Many early
immigrants traveled to North America to avoid religious persecution in their homelands, whether based on a different denomination, religion or sect. Some immigrants came from England after the
English Civil War and the rise of Protestant dissenting sects in England. Others fled Protestant-Catholic religious conflicts in
France and
Germany. Immigrants included
nonconformists such as the
Puritans, who were Protestant
Christians fleeing
religious persecution from the Anglican King of England, and later
Dissenters, such as Baptists. The groups had a variety of attitudes on
religious toleration; the Puritans, for instance, initially wanted a totally Puritan society. While some leaders, such as
Roger Williams of
Rhode Island and Quaker
William Penn of
Pennsylvania, ensured the protection of religious minorities within their colonies, the
Plymouth Colony and
Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England
established Congregational churches, initially Puritan. The Dutch colony of
New Netherland established its state
Dutch Reformed Church and outlawed all other worship, though enforcement was sparse in what was essentially a trading, mercantile colony. In some cases, jurisdictions wanted religious conformity for financial reasons: the established Church was responsible for
poor relief, putting dissenting churches at a significant disadvantage.
State churches in British North America prior to the Revolution Catholic colonies • The
Colony of Maryland was founded by a charter granted in 1632 to George Calvert, secretary of state to
Charles I, and his son Cecil, both recent converts to Catholicism. Under their leadership allowing the practice of this denomination, many English Catholic gentry families settled in Maryland. The colonial government was officially neutral in religious affairs, granting toleration to all Christian groups and enjoining them to avoid actions that antagonized the others. On several occasions, "low-church" dissenters among Protestants led insurrections that temporarily overthrew the Calvert rule. In 1689, when
William and
Mary came to the English throne, they acceded to Protestant demands to revoke the original royal charter. In 1701 the Church of England was "established" as the state church in Maryland. Through the course of the eighteenth century, Protestants barred Catholics from public office in the colony, and then prohibited them from voting, disenfranchising them. Not all of the laws passed against Catholic (notably laws restricting property rights and imposing penalties for sending children to be educated in foreign Catholic institutions) were enforced, and some Catholics continued to hold public office. • When
New France was transferred to
Great Britain in 1763 after it defeated France in the Seven Years' War, it practiced a policy of tolerating the
Catholic Church in the colony. No Catholic people in Quebec or other parts of New France were forced to convert to the Anglican Church. The British did open the colony to Protestant
Huguenots, who had been banned from settlement by previous French colonial authorities - a continuation of discrimination that existed in France. •
Spanish Florida was ceded to
Great Britain in 1763, in exchange for it giving up other claims. The British divided Florida into two colonies, East and West Florida. Both colonies had a policy of toleration for Catholic residents, as Catholicism had been the established religion of the Spanish colonies, but established the
Church of England as the state church.
Protestant colonies The colonies of
Plymouth,
Massachusetts Bay,
Connecticut,
New Haven, and
New Hampshire were founded by
Puritan Calvinist Protestants, and had
Congregational established churches. •
Plymouth Colony was founded by
Pilgrims,
English Dissenters or Separatists, who were Calvinists. •
Massachusetts Bay Colony,
New Haven Colony, and the
New Hampshire were founded by Puritans, Anglican but Calvinist Protestants. • The colonies of
New York,
Virginia,
North Carolina,
South Carolina, and
Georgia officially maintained the
Church of England as the established church, but the Anglican Church operated as an established church in the southern colonies. Absorbing the Dutch Calvinists and other Protestant immigrants, New York had a more diverse population. There were also two non-British Protestant-dominated colonies that were later incorporated into British North America: •
New Netherland was founded by
Dutch Reformed Calvinists. •
New Sweden was founded by
Church of Sweden Lutherans.
