

Amendment to the United States Constitution.

BACKGROUND

The idea of the separation of religion and the State was conceived when Jesus Christ

said, “Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”

(Luke 20:25 ESV). Until that time religion was a national concept; all members of a society

shared a common belief system, and dissenters were not tolerated. Christ opened the door for

religion apart from state sanction or regulation. This idea became a way of life for His followers,

especially during the Patristic period before Constantine. Upon Constantine’s accession to the

throne, Christianity became the state-sponsored religion throughout the Roman Empire,

eventually seeking out those who held dissenting views—heretics. Ultimately, one of these


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heretical views, Church-State separation, would, in due course, become implanted in the

American colonies.1

Europe

With the marriage of the Church and the State under Emperor Constantine in 313 AD and

the domination of Roman Catholicism under Gregory from 590 AD, all of Europe was seized in

its iron grip; religious liberty was not tolerated, and those who sought it were punished as

enemies of both the Church and the State.2 The more intertwined the Church and State became,

the more the citizenry suffered under their joint control. Eventually, in 1517, Martin Luther

permanently disrupted the medieval Church-State feudal system in Europe.

3

As the seams of the

established religious and political institutions began to heave under the pressure, others added to

the strain: Thomas Cranmer in England, John Knox in Scotland, Menno Simons in the

Netherlands, and Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich.4 Many of these ‘reformers’ simply wanted to repair

the existing Church, but others wanted to completely separate from it.

John Smyth

Among those Separatists was an Englishman, John Smyth, an ordained minister of the

Church of England who was dismissed for his radical teachings on believers’ church. He wrote,

“The true constitution of the Church is of a new creature baptized into the Father, the Son, & the

Holy Ghost.”5 He joined a group of Separatists who met in Gainsborough; however, the

persecution against them under King James I was relentless, forcing Smyth and another leader,

1 Philip Schaff, and David Schley Schaff, History of the Christian Church (New York: Charles Scribner’s

Sons, 1910), under “Restriction of Religious Freedom, and Beginnings of Persecution of Heretics.” Logos ebook.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid., under “Luther and Henry VIII.” Logos ebook.

4 Ibid.

5 John Smyth, The Character of the Beast , 1609. Baptist Theology.org.

http://www.baptisttheology.org/documents/history/thecharacterofthebeast.pdf (accessed February 28, 2013).


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Thomas Helwys, to immigrate to Holland where they discovered greater religious toleration.

Smyth and Helwys formed the first Baptist church in Amsterdam in 1609; however, Smyth’s

growing attraction to the Mennonites caused a split with Helwys.6

Thomas Helwys

In 1612, Helwys returned to England and founded the first Baptist church there.7 An

early English advocate for religious freedom, Helwys wrote, “If the Kings people be obedient

and true subjects, obeying all humane lawes made by the King, our Lord the King can require no

more: for men’s religion to God is betwixt God and themselves; the King shall not answer for it,

neither may the King be judge between God and man.”

8

His words expressed one of the most

divisive issues among the Reformers and Separatists: the proper relationship between the

Church and the State.9 Some of the Helwys’ group departed for America, and in 1620 these

‘Pilgrims’ settled the Plymouth colony in New England.10

America

Columbus had brought European Catholicism with him to the New World. Pope

Alexander VI divided this newly-discovered land between Spain and Portugal and charged them

“to bring the Christian faith to the peoples who inhabit these islands and the mainland, and to

send to the said islands and to the mainland wise, God-fearing, and virtuous men who will be

capable of instructing the indigenous people in good morals and in the Catholic faith.”11

Little

6 E. Glenn Hinson, “The Baptist Experience in the United States,” Revew & Expositor 79, no. 2 (Spring

1982), 218.

7 Ibid.

8 McBeth, A Sourcebook for Baptist Heritage, 72. Logos ebook.

9 Nicholas P. Miller, The Religious Roots of the First Amendment (New York: Oxford University Press,

2012), 35. Kindle ebook.

10 Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids: Wm. B.

