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Lesson 1.4 Religious Freedom in the New World
The Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620 is the tale we are most familiar with. The Pilgrims were separatists. Though the Pilgrims’ roots were with the Puritan Church, they endeavored to separate themselves from the Puritan Church, as well as British mainstream society.
The Protestant Reformation was rejected by England at first. The Church in England stayed with the Catholic Church, continuing allegiance to the pope. King Henry VIII changed his mind when he wanted a divorce, and the Vatican refused to grant it to him. He established the Church of England, and proclaimed himself supreme head of the new church. While the king controlled the church, Catholics demanded a return to the Catholic Church, and many other English people demanded a true Reformation in England. These reformers came to be called Puritans.
During the early 1600s, King James I enforced conformity to the Church of England, and punished anyone who dissented, under the authority of the 1559 Act of Uniformity. In 1629 King Charles I initiated aggressive anti-Puritan policies. To escape the persecution in England, many of the Puritans came to the New World, setting up settlements in Massachusetts. The Pilgrims, after a time in Holland, also came to the New World. Since the Pilgrims were separatists, they desired to be separate from the other colonies, and allegedly changed course on purpose so that they could settle to the north of the other colonies. Like the Puritans, the Pilgrims were seeking religious freedom.
These early northern colonies were theocracies, but the strong hold by the Church splintered as more and more colonists moved into the frontier. New strains of Protestantism emerged in the frontier lands to the west of the colonies, and the Puritan Church’s influence lessened with each new settlement to the west. In the colonies the Puritan churches divided and subdivided as well. The Christian founding of these settlements is undeniable, but neither is the diversity of the religious beliefs of the early colonists.
Quakers flocked to Pennsylvania where William Penn was determined to live in peace with the Indians, and all other religious denominations. Penn’s first principle of government was that every settler “enjoy the free expression of his or her faith and exercise of worship towards God.” Pennsylvania tolerated all Protestant sects, as well as Roman Catholics. Though all voters and officials had to be Christians, the government did not compel settlers to attend church services (as in Massachusetts), or pay taxes to maintain a state-supported church (as in Virginia). Pennsylvania was the first of the northern colonies to practice true religious freedom, aside from Rhode Island which had begun to advocate freedom of religion when Roger Williams, the founder of the colony, had been banished by the Puritans in the early 1630s.
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