Colonies without established churches • The
Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was founded by religious dissenters who were forced to flee the Massachusetts Bay colony. The
Rhode Island Royal Charter of 1663 guaranteed "that all and every person and persons may, from time to time, and at all times hereafter, freely and fully have and enjoy his and their own judgments and consciences, in matters of religious concernments." • The
Province of Pennsylvania was founded by
Quakers, but the colony never had an established church. • The
Province of New Jersey, without official religion, had a significant
Quaker lobby, but Calvinists of all types also had a presence. •
West Jersey, also founded by
Quakers, prohibited any establishment. •
Delaware Colony had no established church, but was contested between Catholics and Quakers.
Tabular summary The following table lists all North American colonies administered by the
United Kingdom at the commencement of the
U.S. revolution, including states now incorporated in the
U.S. and current provinces of
Canada. In several colonies, the establishment ceased to exist in practice at the
Revolution, about 1776. Some states' laws treat 1776 as the presumptive date of permanent legal abolition; other states' constitutions and/or laws either explicitly disestablished the state's established church (e.g. North Carolina) or forbade establishment of any religion. Some Canadian provinces (e.g.
Nova Scotia) have disestablished the Church of England, but some of the pre-U.S.-revolutionary provinces retain it. See
History of the Connecticut Constitution. In 1789, the Georgia Constitution was amended as follows: "Article IV. Section 10. No person within this state shall, upon any pretense, be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshipping God in any manner agreeable to his own conscience, nor be compelled to attend any place of worship contrary to his own faith and judgment; nor shall he ever be obliged to pay tithes, taxes, or any other rate, for the building or repairing any place of worship, or for the maintenance of any minister or ministry, contrary to what he believes to be right, or hath voluntarily engaged to do. No one religious society shall ever be established in this state, in preference to another; nor shall any person be denied the enjoyment of any civil right merely on account of his religious principles." From 1780 to 1824, Massachusetts required every resident to belong to and attend a
parish church, and permitted each church to tax its members, but forbade any law requiring that it be of any particular denomination. But in practice, the denomination of the local church was chosen by majority vote of town residents, which
de facto established Congregationalism as the state religion. This was objected to, and was abolished in 1833. For details see
Constitution of Massachusetts. Until 1877 the New Hampshire Constitution required members of the state legislature to be of the Protestant religion. Until 1968 the Constitution allowed for state funding of Protestant classrooms but not Catholic classrooms. The North Carolina Constitution of 1776 disestablished the Anglican church, but until 1835 it allowed only Protestants to hold public office. From 1835 to 1876 it allowed only Christians (including Catholics) to hold public office. Article VI, Section 8 of the current state constitution forbids only atheists ("any person who shall deny the being of Almighty God") from holding public office. The
United States Supreme Court held such clauses to be unenforceable in the 1961 case
Torcaso v. Watkins, when ruling unanimously that such clauses constitute a "religious test" forbidden by the
First Amendment prohibiting federal religious tests and the protections in the
Fourteenth Amendment, which apply to the states as well as the federal government under the doctrine of
incorporation. Religious tolerance for Catholics with an established Church of England was the policy in the former Spanish Colonies of East and West Florida while under British rule. In the
Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended the
American Revolutionary War, the British ceded both East and West Florida back to Spain (see
Spanish Florida). Tithes for the support of the Anglican Church in Virginia were suspended in 1776 and never restored. 1786 is the date of the
Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, which prohibited any coercion to support any religious body.