Eerdmans, 1992), 56.

11 Ibid., 13.


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thought was given to the religious liberty of the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas; they

were viewed as heathens in need of salvation. Much of this missionary effort was concentrated

in Latin America; however, Spanish missions were also founded in Florida and the American

southwest.12

Spain and Portugal were not the only European nations to express interest in the New

World. Great Britain, Sweden, France, and the Netherlands all inaugurated colonies in North

America.13

Their goals for establishing colonies in the New World were mostly commercial;

however, many religious groups who were suffering persecution in the Old World elected to seek

an opportunity in the New World to practice their religious beliefs as they chose. While there

was no unity of purpose in settling the various North American colonies, many of their colonial

charters included provisions for religious organization. Indeed, the American colonies

demonstrated four distinct approaches to the relationship between religion and the State.14

THE AMERICAN COLONIES: FOUR APPROACHES

In reviewing the history of the widely disparate beginnings of the colonies in North

America, four specific methodologies in their governance and the Church-State bond clearly

emerge. These four concepts vary from state-mandated religion, similar to what existed in

Europe, to self-imposed compulsory religion, to relative ambivalence, to religious toleration.15

12 Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada, 14-17.

13 Ibid., 197.

14 Michael W. McConnell, “The Origins and Historical Understanding of Free Exercise of Religion,”

Harvard Law Review 103 no. 7 (May 1990), 1423. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1341281 (accessed January 31,

2013).

15 Ibid.


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Virginia

In the Colony of Virginia, religion in the form of the Church of England was established

and financially supported by the State as an instrument of social control.16

England’s first

colony was founded by a proprietary charter from King James in 1606, which stated one goal of

the colonists was “propagating of Christian Religion to such People, as yet live in Darkness and

miserable Ignorance of the true Knowledge and Worship of God, and may in time bring the

Infidels and Savages, living in those parts, to human Civility, and to a settled and quiet

Government.”17

With this, supremacy was given in Virginia to the King and to the Church of

England. For two hundred years, other religious groups, including the Baptists, were beaten and

imprisoned in Virginia for practicing their beliefs.18

New England

Conversely, the New England colonies were primarily settled by English Calvinists who

had separated from the Church of England.19

For example, the Pilgrims’ Mayflower Compact of

1620 refers to the “Advancement of the Christian Faith”; however, it also asserts that the

colonists will “covenant and combine [themselves] together into a civil Body Politick.”20

Likewise, the Plymouth Charter also references simply “the propagation of religion”21

by its

Puritan colonists. Further, the immigrants from Massachusetts who founded Connecticut gave

16 Ibid.

17 First Charter of Virginia, April 10, 1606. The Avalon Project.

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/va01.asp (accessed January 22, 2013).

18 John S. Moore, “The Struggle for Religious Freedom in Virginia,” Baptist History and Heritage 11, no. 3

(July 1976), 161-162.

19 McConnell, “The Origins and Historical Understanding of Free Exercise of Religion,” 1422-1423.

20 Mayflower Compact , 1620. The Avalon Project. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/mayflower.asp

(accessed January 22, 2013).

21 Charter of the Colony of New Plymouth Granted to William Bradford and His Associates,1629. The

Avalon Project. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/mass02.asp (accessed January 22, 2013).


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the governor “the power to administer justice according to the Laws established…according to

the Rule of the Word of God.”22

These New Englanders were congregational in their polity and

in their colonial governance; their church governance was democratic as well. While religion in

these colonies was not mandated from England, they chose to be monolithically Puritan.

Religious dissent was not tolerated and in most instances was persecuted. For example,

Anne Hutchinson, who had been a follower of Puritan preacher John Cotton, was tried for heresy

for preaching salvation by faith and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. She was considered a

danger to the Puritan civil authority, convicted, and banished from Massachusetts. Her followers

were punished, and Hutchinson left Massachusetts and founded the settlement of Portsmouth.

