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RISE OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

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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 religions 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 obtained universal rule. There were differing policies of 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

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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

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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 battlefields 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

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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

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people to proclaim true liberty of soul. There is nothing to detract from that glory — the glory of the prophet who afar off tells of the blessing which is to come.

It is significant, with an import unequalled by any other element in colonial conditions, that at the very beginning this standard should be raised, to be at first derided and driven out; then to be tolerated; and at last, as the promise of what the spiritual mission of America was to be, to win to itself the fealty and following of every portion of the land. To have discovered and preached that truth of the liberty of soul, so that in the blessing of it all after generations have rejoiced, places Williams among the few great benefactors of the race, and among the earlier founders of the American Republic, with whatever equals, surely without any superior.

The idea of a pure religious liberty, such as obtains in the United States and is guaranteed in the national constitution and the constitutions of the various states, seems at the first glance to be simple. Resting upon the fundamental truth that God alone is Lord of the conscience, all its consequents flow naturally and logically therefrom. In the light of history, however, with the countless interferences of the civil power, and with the age-long struggle to ascertain and effect this liberty, the idea has become complex and demands some points of definition.

A not uncommon confusion of thought holds Freedom of Conscience as a synonym for this liberty. But they are not the same. To establish the parallel we need to add to this freedom of conscience its exercise in outward expression. In reality the conscience is always free, and the mind is free. No power on earth can compel the conscience or the mind.

The civil power may reach to silencing the expression of that opinion, but cannot force the intellectual espousal of its opposite. It may compel conformity to the expression of a

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creed and the exercise of a certain form of worship, but it cannot transmute unbelief into faith, or to the inner consciousness change the nature of moral convictions. On this point Dr. Francis Lieber well and tersely says: — “Conscience lies beyond the reach of government. ‘Thoughts are free,’ is an old German Law. The same must be said of feelings and conscience. That which government, even the most despotic, can alone interfere with, is the profession of religion, worship, and church government.”¹

In the “Political Tractate” of Spinoza, published after his death, is a very curious appeal to this inalienable freedom of conscience, as a reason for submission by the citizen to governmental regulation of outward religious matters. Having urged that the safety of society required that the state should direct all public faith and worship, he meets the argument from conscience with the words, “The mind of the individual belongs to himself, not to the state. Wherever I am, I can worship God and cultivate religion in my heart, and can look after my own conduct; and that is the business of the private citizen. The care of spreading that religion is to be handed over to God and to the supreme powers, for to them alone it belongs to care for the community.” The sophistical character of this argument is abundantly evident, yet the distinction made as to the inalienable freedom of mind is true as it is acute. Only when the outspeaking of faith or thought demands that it be untrammelled by civil power, and only when the demand of conscience reaches to the outward exercise of worship in whatever forms shall seem best to the worshipper, does the freedom of conscience assume the larger dignity of religious liberty.

Another mistaken conception, not unfrequently coming to speech, is the likening of religious liberty to Toleration. This mistake is gross, for the two things are irreconcilably at odds. It may be true enough that a toleration may be so

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broad as to furnish both safety and comfort to the followers of a tolerated religion, and yet the principle on which that toleration is granted, is the precise denial of the principle which underlies the idea of religious liberty. Religious liberty asserts the equality of all; that in the matters of religion all men are equal before God and the law. Quite opposite from this, toleration assumes that all are not equal, that one form of religion has a better right, while for the sake of peace it consents that they who differ from it shall be allowed to worship as shall best please themselves.

Toleration, then, is a gift from a superior to one who is supposed to occupy a lower station in the scale of rights. We are compelled at times to tolerate that which is incontestably evil, for the reason simply that we cannot abate it. Indeed, this is in the very meaning of the word. To tolerate is to endure — to bear a burden, from which one would gladly be freed. The follower of any religion in a hostile environment may be very thankful for the toleration which permits the free exercise of his worship, with whatever limitation of civil rights it may involve. But if he understands himself, the nature of religion, and the true foundation of human rights, he will recognize in that toleration itself an unjust burden, the imposition of which is an outrage to the dignity of the soul. He will bear that burden only so long as he must, and will labor and pray unsatisfied until, in the recognition of his equal right with all, he shall deem himself to have obtained outwardly as inwardly, that liberty with which Christ makes His people free.

