Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Remember with Thanksgiving

THE FAITHFUL PURITANS
It’s easy, in the twenty-first century, to recall North America’s first white settlements with romantic images of pilgrims hewing wood, hunting wild turkeys with flintlock muskets, building new communities, and defending themselves against Native savages with a righteous fervor. Binding them all together was a strong faith that God was on their side through thick and thin. Left behind was the persecution suffered in their homelands of Europe and the British Isles. They came to a new land with hopes for peace, justice, and the right to govern themselves and worship God as each man’s conscience directed.

Around the Thanksgiving season our homes may be decorated with quaint scenes of Colonial America. Magazines display pictures of our forefathers praying together over a delicious meal, every one piously smiling and content. The harmony enjoyed in these communities is envied, as we endure the strife and stress of our modern world. It was pretty much an idyllic setting, we thought, each family cozied away in their log cabins, sitting by the fire reading scripture, loving their neighbors, everyone looking out for everyone else.

It may be true that life centered around church, faith, and family in those simple times, but it was far from paradise. Free from the harassment and bigotry back home, the new colonists took on a zealousness of their own that quickly mirrored the treatment they, themselves, had escaped. Unwilling to extend the virtues of kindness and patience, the pilgrim communities became closed societies where outsiders and ethnic differences were clearly unwelcome. The Puritans of New England were the most extreme examples, but prejudice and hatred filled the New World from Masscussetts to Georgia. Civil governments were heavily influenced by the religion of the day. In many places they were one and the same, pointing to divine authority as the basis for civic law. They saw it as their God-given duty to enforce their brand of biblically-based righteousness in order to ensure morality and order were maintained. Let’s have a quick look at some of the laws that were introduced in pursuit of the idyllic Christian society.

1610, Virginia. Church attendance was mandatory twice each Sunday. Failure to comply could result in: First offence- having no provisions given out. Second offence- public flogging. Third offence- death. (It should be pointed out that, at least in Virginia, the death penalty was merely a scare tactic and was never carried out, unlike the situation in New England).

1630, Connecticut. Citizens could not vote on public matters unless a member of an approved church.

1646, Massachussetts. Quakers were ordered banished on pain of death. Catholic priests were given the same order a year later.

1649, Maryland; Acts of Toleration. Denying God or the Bible: First offence- being bored through the tongue with a red hot iron and fined 20 pounds Sterling, or 6 months in prison. Second offence- being branded in the forehead and fined 40 pounds or 1 year in prison. Third offence- Death. These punishments did not necessarily apply to freeholders or other “reputable persons” such as clergymen. The toleration the acts promised was extended only to church-going Christians.

1651, Mass. Denying the authority of the Bible carried a punishment of up to 40 lashes, banishment, or death for repeated offences.

1659, Mass. The Provincial Court of Records shows that 3 Quakers were hanged for repeated refusal to recant their beliefs.

1660, Mass. Membership in an approved church became mandatory.

1661, Mass. The General Court of Boston contains an account of Quakers being stripped to the waist and flogged through town while tied to and walking behind a cart. The punishment was carried out in two more towns before the offenders were banished into the wilderness.

1661, Virginia. Baptism of children became mandatory. Failure to comply resulted in a fine of 2,000 pounds of tobacco, half to go to the public and half to the informant.

1663, Virginia. Anyone found to be allowing Quakers to preach or teach, in or near their house, was to be fined 5,000 pounds of tobacco.

1671, Mass. Traveling or sporting (hunting, fishing etc) on Sunday could be met with fines, whippings, or death for repeated offences.

1679, Rhode Island. Fines or 3 hours in the stocks could be handed out for exercise, sport, or labor on Sunday.

1683, New Jersey. Fines imposed for recreation, travel, or labor on Sunday.

1691, New York. Fines or 3 hours in the stocks for “prophaning the Lord’s Day”. This included hunting, fishing, horse racing, travel, labor, drinking in a ‘tippling house’, or other exercises considered unlawful.

1692, Mass. Blaspheming the name of God could result in up to 6 months in prison, public flogging, being bored through the tongue with a red hot iron, or be forced to sit on the gallows with a rope around the neck. In a gracious gesture, officials determined that no more than any 2 of these punishments should be meted out for the same offence.

1696, New Hampshire. Citizens failing to keep the Lord’s Day by applying themselves to the duty of religion were to be fined, imprisoned, or put in the stocks for up to 3 hours.

1700, Pennsylvania. Fines imposed for drinking on Sunday. Stocks for repeated offences. In a magnanimous move, Pennsylvania specifically refrained from legislating mandatory church membership and attendance, so long as you were a professing Christian.

1762, Georgia. Church Wardens and Constables were empowered to search the towns during both AM and PM church services to apprehend non-attendees. The guilty could be fined or put in the stocks up to 2 hours.

1789, New York. Sunday fines were imposed for sleeping excessively, loitering out of doors, or traveling to and from church in too much haste. President George Washington was stopped by an enforcer, known as the Tithingman, and had to explain why he was on horseback on a Sunday. He was able to talk his way out of a fine only by proving he had become lost coming through Connecticut the day before and was still several miles from town, where he promised he would lay up for the remainder of the day.