23

Roger Williams

Roger Williams was a Separatist who immigrated to America from England, settling in

Massachusetts, where he was confronted not with the religious liberty he had expected, but with

the same religious intolerance and persecution he had left England to escape.24

Among his

beliefs that set him at odds with the recognized Church in Massachusetts were the fair treatment

of the Native Americans and the involvement of state authority in the Church and vice versa.

His heretical views caused him to leave Massachusetts and establish a settlement called

Providence.

Although Williams was a Baptist for only a few months, he and several others originated

the first Baptist church in the New World.25

Williams’ seminal work, The Bloudy Tenent of

22 Fundamental Orders of Connecticut , 1639. The Avalon Project.

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/order.asp (accessed January 22, 2013).


24 H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1987), 124. Logos ebook.

25 Ibid.


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Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed , was a scathing attack against the harsh

treatment of dissenters in Massachusetts. In it Williams expressed:

All civil states, with their officers of justice, in their respective constitutions and

administrations, are proved essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, ordefenders of the spiritual, or Christian, state and worship…God requireth not an

uniformity of religion to be enacted and enforced in any civil state; which enforced

uniformity, sooner or later, is the greatest occasion of civil war, ravishing of conscience,

persecution of Christ Jesus in his servants, and of the hypocrisy and destruction ofmillions of souls.

26

While not certain, it is likely that Williams’ work influenced those who followed him, such as

Isaac Backus, and perhaps even Thomas Jefferson.27

John Clarke

John Clarke’s Puritan beliefs caused him to flee England and come to Boston in the

Massachusetts Bay Colony, where he supported Anne Hutchinson. Clarke, Hutchinson, and

Williams eventually formed the Rhode Island colony on the basis of religious freedom.28

Clarke

became the minister of the first American congregation identified as Baptists. He and two others

were arrested, tried, and convicted for conducting an unauthorized prayer meeting at the house of

an elderly parishioner. Outraged by this event, Clarke wrote Ill Newes from New England , which

was published in London and described the severe persecution of Baptists in Massachusetts,

making clear the Baptist position that religious liberty was a God-given right.29

Clarke wrote:

No such believer, or Servant of Christ Jesus hath any liberty, much less Authority, from

his Lord, to smite his fellow servant, nor yet with outward force, or arm of flesh, toconstrain, or restrain his Conscience no nor yet his outward man for Conscience sake, or

worship of his God … every man being such as shall appear before the judgement seat of

26 Roger Williams, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience Discussed , 1644, 7, Adobe

Digital Edition.

27 McBeth, The Baptist Heritage, 259. Logos ebook.

28 Edwin S. Gaustad, “John Clarke: ‘good news from Rhode Island,’” Baptist History and Heritage 24, no.

4 (October 1989), 21.

29 Forrest Church, ed., The Separation of Church and State (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011), under “Corrupt

and Dangerous Opinions,” Kindle ebook.


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Christ, and must give an account of himself to God, and therefore ought to be fully

perswaded in his own mind, for what he undertakes.30

While sharing the same belief in religious liberty as Roger Williams, Clarke is less well known

although he was more influential in establishing the Baptist presence in New England and in

successfully negotiating the charter for the colony of Rhode Island that provided for the religious

liberty of its inhabitants.31

New York, New Jersey

By contrast to New England, New York was first settled as the Dutch colony New

Netherland, which was a trading outpost into which the Dutch attempted to plant the old

European feudal system. When the English conquered the Dutch colony in 1664, they replaced

this feudal system with a more democratic form of government. There was no state-sanctioned

religion; in fact, the Charter of Liberties and Privileges, which was enacted by the New York

colonial government, instituted religious toleration for all Christians.32

Religion in the former

Dutch colonies of Delaware and New Jersey was treated in a like manner. McConnell refers to

this third approach to religious liberty as “benign neglect.”33

Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island

A few colonies were established solely as refuges for religious dissenters: Maryland

(Catholics), Rhode Island (Baptists), and Pennsylvania (Quakers).34

Cecil Calvert, Lord

30 John Clarke, Ill Newes from New England , 1652. Old School Particular Baptist Library.

http://www.particularbaptistlibrary.org/LIBRARY/History/Ill%20News,%20John%20Clark.pdf (accessed February

24, 2013).