This thought of toleration was finely expressed by Lord Stanhope in the house of lords, during the debate of 1827, on the bill for the repeal of the “Test and Corporation Acts.” “The time was,” he said, “when toleration was craved by dissenters as a boon; it is now demanded as a right; but the time will come when it will be spurned as an insult.” Says Paine, “Toleration is not the opposite of intolerance, but is the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms: the one assumes

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to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, the other of granting it.”¹

“In liberty of conscience I include much more than toleration. Christ has established a perfect equality among His followers. It is therefore presumption in any of them to claim a right to any supremacy or preëminence over their brethren. Such a claim is implied whenever any of them pretend to tolerate the rest. Toleration can take place only when there is a civil establishment of a particular mode of religion. . . (which) thinks fit to suffer the exercise of other modes.”² There were times in the colonial history of America when the word toleration could be used in description of the governmental attitude towards certain forms of religious faith and worship. Thus, after many struggles, the authorities of Massachusetts concluded to tolerate Episcopalians and Baptists, while the Presbyterians were compelled to be satisfied for many years with the more or less liberal toleration of New York and Virginia. But for over a hundred years there has been neither place nor need for toleration in these states, where the religious equality of all men before the law is made a corner-stone in the foundation of rights.

The true definition of religious liberty is to be sought in two things: its origination in the will of God as Maker of the human soul, and its relation to the civil law. That God so breathed the living spirit into man as to constitute Himself the only law-giver of its life, may be here assumed without discussion. Our proper discussion arises about what civil society and law may have to say touching the exercise of this inalienable right conferred by God upon His creature. In every community it is the attitude of the law which defines the measure of religious liberty enjoyed. According as the civil law interferes with religious matters by direct control; by establishment of a State-Church; by preference of one

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form of religious organization to the prejudice of others; by exclusion from civil rights of the followers of any specified form of religion; or as it expressly abstains from all such interference, preference or control, will the measure of religious liberty be declared.

This relation to the civil law must be emphasized, as a not infrequent confusion of thought grafts upon the idea of religious liberty that which does not belong to it. By some persons it is assumed that any process, of any kind, against preachers of so-called heretical doctrine is an invasion of religious liberty. An ecclesiastical trial or sentence for heresy is sometimes thus spoken of; but there is no propriety in such representation, which confounds two different relationships. A man’s membership in a church is not the same as citizenship; and yet there is this likeness, that both demand loyalty. If he break the civil law, he is rightly punished. So if he prove false to the Church, of which he is a member, he can justly be proceeded against. While the civil law has no jurisdiction in religious matters, it yet must hold true that the Church must have its own law to guard and maintain its purity. So long as no law compels a man to be in a Church, there is no injustice in the requirement that, while he is in a Church, he shall not teach doctrine subversive of its faith or polity. Such requirement is for the protection of the Church itself and is in no sense an oppression of conscience. The man is at liberty to withdraw. But of all this the civil law takes no cognizance in this country.

There are many degrees of interference by the civil law represented in the Christendom of to-day. At one extreme stands Russia, with so exclusive an ecclesiastical establishment, under the direct and personal rule of the czar, that no form of dissent is tolerated, save the Lutheranism of Finland; while other religionists, such as the Stundists, are subjected to the cruelties of a persecution almost equal to the bitterness of fire and sword. At the other extreme is England, where, though the individual finds no bonds to the following of any

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faith and worship which his mind and conscience may approve, yet an established Church, existent by act of parliament and supported by public tax, marks a measure of state interference with religious matters notably below the standard of a pure religious liberty, such as the American understands that liberty to be.¹

It needs to be noted, however, that while this relation to the civil government necessarily involves such interferences, and while the interferences are directly antagonistic to our American idea of liberty of the Church, yet it affects the Church only as an organization, and never, save in the lightest and most remote way, works aught that savors of religious oppression. Indeed, so far as concerns individual excursions into the outlying regions of faith, the tendency is towards a broader comprehensiveness than would be likely to obtain in a self-governing organization.

