Early American Christianity

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In the early American colonies from the earliest days of the Jamestown colony until 1700, colonists from Britain settled along the east coast in areas now known as Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Virginia. While we think of these colonists as coming to find religious freedom. The truth is that most of them were only looking for freedom for their type of Christianity. The majority of the English colonies established official churches backed by the local government. This was the pattern of government that they were used to.

In Massachusetts, the church was Puritan (which came to be known as Congregationalist). In New York and the southern colonies, they followed the Church of England (Anglican or Episcopal). Maryland would be a safe place for Catholics and Pennsylvania would be a haven for the Quakers. In most cases, Citizens paid tithes to support the church, and in some cases church attendance was mandatory. Rhode Island is an exception, becoming an early outpost of religious freedom.

Obviously, the settlers from Europe also entered a landscape of diverse indigenous religions that presented their own ideas about the world and life after death. Among the Native American groups are the Pequot, Powhatan, Narragansett, Mohegan, and the Wampanoag.  Many colonists consider themselves missionaries in the New World and attempt to Christianize and civilize both the Native Americans and slaves who arrive from Africa. Many of those slaves from West Africa were Muslim.

Very quickly you can see the religious melting pot which developed early on. In some cases, these differences erupted in conflict and violence, while there are some signs of a trend of tolerance.

1607

The first Protestant Episcopal parish is established in America’s first successful colony, Jamestown, Virginia. Adhering for the most part to the Church of England, it becomes the official religion of the colony and draws its members from its economic and cultural elite.

1620

Facing controversy in England, the Separatists seek new places for worship. A group of them board the Mayflower in Plymouth, England, and arrive in America after a grueling two-month voyage. Landing in Massachusetts, they establish the second successful colony in America, also called Plymouth, and become known as the Pilgrims. In 1628, a large group of Puritan colonists land in America, settle in Salem, and start the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Now that they are both out from under the Church of England, Separatists and Puritans join forces. They reject most of the rituals, liturgy, and hierarchy of the Church of England (Anglican), whose roots are in Roman Catholicism. In contrast with the Anglican Church, they move away from the tradition of bishops and central church authority, and encourage each church to make decisions for their own congregation (Congregationalist).

Church leaders, who were closely connected with the colonial civil government, want the government to help enforce religious conformity (not freedom) and moral behavior in the community.

1632

Although French (and earlier, Spanish) Catholics had settled in areas that are now part of the US, only a handful of them lived in the thirteen English speaking colonies. The first English Catholics made their entry into the colonies when a group of 128 English Catholics arrived and founded Maryland, they sought to provide a safe haven for English Roman Catholics who had been persecuted by both Puritan and Anglican alike. They named the colony in honor of the Catholic heritage of Queen Mary I, and possibly with a nod to the Virgin.

1635

Roger Williams, a London Minister, who arrived in America four years earlier, is banished from Massachusetts for his “heretical” views about church and civil powers. Williams, in effect, made the first argument in the colonies for a separation of religion and government. He demanded that governments not be permitted to make any judgment about the religious beliefs of their subjects. He was the first to use the phrase a “wall of separation” between government and religion, words later made famous by Thomas Jefferson in 1802.

Williams was known for his concern for and good relations with the Native Americans in the region. He traveled, with their help, to Rhode Island, where he started a colony he called Providence Plantations. He invited all religious denominations and dissenters to join the new colony. Three years later, in 1638, he founded the first Baptist church in the colonies there in Rhode Island.

1638

Anne Hutchinson arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634 and engaged women in Bible studies at home. The practice drew in many who questioned the Puritans, with their emphasis on clerical authority in civil and personal matters and also their general disregard for the rights of women and Native Americans.

Because of her radical Protestant teachings and influence, the colonial authorities sought to expel her from Massachusetts. And in 1638, they tried her for “heresy” and expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. On an invitation from Roger Williams, she, her family, and her supporters moved to Rhode Island where they settled.