31 John Corrigan and Winthrop S. Hudson, Religion in America, 7th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson,

2004), 71-72.

32 Charter of Liberties and Privileges, 1683. The Online Library of Liberty.

http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1042&Itemid=264 (accessed February

28, 2013).

33 McConnell, “The Origins and Historical Understanding of Free Exercise of Religion,” 1424.

34 Ibid.


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Baltimore, was a Roman Catholic who had been expelled by the Anglican settlers of colonial

Virginia.35

Maryland’s Act of Toleration in 1649 gave legal protection to all Trinitarian

Christians, both Catholics and Protestants.36

As mentioned previously, Rhode Island’s founders

were Baptists who had been expelled from Puritan Massachusetts. William Penn was a

prominent English Quaker, who was sympathetic with the persecution of his people in colonial

America. Penn’s Frame of Government for his “Holy Experiment” in Pennsylvania offered

freedom of religious worship to all “who confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and eternal

God, to be the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the world.”37

The religious practices of each of

these colonies helped to establish the tradition of religious toleration that would become

widespread in America during the revolutionary period.38

THE RISE OF RELIGIOUS TOLERATION

The foregoing brief discussion easily shows the broad spectrum of Church-State relations

practiced in early colonial America, ranging from vehement persecution to acquiescent

toleration. This idea of toleration had developed in England over the course of their struggle for

separation from Roman Catholicism. Even so, “Toleration [was] an important step from state-

churchism to free-churchism. But it [was] only a step. There is a very great difference between


36 Ibid., 28.

37 William Penn, Frame of Government , 1682, The Avalon Project.

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/pa04.asp (accessed January 22, 2013).

38 Michael Ferris, From Tyndale to Madison: How the Death of an English Martyr Lead to the American

Bill of Rights (Nashville: B&H, 2007), 273. Kindle ebook.


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toleration and liberty.”39

Nevertheless, it was a step in the right direction, and without that step,

the journey toward religious liberty may very well have ended in England.

Act of Toleration

In 1689, under the guidance of William of Orange and Mary, the English Parliament

passed the Act of Toleration, which was a breakthrough for the cause of freedom of religion.

While falling short of affording complete religious liberty, the Act did allow Baptists and other

dissenters the freedom to exist, to meet for worship without fear, and to hear and heed their own

ministers.40

However, dissenters still had to pay the tithe to the Church of England and fulfill

other state requirements; nonetheless, its application in England and in colonial America, albeit

uneven, opened pathways for the dissenters, especially the Baptists, that had been blockaded

until that time, and the journey toward true religious liberty took another great stride.41

The Enlightenment and the Great Awakening

Two landmark events occurred that further prepared the way for the next steps in that

journey: the Enlightenment (1654-1789) and the Great Awakening (1725-1760). The

Enlightenment was a philosophical mood of in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that

emphasized faith in human reasoning and its ability to free man from all bondage. The

Enlightenment criticized any claims to the revealed authority of the Bible and the Church, but it

also advocated tolerance.42

In many ways, the Great Awakening was a revivalist response to the

Enlightenment, which invigorated colonial convictions that God not only existed, but also that

39 Verna M. Hall, The Christian History of the Constitution of the United States of America, Vol. II.

Christian Self-Government With Union, American Revolution bicentennial ed. (San Francisco: Foundation for

American Christian Education, 1979), 39. Logos ebook.

40 H. Leon McBeth, A Sourcebook for Baptist Heritage (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers,

1990), 79. Logos ebook.


