Religious Liberty in early America???

[aldona]

I recall reading The Great Controversy as a teenager and marvelling at the picture painted of the early US colonies as a paradise of religious liberty and freedom of worship. After all, did not the Founding Fathers flee religious persecution in England and other nations in Europe?

Now I am reading a book from my local public library entitled "The Progress of the Protestant: A Pictorial History from the Early Reformers to Present-Day Ecumenism", by John Haverstick.

And what do I find within its pages?

- Catholics persecuting Protestants

- Protestants persecuting Catholics

- Calvinists persecuting Lutherans (and vice-versa)

- Everybody persecuting Quakers and Anabaptists

- Puritans setting up a theocracy that would make the Ayatollahs of Iran proud

- People placed in the stocks and flogged for failing to attend church on Sunday, or for attending services in a private house instead of an approved church

- People subject to flogging and banishment for expressing disbelief in any book of the Bible

- Civil punishments for blasphemy

- People being interrogated about their religious beliefs before being considered for public office

- Quaker women being imprisoned and hanged for attempting to proselytize their faith

...and the list goes on and on...

Now when I hear of US politicians aiming to restore the nation to its "Christian roots," I have a clearer picture of what they have in mind!!! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

aldona

[there buster]

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Now when I hear of US politicians aiming to restore the nation to its "Christian roots," I have a clearer picture of what they have in mind!!

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Not at all. What people are thinking of is a vague notion of something like the 1930's--without the Depression. Sort of like traditional SDA's.

Yes, America was intolerant in those early years--as what country was not? That's the historical mistake. England was still burning heretics of one sort or another at the stake under Elizabeth I and James I. The Puritans who remained in England would behead a king, fight a civil war, and take over the government. There was no religious liberty-as we think of it--anywhere.

Respect for differing beliefs has been the exception rather than the rule throughout history. It is not remarkable that there was persecution, it is remarkable that there has been so little for the last two centuries.

Today, there's a new religious persecution taking place in America. Certain ideas may not be mentioned, even here at CA, without one's character being vilified. Yet it is not in the name of a religion.

[james423]

Some comments about the ideas in your book:

1. People tend to go to extremes, and in the colonial period anyone who had the upper hand generally forced everyone else to obey him with some exceptions. The point, I believe, is that these settlers were put in positions where they were eventually forced to be tolerant. It's a little hard to be intolerant of a person helping you fight off a group of Indians when there are arrows going through your hair or when that person is nursing your family through a plague (no 911 back then).

2. In my study of American colonial history, however, I do find some islands of comparative freedom. Rhode Island comes to mind with all religions welcomed, even Jews. Pennsylvania welcomed more religions than just Quakers. Maryland (my native state), despite being Catholic, was not a place of great persecution as far as I can tell. New York City also comes to mind as another location that in its pursuit of business tended to leave other people's religions alone.

3. The Puritans came to the New World to establish their own earthly heaven. They perhaps more than any other people gave the colonial period a bad name for religious persecution. Yet the Quakers gave the period a bad name, too. For example, they tried to force their way into Boston and some got hung for their zeal in returning when they were asked not to.

4. Those without religion altogether were not welcomed anywhere. Scepticism did develop in the more established sections of the Southern colonies later on (Thomas Jefferson, for example, developed his own skeptical ideas about religion).

5. The frontier areas tended to be a little more open in the matter of religion than were the established seacoast sections (the Massachusetts colony was a big exception).

6. We still ask candidates for public office about their religious beliefs. As far as I can see, this takes place in most of the world. Australia may be an exception.

7. Overall, however, I would say that Ellen White's picture of greater freedom in the colonial period is correct with the exception of the Puritan areas.

[Robert]

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aldona said:

Now when I hear of US politicians aiming to restore the nation to its "Christian roots," I have a clearer picture of what they have in mind!!!

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[Edited: I took a cheap shot at Ed....We push each others buttons....So I deleted my comment]

Anyway, you are right Aldona.....They want to be in control pertaining to religious matters. The very fact that they teach and believe in a "perverted gospel" should send chills down those who understand God's non-coercive love.

Most Christians have failed to see the love of God as manifested through Jesus Christ. They see a God who demands blood...a God of wrath who kills...no murders His enemies. Hence they themselves take on these attributes while appearing as angels of light.

Given that mind-set we especially need the separation of Church and state. What these "wolves dressed in Christian clothing" do not understand is that God doesn't force...God doesn't coerce...God doesn't payback evil for evil.

Religious bigots have bloodied the pages of history with unspeakable crimes, which surely flowed out of their picture of God.

Jesus predicted two thousand years ago that thus it would be.

• "The time is coming that whosoever kills you will think that he offers God service"

History confirms His prophecy. How could we, as Christians, have been so blind, so callous, so indifferent to human life? Jesus distills the answer down to its core.

• "These things they will do to you," He continues, "because they have not known the Father nor Me."

[Dr. Shane]

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I recall reading The Great Controversy as a teenager and marvelling at the picture painted of the early US colonies as a paradise of religious liberty and freedom of worship.

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The Great Controversy??? Maybe it was another book.

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Yet honest and God-fearing as they were, the Pilgrims did not yet comprehend the great principle of religious liberty. The freedom which they sacrificed so much to secure for themselves, they were not equally ready to grant to others. "Very few, even of the foremost thinkers and moralists of the seventeenth century, had any just conception of that grand principle, the outgrowth of the New Testament, which acknowledges God as the sole judge of human faith."--Ibid., vol. 5, p. 297. The doctrine that God has committed to the church the right to control the conscience, and to define and punish heresy, is one of the most deeply rooted of papal errors. While the Reformers rejected the creed of Rome, they were not entirely free from her spirit of intolerance. The dense darkness in which, through the long ages of her rule, popery had enveloped all Christendom, had not even yet been wholly dissipated. p. 292, 293

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Roger Williams was respected and beloved as a faithful minister, a man of rare gifts, of unbending integrity and true benevolence; yet his steadfast denial of the right of civil magistrates to authority over the church, and his demand for religious liberty, could not be tolerated. The application of this new doctrine, it was urged, would "subvert the fundamental state and government of the country."--Ibid., pt. 1, ch. 15, par. 10. He was sentenced to banishment from the colonies, and, finally, to avoid arrest, he was forced to flee, amid the cold and storms of winter, into the unbroken forest.

"For fourteen weeks," he says, "I was sorely tossed in a bitter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean."

But "the ravens fed me in the wilderness," and a hollow tree often served him for a shelter.--Martyn, vol. 5, pp. 349, 350. Thus he continued his painful flight through the snow and the trackless forest, until he found refuge with an Indian tribe whose confidence and affection he had won while endeavoring to teach them the truths of the gospel. p. 294, 295

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[Gail]

To all:

Interesting topic

[Jeannieb43]

Yes. Even Calvin, the Protestant reformer himself, believed that "religious freedom" applied only to the organization but never to the individual.

History shows that Calvin ordered some Protestant Christians burned at the stake because they disagreed with his interpretation of theology.

In spite of all the good he accomplished, he was wrong in persecuting those who thought differently from himself.