1649

Maryland, founded for Catholics, is now dominated by a majority population of Anglicans and Puritans. To accommodate, Maryland adopts the Toleration Act, providing freedom of worship and protection to all who believed in the doctrine of the Trinity. However, the act was reversed within a decade when Anglicans took over the Maryland Assembly.

The colony of Maine passes legislation creating religious freedom for all citizens, but only on the condition that those of “contrary” religious beliefs behave “acceptably.”

1654        

A group of twenty-three Jews, fled the Catholic Inquisition from a Dutch colony in Brazil and sailed up the Eastern seaboard on a Dutch ship and landed in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. The colony is managed by a for-profit company, the Dutch West India Company.

The corporation’s governor-general, Peter Stuyvesant, didn’t want to let the Jews settle there, because he didn’t believe that the Jews could be absorbed into the colony without undermining their Dutch Calvinist religious order. Despite his objections, the Company ordered Stuyvesant to allow the Jews to stay, so long as they didn’t become a burden on the public purse, and didn’t worship publicly. These restrictions would stay in place until well after the British defeat the Dutch and rename the colony, New York.

1656         

The first two Quakers arrive in Boston. They are arrested by the authorities, detained, and five weeks later they are deported back to England. Another group of eight Quakers arrived in Boston and are also immediately imprisoned by Puritan authorities who regard them as politically and religiously subversive.

Who are the Quakers? They are also known as the Society of Friends. They are diverse, but all commonly believe that the presence of God lives in every human being. They call this indwelling, the Inner Light. They were founded in England by a dissident preacher named George Fox.

1657

When the Dutch governor of the colony of New Amsterdam, Peter Stuyvesant, pursued a policy of imprisoning and persecuting Quakers in his city, he was met with some resistance by non-Quaker residents who presented a public petition known as the “Flushing Remonstrance,” which called for peaceful co-existence of all faiths. This was an early act of popular resistance to government intolerance.

1658

A group of fifteen Jewish families, hearing about Roger Williams’ experiment in religious freedom in Rhode Island, sailed into Newport harbor. These Jews, whose families escaped persecution in Catholic Europe, founded the second Jewish settlement in the colonies. They began a congregation and in 1677, they purchased land and established a Jewish cemetery.

1660

Mary Dyer, a Puritan-turned-Quaker, was executed in Boston after repeatedly defying orders banning her and any other Quakers from living in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. 

1663 

Puritan missionary John Eliot translated the Bible into an Algonquian language in an attempt to Christianize the native peoples living in communities around Massachusetts Bay. The “Eliot Bible,” as it comes to be known, is the first complete Bible printed in America.

1673   

The Quakers, with their emphasis on social justice and equality, lodged an early objection to the practice of slavery in the colonies on religious grounds. In 1673, they publish An Exhortation & Caution to Friends Concerning Buying or Selling of Negroes. This is one of the earliest anti-slavery publications circulated in the American Colonies.

1682

William Penn, an English entrepreneur, sailed to America to claim land given to him by the Duke of York, which included parts of what is now Pennsylvania and Delaware. Penn, a Quaker, founded the new colony that bore his name, Pennsylvania. His pledge of religious freedom attracted a Quaker community and other persecuted religious minorities, including Huguenots, Mennonites, Amish, Catholics, Lutherans, and Jews. Fun Fact: the guy on Quaker Oats is William Penn.

1692    

The Salem Witch Trials in the Massachusetts colony officially launched with the conviction of Tituba, a West Indian slave woman. In an episode of mass hysteria, Salem was swept with a panic that resulted in citizens trying 150 of their neighbors for witchcraft, ending in twenty executions. This event became a lesson about tolerance of religious and cultural differences, and the dangers of mass hysteria.

What event on the Timeline stood out as interesting to you? Please google more about it. In your opinion, by the time we are in 1700 in the Colonies, nearly 100 years into English occupation of this new world, is Religious tolerance beginning to show up as a normal thing? Do you think that conflicts in Europe like the Thirty Years War and the persecution under James II in England helped to change peoples minds about religious beliefs? Share your comments in the box below.

What ideas were the intellectuals of the day arguing about, did they have an impact on the religious beliefs of the times? We’ll talk about that next week.