42 Miller, The Religious Roots of the First Amendment , 1, Kindle ebook.


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He was knowable and personal.43

One result of the Great Awakening was the explosion in the

number of Baptist congregations, especially in the South. It also engendered a feeling of

fellowship and religious toleration among all American Christian churches. In many ways these

two events leveled the terrain for religious liberty in America and political liberty from Britain.44

John Locke

Perhaps second only to the Bible, the Enlightenment writings of John Locke influenced

the American colonial view of government and religion more than any other.45

Locke’s A Letter

Concerning Toleration gave voice to the idea of religious liberty: “For the civil government can

give no new right to the church, nor the church to the civil government…It neither requires the

power of the sword by the magistrate's coming to it, nor does it lose the right of instruction and

excommunication by his going from it.”46

In his The Reasonableness of Christianity, As

Delivered in the Scriptures, Locke defended the natural moral law, “As men, we have God for

our King, and are under the law of reason: as Christians, we have Jesus the Messiah for our

King, and are under the law revealed by him in the gospel.”47

Much of the writing in the

American Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, and the Bill of Rights

can be tied to Locke’s work, particularly his Two Treatises of Government .48

43

Ibid., 458.44 McBeth, The Baptist Heritage, 253. Logos ebook.

45 Corrigan and Hudson, Religion in America, 114.

46 John Locke, The Work of John Locke, 2004, under “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” Kindle ebook.

47 John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, As Delivered in the Scriptures, 1824, 229, Adobe

Digital Edition.

48 Locke, The Work of John Locke, under “Two Treatises of Government,” Kindle ebook.


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LIBERTY

While the Great Awaking and the Enlightenment were propelling the ideal of liberty ever

onward, many American colonial preachers were espousing these same thoughts from their

pulpits. Congregational and Presbyterian preachers, such as Elisha Williams and John

Witherspoon preached sermons exhorting Christians to stand against the political and economic

tyranny of England.49

When independence was declared in 1776, many of the newborn states,

including Georgia, North and South Carolina, and New York, quickly dissolved all bonds with

the Church of England. New York and North Carolina joined the states having no established

religion (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Rhode Island); however, the old bastion of

state-sponsored religion, Virginia, was slower to change.50

New England was even more

reluctant, believing their “exemption laws” to be sufficient, as Samuel Adams expressed, “The

religion and public liberty of a people are so intimately connected, their interests are interwoven,

and cannot exist separately.”51

Viewing the struggle for independence as a twofold conflict, the pulpits of the dissenters

focused on the colonists’ right to worship freely, especially in New England where the battle for

political freedom was imminent. Acknowledging the necessity for freedom from the

governmental oppression of England, these men preached the corollary need for freedom from

the religious oppression of America. Among these sermons, two from Baptist preachers are

notable: An Oration of the Beauties of Liberty by John Allen and An Appeal to the Public for

Religious Liberty Against the Oppression of the Present Day by Isaac Backus.

49 Ellis Sandoz, Political Sermons of the American Founding Era: 1730-1805, 2 vols. 2nd ed. (Indianapolis:

Liberty Fund, 1998). http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/816/69205 (accessed on January 24, 2013).

50 McConnell, “The Origins and Historical Understanding of Free Exercise of Religion,” 1436.

51 Church, ed., The Separation of Church and State, under “The Rights of the Colonists—Samuel Adams,”

Kindle ebook.


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John Allen

John Allen was ordained a Baptist minister in England in1764. Allen had immigrated to

America, settling in Boston and pastoring the Second Baptist Church there. In 1772, he preached

a sermon entitled An Oration of the Beauties of Liberty, which was published and widely

circulated. The published version includes a “Dedication” to the Earl of Dartmouth—the British

Secretary of State for the Colonies.52

Allen advised:

Liberty, my lord, is the native right of the Americans; it is the blood-bought treasure oftheir Forefathers; and they have the same essential right to their native laws as they have

to the air they breathe in, or to the light of the morning when the sun rises: And therefore

they who oppress the Americans must be as great enemies to the law of nature, as they

who would, if it were in their power, vail the light of the sun from the universe.

53

While specifically targeting the American right to freedom from tyranny, Allen’s words were

also a general appeal for liberty of all kinds.