Colonial views on establishment, accommodationism, and separationism The
Library of Congress states that: The
Rhode Island Royal Charter obtained in 1663 by
Roger Williams and
John Clarke contains unique provisions which make it significantly different from the charters granted to the other colonies. It gave the colonists freedom to elect their own governor and write their own laws, within very broad guidelines, and also stipulated that no person residing in Rhode Island could be "molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question for any differences in opinion in matters of religion". The
Flushing Remonstrance shows support for separation of church and state as early as the mid-17th century, stating their opposition to religious persecution of any sort: "The law of love, peace and liberty in the states extending to Jews, Turks and Egyptians, as they are considered sons of Adam, which is the glory of the outward state of Holland, so love, peace, and liberty, extending to all in Christ Jesus, condemns hatred, war, and bondage." The document was signed on December 27, 1657, by a group of English citizens in America who were affronted by
persecution of Quakers and the religious policies of the Governor of
New Netherland,
Peter Stuyvesant. Stuyvesant had formally banned all religions other than the
Dutch Reformed Church from being practiced in the colony, in accordance with the laws of the
Dutch Republic. The signers indicated their "desire therefore in this case not to judge lest we are judged, neither to condemn least we are condemned, but rather let every man stand or fall to his own Master." Stuyvesant fined the petitioners and threw them in prison until they recanted, but
John Bowne allowed the Quakers to meet in his home. Bowne was arrested, fined 150 guilders, and jailed for his refusal to pay. After three months, Stuyvesant sent him away to Amsterdam. Bowne appealed there to the Dutch West India Company, persuading its Directors to let him return to New Netherland. They also sent Stuyvesant a letter rebuking him for not tolerating religious dissent.
New York Historical Society President and Columbia University Professor of History
Kenneth T. Jackson describes the Flushing Remonstrance as "the first thing that we have in writing in the United States where a group of citizens attests on paper and over their signature the right of the people to follow their own conscience with regard to God - and the inability of government, or the illegality of government, to interfere with that." Given the wide diversity of opinion on Christian theological matters in the newly independent American States, the
Constitutional Convention believed a government-sanctioned (
established) religion would disrupt rather than bind the newly formed union together.
George Washington wrote a letter in 1790 to the country's first
Jewish congregation, the
Touro Synagogue in Newport,
Rhode Island to state: Allowing rights and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it were by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support. There were also opponents to the support of any established church even at the state level. In 1773,
Isaac Backus, a prominent Baptist minister in
New England, wrote against a state-sanctioned religion, saying: "Now who can hear Christ declare, that his kingdom is, not of this world, and yet believe that this blending of church and state together can be pleasing to him?" He also observed that when "church and state are separate, the effects are happy, and they do not at all interfere with each other: but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued."
Thomas Jefferson's influential
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was enacted in 1786, five years before the
Bill of Rights. Most Anglican ministers and many Anglicans were
Loyalists. The Anglican establishment, where it had existed, largely ceased to function during the
American Revolution, though the new States did not formally abolish and replace it until some years after the Revolution.
Jefferson, Madison, and the "wall of separation" The phrase "hedge or
wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world" was first used by Baptist theologian
Roger Williams, the founder of the colony of
Rhode Island, in his 1644 book
The Bloody Tenent of Persecution.
Thomas Jefferson later used the phrase as a description of the
First Amendment and its restriction on the legislative branch of the federal government, in an 1802 letter to the
Danbury Baptists (a religious minority concerned about the dominant position of the
Congregationalist church in
Connecticut): Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their "legislature" should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a
wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. Jefferson's letter was in reply to a letter from the Danbury Baptist Association dated October 7, 1801. In an 1808 letter to Virginia Baptists, Jefferson used the same theme: We have solved, by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries. Jefferson and
James Madison's conceptions of
separation have long been debated. Jefferson refused to issue Proclamations of Thanksgiving sent to him by Congress during his presidency, though he did issue a Thanksgiving and Prayer proclamation as Governor of Virginia. Madison issued four religious proclamations while president, but vetoed two bills on the grounds they violated the first amendment. On the other hand, both Jefferson and Madison attended religious services at the Capitol. Years before the ratification of the Constitution, Madison contended, "Because if Religion be exempt from the authority of the Society at large, still less can it be subject to that of the Legislative Body." After retiring from the presidency, Madison wrote of "total separation of the church from the state." Jefferson's opponents said his position was the destruction and the governmental rejection of Christianity, but this was a caricature. In setting up the
University of Virginia, Jefferson encouraged each sect to have its own preacher, though there was a constitutional ban on the State supporting a Professorship of Divinity, arising from his own
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Some have argued that this arrangement was "fully compatible with Jefferson's views on the separation of church and state"; others point to Jefferson's support for a scheme in which students at the university would attend religious worship each morning as evidence that his views were not consistent with strict separation. Still other scholars, such as
Mark David Hall, attempt to sidestep the issue by arguing that American jurisprudence focuses too narrowly on this one Jeffersonian letter while failing to account for other relevant history. Jefferson's letter entered American jurisprudence in the 1878 Mormon polygamy case
Reynolds v. U.S., in which
Stephen Johnson Field cited Jefferson's "Letter to the Danbury Baptists" to state that "Congress was deprived of all legislative power over mere opinion, but was left free to reach actions which were in violation of social duties or subversive of good order." Madison noted that
Martin Luther's
doctrine of the two kingdoms marked the beginning of the modern conception of separation of church and state.
