Overall, one can judge that religion was fairly
diverse in the American colonies. Actually,
the main motivation that spurred initial colonization was to seek religious
freedom especially in the case of Puritans in what would become the New England
Colonies and the Quakers, an off shoot Puritanical denomination, in the
settlement of Pennsylvania. And given
the hazards one encountered in making the trip to the North American shores,
that motivation must have been quite strong.
Now,
whether these early settlers, usually victims of intolerance in England, were
in turn tolerant of other religions, is a bit complicated. There were the famous cases of intolerance in
the Puritan settlement led by John Winthrop.
In their perceived aims, these Puritans sought to establish their ideal
religious arrangement; that being the Congregational Church to establish that “city
upon the hill.” And such an image did
not tolerate wayward religious views. The
exception was in Rhode Island that led the way to more accommodating policy.
In
Massachusetts, there were famous cases of intolerance such as the case of Roger
Williams who was banished from the colony and fled to the area he established as
Rhode Island in 1636. Anne Hutchinson
was banished two years later and also made her way to Rhode Island. Along with banishment, there were other punishments
such as jailing, flogging, and other harsh punishments meted out to those who
were found guilty of not conducting themselves in acceptable religious ways. The famous case of the Salem Witchcraft
trials, in which over a hundred arrests were made, resulted in the hanging of
19 colonists and the stoning of a couple of men. But this harshness had a limited history as
its impracticality became apparent as new settlers with other beliefs started
to arrive.
In
addition, as indicated above, other sects began establishing other colonies and
with them other nationalities began showing up.
Among these other settlers were Roman Catholics, Jews, Lutherans, Anglicans,
Quakers, and Presbyterians. As the years
rolled by, this became a prominent feature of the establishment and settlement
of the various colonies. This blog has
already commented on the role the Quakers played in establishing Pennsylvania
and how its founder, William Penn, advocated religious tolerance.
And
in this, despite the initial intolerance of Puritans, it turned out that
congregational churches began to be more tolerant than hierarchical churches. That is, churches such as Puritans and Quakers
tended to allow for other religions and perhaps it was their more local,
communal structures that lent themselves to accepting neighbors of other faiths
whereas with religions that place ultimate allegiances to some far-off figure, be
it a monarch or a pope, this was not so easily accomplished.
This was particularly the case under the
rule of King James II in England. His
Catholic bent had a double effect when he tried to switch England back to Catholicism. This did not only sit poorly with the English
population, but with colonists as well who were mostly, by a wide margin, Protestant. Of course, this upheaval ended with the Glorious
Revolution that replaced James with King William III and Queen Mary II. The lasting effect was to undermine the unquestioned
authority among the colonists of a king or a queen, but also to establish a
more general bias toward tolerance especially in terms of religion.[1]
This is pointed out to make the claim
that, first, a basic tenet of federalism – almost definitional – is
inclusion. One cannot speak of being federated
with others if others are excluded. Yet,
second, when it came to races and to some degree nationalities and
non-Christian religions, early Americans were exclusive and, in terms of race,
for too many that is still the case.
But to the extent they were inclusive,
this development should be considered as a version of federalism among
Americans. It is a version this blogger
calls parochial/traditional federalism.
And a place to start considering how federalism gained in its ability to
influence colonists, one can start with religious tolerance. Even in this social domain, the path toward
acceptance was not always smooth and considered inevitable; it had its “bumps
in the road” as the above overview indicates. But the path toward religious tolerance
was inevitable.
And here, ironically, it was not
religious thought that led the way, but the more secular bent among Enlightened
thinkers that pushed Americans to realize that their common welfare hinged on
being tolerant, especially in this domain of religion. One finds a general transition from a fairly
intolerant postures among various colonial settlements to functional levels of
inclusion especially as the jurisdictions of evolving polities grew in size.
And it is in this form of development
that congregational – the more federalist arrangement – functioned to almost
insist that tolerance be part of the necessary foundation of such unification. Surely, this historical development provided
evidence of the functionality religious tolerance could play to those who would
become the leaders of the new nation Americans would establish toward the end
of the eighteenth century.
Those leaders included Benjamin
Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. Each of these and others actively fought for
provisions to be drawn up and enacted into the founding documents of the
nation. Religious freedom for all
denominations, majority and minority sects, was seen by these founders as an essential
property right. In addition, this was
not only seen as an individual right but a communal element that the past had
demonstrated was an essential factor in establishing and maintaining peace and
mutual well-being.
And the growing sense of tolerance was eventually
legalized by various provisions in law, most notably by the ratification of the
First Amendment to the US Constitution, but also at the local level as exemplified
with the adoption of the Connecticut Constitution of 1818 which finally
killed any consideration of having an “established” religion for either a state
or the nation.
And this more secular turn reflected
Enlightened thinking that objected to any traditions of aristocracy while
turning to republicanism as the preferred mode of governance. This blog has already shared a list of
Enlightened writers, both from the colonies, but also from Europe and Britain,
that provided the theoretical guidance leading the way to republicanism.
Those names include John Locke, David
Hume, but also should include Charles-Louis Montesquieu and Jean-Jacques
Rousseau. Adding to these names is those
of the Scottish Enlightenment, Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid. There are others such as Samuel von Pufendorf,
a German thinker who wrote about the ideas of Thomas Hobbes’ dealings with
natural law. But with these works, what
became contentious was the conflicting ideas between republicanism and
liberalism.
The term
republicanism is somewhat new to this blog.
Related terms the blog has utilized are federated polities (a form of
republicanism) and democracy (republicanism being a form of democracy). America’s form of republicanism includes a
commitment to a list of governing attributes.
They are the consent of the governed, doing away with any remnants of
aristocracy, and a deep-seated antagonism to corruption especially in the
public domain.
Such writers as New
Zealand historian, John Greville Agard Pocock, write of the rich political literature
upon which American republicanism is based.
Pocock shares the following:
[Those political writings] formed the authoritative literature of
this culture; and its values and concepts were those with which we have grown
familiar: a civic and patriot ideal in
which the personality was founded on property, perfected in citizenship but
perpetually threatened by corruption; government figuring paradoxically
as the principal source of corruption and operating through such means as patronage,
faction, standing armies (opposed to the ideal of the milia); established
churches (opposed to the Puritan and deist modes of American religion); and the
promotion of a monied interest – though the formulation of this last concept
was somewhat hindered by the keen desire for readily available paper credit
common in colonies of settlement.[2]
And this has led to a current debate
between those who see the prominent thinking among the founders as being
predominately that of republicanism (of which this blogger can be included) or
those who see them being influenced by liberalism (that being a reflection of
natural rights’ ideas and ideals).
The next posting will delve into this
debate since it has a profound effect on contemporary politics. That is, liberalism has become the central
rationale for many conservative arguments and a foundational cause of what is
being called polarization. Republicanism
can be seen as both supporting non-Trumpian conservativism and many left-of-center
liberal advocacy of today. The verbiage
can be confusing, but hopefully, the next posting will shed some light on these
foundational concerns.
[1] For a simple overview of this history see “Religion
in the Colonies,” (no author or date), https://www.landofthebrave.info/religion-in-the-colonies.htm
.
[2] J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), 507,
emphasis added.
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