Isaac Backus

Perhaps the most recognized spokesman for the cause of religious liberty in New England

was Isaac Backus. Backus’ insights on religious liberty drew heavily from Roger Williams and

John Locke.54 Backus wrote various publications advocating religious freedom and church self-

governance. Written in 1773, Backus’ most influential tract, An Appeal to the Public for

Religious Liberty Against the Oppression of the Present Day makes his most persuasive and

robust argument for religious liberty and separation of Church and State.55

Backus believed,

“All acts of executive power in the civil state are to be performed in the name of the king or state

52 John M. Bumsted and Charles E. Clark, “New England’s Tom Paine: John Allen and the Spirit of

Liberty,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series., 21, no. 4 (October 1694), 562-563.

53 John Allen, An Oration of the Beauties of Liberty, 1772 in Political Sermons of the American Founding

Era: 1730-1805, 2 vols. 2nd ed. Sandoz, Ellis. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998.

http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/816/69205 (accessed January 24, 2013).




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they belong to, while all our religious acts are to be done in the name of the Lord Jesus and so

are to be performed heartily as to the Lord and not unto men.”56

In 1774, Backus was sent to the

First Continental Congress as a Baptist lobbyist to ensure that the delegates did not neglect the

issue of religious liberty.57

According to fellow Baptist lobbyist Samuel Jones, “One of them

[John Adams] told us that if we meant to effect a change in their measures, respecting religion,

we might as well attempt to change the course of the sun in the heavens.”58

Undaunted, Backus continued his efforts to ensure religious freedom, unsuccessfully

introducing a religious liberty clause into the Massachusetts State Constitution, asserting, “As

religion must always be a matter between God and individuals, no man can be made a member of

a truly religious society by force or without his own consent, neither can any corporation that is

not a religious society have a just right to govern in religious affairs.”59

However, Backus did

not allow that failure to halt his efforts on a national level.60

He and other Baptists, such as

James Manning, Baptist pastor of Roger Williams’ Providence Church,61

and Morgan Edwards,

pastor of First Baptist Church in Philadelphia and co-founder (with Manning) of Rhode Island

56 Isaac Backus, An Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty Against the Oppression of the Present Day,

1773, in Political Sermons of the American Founding Era: 1730-1805, 2 vols. 2nd ed. Sandoz, Ellis. Indianapolis:

Liberty Fund, 1998. http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/816/69205 (accessed January 24, 2013).

57 Thomas J. Curry, The First Freedoms: Church and State in America to the Passage of the First

Amendment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 131-132.

58 Samuel Jones, A Century Sermon, 1807, Baptist History Homepage.

http://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/phila.century.sermon.1.html (accessed March 2, 2013).

59 Isaac Backus, “A Door Opened to Christian Liberty,” 1783, in A Documentary History of Religion in

America: To the Civil War , Gaustad, Edwin S., ed. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1922), 269.

60 Church, The Separation of Church and State, under “Baptist Appeals for Religious Liberty—Isaac

Backus,” Kindle ebook.



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College (Brown University)62

are credited with ratification efforts in Massachusetts and the rest

of New England.63

THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

After gaining independence from England, the newly-freed states faced the daunting task

of fashioning a form of government by which they could function together yet maintain their

individual identities. The original “Articles of Confederation” had failed because they instituted

a loose confederation in which the states held the most significant power. In the spring of 1787,

fifty-five national leaders met in Philadelphia to amend the Articles, which was deemed

impracticable; therefore, an entirely new constitution was prepared. For various reasons, the

constitution submitted to the states for ratification did not include a Bill of Rights.64

Once again,

the Baptists continued blazing the trail for religious liberty against the majority who were firmly

entrenched in their position of Church-State support, as strongly evidenced by the Anglicans in

Virginia.65

Thomas Jefferson

In 1776, the General Committee, a group of Separate and Regular Baptists, petitioned the

Virginia House of Delegates for freedom to worship without fear of prosecution, which was

becoming increasingly rampant because of the ties between Virginia’s Anglicans and the Church

of England. The General Committee observed:

We believe that Preachers should be supported only by voluntary Contributions from thePeople, and that a general Assessment (however harmless, yea useful some may conceive



64 Curry, The First Freedoms, 194.

65 Ibid., 176.


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it to be) is pregnant with various Evils destructive to the Rights and the Privileges of

religious Society.66

Thomas Jefferson, a member of the Virginia House, received the petition and aggressively joined

the battle for religious freedom in Virginia.67

Three years later the result was “A Bill for

Establishing Religious Freedom,” submitted by Jefferson to the Virginia legislature.68

Sandler

observes several ideas in Jefferson’s bill that originated with Locke’s A Letter Concerning

Toleration noting, “At the heart of Jefferson’s Bill is the doctrine of the separation of church and

state.”69

While the Baptists were universally supportive of Jefferson’s proposal, they were

virtually alone. In opposition to Jefferson was devoted Anglican Patrick Henry, whose “Bill

Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion” in 1784 would not only have

levied a tax to support Christian educators, but it would also have granted the Virginia legislature

the prerogative in promoting the Christian religion.70

By then, Jefferson had moved from the

State House to the governor’s office, leaving the battle in the House to his protégé, James

Madison.71

66 Michael Ferris, From Tyndale to Madison, 337. Kindle ebook.

67 Church, ed., The Separation of Church and State, under “Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom—

Thomas Jefferson,” Kindle ebook.

68 Matthew L. Harris and Thomas S. Kidd, eds., The Founding Fathers and the Debate over Religion in

Revolutionary America: A History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), under “Bill forEstablishing Religious Freedom, 1786,” Kindle ebook.

69 S. Gerald Sandler, “Lockean Ideas in Thomas Jefferson’s Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom,”

Journal of the History of Ideas 21, no. 1 (January 1960), 110-113.

70 Harris and Kidd, The Founding Fathers and the Debate over Religion in Revolutionary America: A

History in Documents, under “Bill for a General Assessment for Religion, 1784,” Kindle ebook.




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James Madison

Jefferson and fellow Virginian James Madison met in 1776 and became friends and

confederates for life. Madison rose to the challenge of Patrick Henry by drafting “A Memorial

and Remonstrance” in 1785. In it, Madison expressed concern over the state’s support of any

religion:

[I]t is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties....Who does not see that

the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions,

may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of allother Sects? that the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute three pence

only of his property for the support of any one establishment, may force him to conform

to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?72

This short document enabled the defeat of Henry’s bill and facilitated the passage of the

Virginia Statute on Religious Liberty in 1786, which was based on Jefferson’s original draft.73

As difficult as the battle in Virginia was, the course to formulating a national stance on

religious freedom was less easily traveled. With Jefferson abroad as the new French

ambassador, Madison and fellow Virginian George Mason were called upon to traverse this

harsh terrain. A staunch supporter of religious liberty, Mason had previously authored Virginia’s

“Declaration of Rights,” whose Article XVI provided:

That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it,can be directed by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore, all men

are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of

conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love,and charity towards each other.

74

72 Edwin S. Gaustad, ed., A Documentary History of Religion in America: To the Civil War (Grand Rapids:

Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1922), 263.



74 Virginia Declaration of Rights, 1776, The Avalon Project,

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/virginia.asp (accessed February 28, 2013).


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Outraged at the passage of the US Constitution without a Bill of Rights, Mason resented this

“fatal” flaw and worked against ratification.75

The Baptists were in complete agreement with Mason’s assessment, causing John Leland

to draft a letter to President Washington voicing their concern over the absence of any guarantee

of religious liberty, yet expressing their complete confidence in the person of George

Washington to “prevent all oppression.”76

The President’s reply was reassuring, commenting,

“No one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of

spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.”77

Nonetheless, the Baptists were

well aware that more work needed to be done to ensure those “effectual barriers” were put into

place.