Patrick Henry, Massachusetts, and Connecticut Jefferson's and Madison's approach was not the only one taken in the 18th century. Jefferson's
Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was drafted in opposition to a bill, chiefly supported by
Patrick Henry, that would permit any Virginian to belong to any denomination but require him to belong to some denomination and pay taxes to support it. Similarly, the
Constitution of Massachusetts originally provided that "no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained, in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshipping God in the manner and season most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience... provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or obstruct others in their religious worship" (Article II), but also that: Since, in practice, this meant that the decision of who was taxable for a particular religion rested in the hands of the
selectmen, usually Congregationalists, this system was open to abuse. It was abolished in 1833. The intervening period is sometimes called an "establishment of religion" in Massachusetts. The
Duke of York had required that every community in his new lands of New York and New Jersey support
some church, but this was more often
Dutch Reformed,
Quaker, or
Presbyterian, than
Anglican. Some chose to support more than one church. He also ordained that taxpayers were free, having paid local taxes, to choose their church. The terms for the surrender of
New Amsterdam had provided that the Dutch would have the liberty of conscience, and the Duke, as an openly divine-right Catholic, was no friend of Anglicanism. The first Anglican minister in New Jersey arrived in 1698, though Anglicanism was more popular in New York.
Connecticut had a real establishment of religion. Its citizens did not adopt a constitution at the Revolution but rather amended their Charter to remove all references to the British Government. As a result, the Congregational Church continued to be established, and
Yale College, at that time a Congregational institution, received grants from the State until Connecticut adopted a constitution in 1818 partly because of this issue.
Test acts The absence of establishment of religion did not necessarily imply that all men were free to hold office. Most colonies had a
Test Act, and several states retained them for a short time. This stood in contrast to the federal Constitution, which explicitly prohibits the employment of any religious test for federal office, and which through the Fourteenth Amendment extended this prohibition to the States. For example, the
New Jersey Constitution of 1776 provides the liberty of conscience in much the same language as Massachusetts (similarly forbidding the payment of "taxes, tithes or other payments" contrary to conscience). It then provides: That there shall be
no establishment of any one religious sect in this Province, in preference to another; and that
no Protestant inhabitant of this Colony shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil right, merely on account of his religious principles; but that all persons, professing a belief in the faith of
any Protestant sect, who shall demean themselves peaceably under the government, as hereby established, shall be capable of being elected into any office of profit or trust, or being a member of either branch of the Legislature, and shall fully and freely enjoy every privilege and immunity, enjoyed by others their fellow-subjects. This would permit a Test Act but do not require one. The original charter of the
Province of East Jersey had restricted membership in the Assembly to Christians; the Duke of York was fervently Catholic, and the proprietors of
Perth Amboy, New Jersey were Scottish Catholic peers. The
Province of West Jersey had declared, in 1681, that there should be no religious test for office. An oath had also been imposed on the militia during the
French and Indian War requiring them to abjure the pretensions of the Pope, which may or may not have been applied during the Revolution. That law was replaced by 1799. The
Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 provided: Again, it provided in general that all tax-paying freemen and their sons shall be able to
vote, and that no "man,
who acknowledges the being of a God, be justly deprived or abridged of any civil right as a citizen, on account of his religious sentiments or peculiar mode of religious worship." ==The U.S. Constitution==