Thus, there is in the Church of England a singular compound of bondage and liberty; bondage to the state with respect to external order and function, and freedom to the individual in matters of faith. The result from centuries of growth, the home also of much that is sweetest and best in the treasures of spiritual life, the Church of England has endeared itself to the vast majority of Englishmen. Though to the American mind it presents many features which seem abatements from a true liberty of faith, it is yet not difficult to understand the mistaken lament of D’Israeli over the disestablishment

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of the Irish Church in 1868, which he described as, “destroying that sacred union between Church and State which has hitherto been the chief means of our civilization, and is the only security for our religious liberty.”

In distinction from all the degrees of union and mutual dependence between Church and State, which have ever obtained in the past or now exist in various parts of the Christian world, the American principle asserts an entire independence and separation, both as the Church might seek to control the organic action of the state, and as the state might affect to interfere with the faith or function of the Church. In their mutual relation, the Church is limited to the cultivation in the citizen of those virtues of order, truth, and righteousness, which shall mould good citizenship, and through that a righteous nation; while the state is confined to adjudication of such questions as involve the rights of property and of ecclesiastical corporations voluntarily formed under the statute law. The implied duty herein of the Church arises from the moral quality of its mission as a teacher of righteousness; while the duty of the state comes, not from religious considerations, but from its place as guardian of the good order of society.

The independence here asserted is complete in respect to all matters of faith, worship, and ecclesiastical action the grounds of this independence may be well stated in the words of Roger Williams. Despite the occasional quaintness of his language, the one hundred years of struggle after his day and the following century of experiment and proof have not produced a better statement of the principle. Perhaps we might desire to change a phrase or two as possibly suggestive of exaggeration, but the general principle stands clear and is well defended.

“All civil states,” writes Williams, “with their officers of justice, in their respective constitutions and administrations, are . . . essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of the Spiritual, or Christian, State

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and worship. . . . It is the will and command of God that, since the coming of His Son, the Lord Jesus, a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or anti-Christian consciences and worship be granted to all men, in all nations and countries; and they are only to be fought against with that sword which is only, in Soul matters able to conquer, to wit; the sword of the Spirit—the Word of God. . . . God requireth not an uniformity of religion to be enacted and enforced in any civil state; which enforced uniformity, sooner or later, is the greatest occasion of civil war, ravishing consciences, persecution of Christ Jesus in His servants, and of the hypocrisy and destruction of millions of souls. . . . An enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility, and that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.”¹

On a foundation so deep and broad as this did Williams essay the building of institutions wherein a universal and comprehensive liberty should dwell. “His work in life seems to have been. that of transforming this sentiment [freedom of conscience] into a living force, and to him is due the honor of being the first who recognized it as a constitutional principle, and who actually created a polity that had it for a foundation stone.”²

As is well known, these principles were far from meeting, in Williams’ day, with general recognition and approval. Rather were they reprobated by the majority of colonists, while their teacher was subjected to exile and much affliction on their account. But he sowed his seed in good soil, wherein it took root and grew, until the whole land now dwells under the shadow of its stately tree of life. To the aid of his doctrine presently came Calvert, of whom it is hardly unjust to say, that the motive of his prescription of religious liberty may have been one rather of shrewd policy than of necessary

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moral principle. Within the half century Penn added his testimony of charity, clearly recognizing the principle of religious freedom and lifting up its standard in the heart of the colonies, though with some inconsistent restrictions.

From such beginnings the leaven worked throughout the whole lump of colonial life, gradually bringing under its influence, with but very few and weak exceptions, the mind of the entire people. There were many fostering circumstances. The conditions of life and society in the new world, where men had to found de novo their institutions, at great distance from the straitening influence of age-long prescription and custom, had much in them to abet impatience with whatever should seek to fetter free expansion. The character of much of the immigration went for the issue of liberty. The adventurous spirit out of which came, first, more or less of dissatisfaction with home conditions; and second, voluntary exile into new climes to meet hardness and danger, insensibly fitted the mind to the propositions of liberty. Almost from the very beginning the colonists assumed a larger political liberty than they had known, as the plain necessity of their colonial life. It is not strange that, in harmony with this new spirit, the conscience should presently seek to free itself from all bonds of human authority.