John Leland

Baptist minister John Leland’s influence in the struggle for religious freedom was

extremely effective. While born a Massachusetts Congregationalist, Leland became a Baptist

minister, and in 1777, he moved from Massachusetts to Virginia. In 1786, he became

representative for the General Committee.78 A staunch supporter of Jefferson and Madison,

Leland is credited with Madison’s election to the Virginia ratification convention in 1788 and to

the First Congress in 1789, which was responsible for authoring the Bill of Rights. These two

75 Daniel L. Dreisbach, “George Mason’s Pursuit of Religious Liberty in Revolutionary Virginia,” The

Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 108, no. 1 (2000), 41.

76 John Leland, The Writings of the Late Elder John Leland, L. F. Greene, ed. (New York: G. W. Wood,

1845), under “Address of the Committee of the United Baptist Churches of Virginia, assembled in the city of

Richmond, 8th August, 1789, to the President of the United States of America.” Kindle ebook.

77 Gaustad, A Documentary History of Religion in America, 276.

78 McBeth, The Baptist Heritage, 273-274. Logos ebook.


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key interventions by Leland on behalf of Madison were instrumental in reaching the eventual

destination: the Federal guarantee of religious liberty.79

Leland continued writing on behalf of the cause of religious liberty; his major work, The

Rights of Conscience Inalienable (1791), maintained three essential propositions. First, Leland

argued that the “rights of conscience” are “inalienable” and cannot be regulated or restricted by

government.80

Second, he asserted that the legal establishment of a religion always harms that

religion, noting, “These establishments metamorphose the church into a creature, and religion

into a principle of state, which has a natural tendency to make men conclude that Bible religion

is nothing but a trick of state.”

81

Third, Leland proclaimed that the actual underlying cause of

religious establishment was not the benefit of that religion but was the strengthening of political

power of civil leaders and the enriching of greedy clerics.82

Although a Christian, Leland did not

support the idea of the United States as a Christian nation:

The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever. … Government

should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuseanother. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is

despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence,

whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians. 83

While agreeing that the government should punish those who caused harm to others, he added,

“Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men, than it has with the

79 Mark S. Scarberry, “John Leland and James Madison: Religious Influence on the Ratification of the

Constitution and on the Proposal of the Bill of Rights,” Penn State Law Review 113, no. 3 (February 11, 2009), 734.

80 Leland, The Writings of the Late Elder John Leland, under “The Rights of Conscience, &c.” Kindle

ebook.

81 Ibid.

82 Ibid.

83 Ibid., under “The Excess of Civil Power Exploded.” Kindle ebook.


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principles of mathematics. Let every man speak freely without fear, maintain the principles that

he believes, worship according to his own faith… and let government protect him in so doing.”84

The First Amendment

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the

free exercise thereof.”85

At last, on December 15, 1791, the United States Bill of Rights became

law upon ratification of three-quarters of the States, with Leland’s Virginia providing the critical

tenth vote for ratification, and freedom of religion in America took its place as the first protected

right. However, even with the passage of the Bill of Rights, freedom of religion was only

guaranteed at the Federal level; many states continued to support religion into the mid-nineteenth

century, with Connecticut deleting all references in its constitution in 1818 and Massachusetts

suspending church funding by the state in 1833.86

CONCLUSION

As has been demonstrated, the pinnacle of religious liberty in America was not easily

achieved. On the contrary, the road to freedom of religion was a costly and lengthy struggle, yet

the Baptists were the initiators of the venture as well as the catalysts who kept it always moving

forward, even at the great personal sacrifice of many of its sojourners. Undaunted by its steep

grade and many perilous obstacles, the outnumbered and underrepresented Baptists tightly

grasped their doctrine of separation of Church and State, refusing any divergent path of historic

state-established religion and reaching the summit of freedom of religion.

84 Ibid., under “The Rights of Conscience, &c.” Kindle ebook.

85 United States Constitution, Amendment 1, clauses 1 & 2.

86 Mark A. Noll, The Old Religion in a New World: The History of North American Christianity (Grand

Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2002), 78.


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