Americas True History of Religious Tolerance
EarlyTimeline:
- 1564 establishment of a Huguenot (French Protestant) colony at Fort Caroline (near modern Jacksonville, Florida)
- 1565 the Spanish commander, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, wrote to the Spanish King Philip II that he had “hanged all those we had found in [Fort Caroline] because...they were scattering the odious Lutheran doctrine in these Provinces.”
- 1600's Puritans banned Catholics from the colonies, including all other non-Puritans.
- 1659 - 1661 - 4 Quakers were hanged in Boston
- Throughout the colonial era, Catholics, especially French and Spanish Catholics were discriminated against in the matters of property and voting.
In newly independent America:
- Massachusetts - only Christians were allowed to hold public office, Catholics were only allowed to do so after renouncing the Pope's authority.
- New York 1777 to 1806 - Catholics banned from public office.
- Maryland - Catholics had full civil rights but Jews did not.
- Delaware - required oath affirming belief in the Trinity.
- Massachusetts, S. Carolina and some other states had state-supported churches.
1779 - Thomas Jefferson (as Virginia's governor) drafted a bill that guaranteed legal equality for all citizens of all religions, including those of no religion in the state.
The bill did not advance until Patrick Henry introduced a bill in 1784 calling for state support for “teachers of the Christian religion.”
Future President James Madison stepped in and laid out reasons why the state had no business supporting Christian instruction. It was signed by 2,000 Virginians.
Among Madison’s 15 points was his declaration that “the Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every...man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an inalienable right.”
Madison also made a point that any believer of any religion should understand: that the government sanction of a religion was, in essence, a threat to religion. “Who does not see,” he wrote, “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 all other Sects?” Madison was writing from his memory of Baptist ministers being arrested in his native Virginia.
Patrick Henry’s bill was defeated 12 to 1. The Virginia legislature took up Jefferson’s plan for the separation of church and state.
1786 - the Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom became law.
After the bill was passed, Jefferson proudly wrote that the law “meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew, the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahometan (Muslim), the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.”
Madison wanted Jefferson’s view to become the law of the land when he went to the Constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787.
The U.S. Constitution clearly stated in Article VI that federal elective and appointed officials “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution, but no religious Test shall ever be required as a qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
"This passage—along with the facts that the Constitution does not mention God or a deity (except for a pro forma “year of our Lord” date) and that its very first amendment forbids Congress from making laws that would infringe of the free exercise of religion—attests to the founders’ resolve that America be a secular republic. The men who fought the Revolution may have thanked Providence and attended church regularly—or not. But they also fought a war against a country in which the head of state was the head of the church. Knowing well the history of religious warfare that led to America’s settlement, they clearly understood both the dangers of that system and of sectarian conflict."
"It was the recognition of that divisive past by the founders—notably Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Madison—that secured America as a secular republic. As president, Washington wrote in 1790: “All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunity of citizenship. ...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.”
He was addressing the members of America’s oldest synagogue, the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island (where his letter is read aloud every August). In closing, he wrote specifically to the Jews a phrase that applies to Muslims as well: “May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
"Late in his life, James Madison wrote a letter summarizing his views: “And I have no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”
"The anti-Catholicism of America’s Calvinist past found new voice in the 19th century. The belief widely held and preached by some of the most prominent ministers in America was that Catholics would, if permitted, turn America over to the pope. Anti-Catholic venom was part of the typical American school day, along with Bible readings."
1832 - mainstream Protestant majority fuels wrath against newly founded Mormon religion, a mob tarred and feathered Joseph Smith.
1834 - a Massachusetts convent was burned to the ground by an anti-Catholic mob.
1838 - Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs ordered all Mormons expelled from his state. 3 days later rogue militiamen massacred 17 church members, including children, at the Mormon settlement of Haun’s Mill.
1844 - Philadelphia, anti-Catholic sentiment fueled the Bible Riots in which houses were torched and 2 Catholic churches were destroyed and at least 20 people killed
1844 - a mob murdered Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum while they were jailed in Carthage, Illinois. No one was ever convicted of the crime.
*quotes are from the article linked at the top of the page.
Left out of this article is the internment of thousands of Japanese American citizens during WWII
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