To this was added a natural resentment towards the foolish and arbitrary actions of the civil authorities in many questions of religious import. The unwise severity of theocratic Massachusetts revolted many of her own citizens. The brutalities of Berkeley in Virginia, and the impudent arrogance of Fletcher and Cornbury in New York, had large influence in preparing the people for the separation of religion from the care of the civil power. At the same time, the neglect of the Church of England in the colonies by the ecclesiastical authorities at home, the shameful personal character of the majority of its clergy in Maryland and Virginia, together with the absence of anything like efficient episcopal jurisdiction, resulted in strengthening the same feeling. To these

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still another factor was added in the number of sects, no one of which, outside of Massachusetts and Connecticut, embraced the majority of the population, so that it was impossible to continue to any one the preference of the civil power, without entailing the animosity of all the rest. Doubtless also much was due to the religious indifference so widely existent in the period of the later colonial and the revolutionary eras.¹

By reason of such general and many minor influences, the education of the people in the principles of religious liberty was equal-paced with that which issued in political independence; so that together with the doctrine, that the American state should no longer owe allegiance to the mother country, was also uttered the new and startling declaration, that the American Church should henceforth be free from all dictation and interference by the state.

It is well to bear in mind the several points of distinction which make up the American idea of religious liberty. Its complete separation of state from Church involves that: —

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Thus the severance of state from Church — of the civil power from all efficient concernment for religion — is made thorough to the minutest detail. As Story somewhat boldly phrases it,¹ “The Catholic and the Protestant, the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Jew and the Infidel may sit down at the common table of the National Councils without any inquisition into their faith and mode of worship.”

Such is the peculiar contribution of America to the formative ideas of civilization, the rise of which and its formulation in the fundamental law afford a study of great and varied interest. “Of all the differences between the Old World and the New this is perhaps the most salient.”² It is interesting to note how thoroughly it permeated the social life and institutions of the people, and how, under the influence of its beneficial ministry of a century and a quarter, it has so justified itself as to take in the mind of American jurists and publicists the form and dignity of inherent and self-evident truth. Thus writes Dr. Lieber,³ “Liberty of Conscience, or, as it

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ought to be called more properly, the liberty of worship, is one of the primordial rights of man, and no system of liberty can be considered comprehensive, which does not include guarantees for the exercise of this right. It belongs to American liberty to separate entirely from the political government the institution which has for its object the support and diffusion of religion.” In like manner, Kent declares,¹ “The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship may be considered as one of the absolute rights of the individual, recognized in our American Constitution and secured by law. Civil and religious liberty generally go hand in hand, and the suppression of either of them, for any length of lime, will terminate the existence of the other.” With similar thought Rawle, discoursing about statutory interference with religion, says,² “Thus a human government interposes between the Creator and his creature, intercepts the devotion of the latter, or condescends to permit it only under political regulations. From injustice so gross and impiety so manifest multitudes sought an asylum in America, and hence she ought to be the hospitable and benign receiver of every variety of religious opinion.” Thus also Judge Cooley writes, “Nothing is more fully set forth or more plainly expressed (in the American Constitutions) than the determination of their authors to preserve and perpetuate religious liberty, and to guard against the slightest approach towards the establishment of any inequality in the civil and political rights of citizens, which shall have for its basis only their differences of religious belief. The American people came to the work of framing their fundamental laws after centuries of religious oppression and persecution — sometimes by one party or sect and sometimes by another — had taught the utter futility of all attempts to propagate religion by the rewards, penalties, or terrors of human law. They could not fail to perceive also that a union of Church and State like that which existed in

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England, if not wholly impracticable in America, was certainly opposed to the spirit of our institutions, and that any domineering of one sect over another was repressing to the energies of the people, and must necessarily tend to discontent and disorder.”¹

Such is the American principle of religious liberty, unique among the governmental policies of the world, the evolution of which in the colonial era it is the purpose of this present work to trace. In order to observe its spring and progress in true historical perspective, we shall do well to note some of the antecedent conditions, and to review the development and chief elements of the Old World Idea, in as brief space as the subject will permit.