1795, Delaware. Fines or imprisonment for prophaning the Lord’s Day.

1797, Delaware. For willful and premeditated blasphemy, the offender was to be placed in the stocks for 2 hours, be branded in the forehead, and be publicly whipped with 39 lashes, well laid on.

1820, Mass. The convention deciding on a new state constitution refused to include Jews in a statement of religious freedom.

One bright spot in all of this involves the life of a man named Roger Williams, founder of the Providence Plantation, later to be named Rhode Island. In 1631 he became the first man to publicly clash with the Puritan administrators over the principle that civil government should, by right, deal only with civil affairs. In other words, he was America’s first proponent of separation of Church and State. For his outspokenness he was banished to the wilderness and wound up settling in the region he named .


In 1636, as people began trickling into and around Williams’ settlement, he began to establish formal principles for a new civic government. He decreed that the Providence Plantation would be a shelter “for all persons distressed for conscience sake”. He was determined that his government would exercise authority only in civil matters. In this he was the first in modern Christendom to assert the doctrine of liberty of conscience and equality of opinion before the law. He would permit no “persecution of opinion or religion, leaving heresy unharmed by law and orthodoxy unprotected by the terror of penal statutes.”

By 1643 there were 4 established settlements in Rhode Island and they all agreed it was time to send Williams to England to charter them as a colony. He went seeking guarantees of protection from the aggressive Puritans from Massachussetts. Such a charter was granted. In 1647 the General Assembly of Rhode Island adopted a code of laws which closed with the declaration: “that all men may walk as their consciences persuade them without molestation- every one in the name of his God”. So long as Roger Williams was influential, no one in his colony ever suffered for any religious opinion or practice, or lack thereof. By 1679, however, the Puritan element had moved in and gained control, beginning first with the passing of Sunday regulations. Williams died 4 years later.

The religionists had triumphed, and the colonies became little theocracies where church and state were bed partners. Birth had been given to the popular idea that more laws and regulations were the sure way to prevent men from performing what the clerics would decide were evil and immoral acts. The church had the undisputed upper hand and was only grudgingly forced to let go over the next two centuries. The following figures stand out in assisting to break the monopoly the church felt it had, by right, over the minds of human beings.

George Washington: “Every man who conducts himself as a good citizen, is accountable alone to God for his religious faith, and should be protected in worshipping God according to the dictates of his own conscience.”

Thomas Jefferson: “Almighty God hath created the mind free; all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy.”

Benjamin Franklin: “When religion is good it will take care of itself; when it is not able to take care of itself…so that it has to appeal to the civil power for support, it is evidence to my mind that its cause is a bad one.”

James Madison: “Religion is not in the purview of human government. Religion is essentially distinct from government and exempt from its cognizance. A connection between them is injurious to both.”

Ulysses. S. Grant: “Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contribution. Keep the church and the state forever separate.”

Dr. Philip Schaff: “Secular power has proved a Satanic gift to the church, and ecclesiastical power has proved an engine of tyranny in the hand of the state.”

John Wesley: “If you cannot reason nor persuade a man into the truth, never attempt to force a man into it.”

Thomas MacAulay: “The whole history of the Christian religion shows that she is in far greater danger of being corrupted by the alliance of power than of being crushed by opposition.”

William F. Vilas: “The absolute independence of the church from the state, and the state from the church…is a doctrine which must be insisted upon continually as absolutely essential to the peace and concord of the country.”

Even so, many of these Puritan laws survived well into the 20th Century; some still extant to this day. Their enforcement became a myriad of contradictions as governments seemed unable to break free of generations-old shackles. When the City of Los Angeles first legalized Sunday dancing, theaters, and bars, they also ruled that it would be unlawful for the Public Library to be open. The District of Columbia, while allowing stores, ball games, and movie houses to operate on Sunday, refused to grant licenses to fruit vendors for the same day. In Baltimore, Sunday laws were loosened to allow food and drug stores to sell necessities, such as tobacco and cigarettes, but they were forbidden from selling food. In Virginia, a man was charged and arrested for hauling a load of wood to a church so it could be heated for its services. The city council of Windom, Minnesota, made it unlawful for one man to shave another on Sunday. These arbitrary laws, meant to enforce Sabbath-keeping, were descended from those same Puritan attitudes that took away all manner of choice for religiously enslaved human beings.

It’s just a little awkward for Christians to admit that their current freedom of expression in matters of faith is owed almost entirely to men; Franklin, Madison, Washington, Jefferson, who for the most part were completely secular in their outlook. Essentially, Christians have been saved from religious slavery by those who took a particular dislike for Christianity. We can, of course, look back with 20/20 vision and see the errors of the past. The question becomes, have we learned anything from it?

Historical Sources-
American State Papers on Freedom in Religion, Review and Herald Publishing, 1943

Harvard Classics Vol.43, American Historical Documents, P.F. Collier & Son, 1910

John Adams, by David McCullough, Simon and Shuster, 2001

Columbia Viking Encyclopedia, Viking Press, 1960

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