RISE OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

I

THE AMERICAN PRINCIPLE

THE history of religion and the Church in America, as these stand related to the civil government, presents features unparalleled in the rest of Christendom, and marks a sharp contrast with the religious and ecclesiastical history of Europe. Its resultant principle of Liberty on which religious institutions and life in the United States are founded to-day, is thus a peculiarly American production. This principle, cutting right across that which the Old World had for all the Christian centuries regarded as axiomatic, illustrates, better than aught else, the profound remark of Bancroft: :

"American law was the growth of necessity, not the wisdom of individuals. It was not an acquisition from abroad; it was begotten from the American mind, of which it was a natural and inevitable, but also a slow and gradual development."1 (America explicitly set aside all the old-time theories of Church and State. In varying forms these had Church a obtained universal rule. There were differing policies of State. union or of control; of alliance, as of two equal parties; of Church dictation to the state, of state government over the Church; of interference by both with the conscience and faith of the individual. The basic idea of them all assumed the necessity of a vital relation between Church and State; an idea accepted by European churchmen, theologians, statesmen, jurists, and publicists, with scarce an exception, from the

1 History of the United States, VII, 354, 23rd (8 vol.) edition, Boston, 1864.

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AmeriI idea.

time of Constantine to that of Jefferson. In clear denial of all such theories, the American principle declared them and their fundamental idea to be oppressions of conscience and abridgments of that liberty which God and nature had conferred on every living soul.

With such denial, this new principle defined that, neither should the Church dictate to the state, as having peremptory spiritual jurisdiction over things civil; nor should the state interfere with the Church in its freedom of creed or of worship, in its exercise of ordination and spiritual discipline; nor yet again should the individual be subjected to any influence from the civil government toward the formation or refusal of religious opinions or as regards his conduct thereunder, unless such conduct should endanger the moral order or safety of society.

Thus by whatever causes promoted, into which it will be our study to look, this revolutionary principle, declarative of the complete separation of Church from state, so startlingly in contrast with the principles which had dominated the past - this pure Religious Liberty-may be confidently reckoned as of distinctly American origin. Individuals there had been, whose thought had reached to the natural right of this principle; governments and peoples had asserted and maintained for themselves freedom from all alien religious dictation; but it was reserved for the people and governments of this last settled among the lands to announce the religious equality of all men and all creeds before the law, without preference and without distinction or disqualification. Here, among all the benefits to mankind to which this soil has given rise, this pure religious liberty may be justly rated as the great gift of America to civilization and the world, having among principles of governmental policy no equal for moral insight, and for recognition both of the dignity of the human soul and the spiritual majesty of the Church of God. To the average American citizen of to-day it may not at once appear that this religious liberty, as defined in the law

and life of this land, is to be thus characterized as of distinctly American origin. We have been born and nurtured in its atmosphere, without questioning its source or analyzing its constituents. As with other natural rights, no doubt has affected the mind with regard to its propriety and justice. It is like the air we breathe, breathed and unthought of, save when some hostile element asserts itself. For the most part, its coming into the public life was so gradual and in so quiet fashion, that no challenge was given to the attention. of the people. Save in New England, where Puritan exclusiveness struggled to hinder its approach; and in Virginia, where the "gentlemanly conformity to the Church of England" was impatient of dissent; and yet again, for two short periods, in New York, where the fanatical folly of Dutch and English governors led to cruelty and oppression, the people of the colonies at large were scarce cognizant of the process by which this principle was gradually taking such place in their thought and life, that in the ripeness of time it should be crystallized in the fundamental law.

Happily for the people, their rights of conscience were never forced in this country to appeal to arms, and the soil of America was never drenched, as were so many battle- Persecu fields in the Old World, with the blood of men fighting and dying for conscience and creed. There were some cases of wicked cruelty. Colonial law, judicial action, and official spite were not always free from the spirit and the severe act of persecution. But the instances were rare, and bore no comparison with the ruthless and sweeping cruelty which turned Holland, England, and Scotland into houses of mourning. Of these few instances of colonial persecution it is folly to speak in apologetic terms. The significant thing about them is, that they were speedily followed by such a revulsion of the public mind that the after-occurrence of similar cruelties was made forever impossible.

So it was that the religious liberty of America grew quietly. Differentiating itself from all systems of mutual relationship

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between religion and law ever known in the world before, save for a short period in the age of Constantine, it came to its right and place almost without observation. It also did its work so well as to put upon its conclusions the force and effect of axioms, assuming to the universal American mind so self-evident and natural demonstration as to promote surprise that there should be any to deny their value and necessity.

Of course, this idea of growth implies that the principle of liberty in religious matters did not assert itself, save in one instance, at once that American colonization was begun. For the most part, the founders of the various colonies came to this country imbued with the ideas concerning the relations between government and religion, which had been universal in Europe. He who voiced the exception noted, stood in marked contrast with all churchmen and all statesmen of his time. They, with one consent, agreed that the lines of civil and ecclesiastical establishment should intersect, with more or less of dependence of one upon the other, and more or less of direction of one by the other. As we shall see in the next chapter, there were differing phases of this general and underlying principle, according as one or other factor rose to the ascendancy.

This principle was not called in question by the Reformation, which lost so many provinces to Rome. It met only the dissent of despised Anabaptists and Separatists. It lay

in the general mind as an axiom not to be doubted for a moment, and with the force of its unquestioned assumption the fathers of New England, New York, Virginia, and Carolina, laid the foundations of their new home and government on these western shores.

This makes the attitude of our American exception, Roger Williams, the more striking and significant. More than one hundred years in advance of his time, he denied the entire theory and practice of the past. To his mind it was alike unphilosophical and unchristian; on the one hand, an invasion of the natural spiritual liberty of man, and on the

other, an unwarranted intrusion of human authority into realms where the divine sovereignty should alone hold sway. Because he was so far in advance of his age, it is not surprising that Williams had not fully thought out all the details of his revolutionary principle and in some respects failed, at the outset of his colonial efforts, to discern some of the limitations needful to the integrity and solidarity of society.1 Nor is it surprising that, in the first decades of Providence and Rhode Island, there should have resorted thither, not only the serious dissenters from the surrounding theocracies of New England, but also many whose restless spirits were hostile to all wholesome restraint. The excess of their ideas of liberty prevented that fraternal union which is a necessity for all organization, whether civil or religious. In some instances there was an impatience of all law, and an unwillingness to submit to that subordination, which is a condition not only of social permanence but also of the continuance of liberty itself.

The occurrence of such unrest in these early years of Williams' colony, though all the circumstances of the age made it both natural and inevitable, has often seemed to obscure the glory of this great apostle of spiritual liberty. But this is notably unjust. Not in a day will the enunciation of a new principle, especially if it be radical and revolutionary, lodge itself in the minds of men with all those details of regulated application to which only experience can give form and authority. To the glory of Williams it remains true, that far deeper than any men of his age he looked into the laws of God and spiritual life and into the human soul; that, as a voice crying in the wilderness, he hesitated not to proclaim a truth, against which the powers of Church and State were alike arrayed; that he refused not to endure cold and hunger and nakedness, and the loss of friends and home, for the sake of this truth; and that in the very early days of this western world he lifted up an ensign for the 1 Felt, Ecclesiastical History of New England, II, 294.