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New England Dissent, 1630–1833: A Review Article*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
William G.McLoughlin, professor of history, Brown University, has suceeded in producing a most extensive monograph on the struggle for religious liberty in New England and his most ambititious work to date. The author’s painstaking research has been exemplary. The result is a meticulous narrative of two–hundred years of religious dissent, told in thirteen chapters consuming some thirteen–hundred pages of text in two hefty volumes with copious footnotes. At the outset, McLoughlin asserts that he undertook this study to clarify the confusion in regard to the history of separation of church and state in America.
This confusion, he holds, is the result of two basic misunderstandings regarding the formation of the concept of separation during the colonial era: The first misunderstanding is based on the theory that separation as we know it today came primarily, if not entirely, from the rationalistic spirit of the Enlightenment and that it received its essential exposition from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in Virginia. The second misunderstanding derives from the very different assumption that separation sprang principally, if not wholly from the radical wing of the Protestant Reformation (brought to America by the Baptists and the Quakers) and that it received its essential exposition from Roger Williams in Rhode Island in the 1630's. (p. xv) McLoughlin is quite sure that the vision of full religious liberty and complete separation of church and state only gradually emerged, since “the fight for religious liberty was primarily a neighborhood affair—a series of dialogues and face to face confrontations in church, parish, and town meetings which continued over two hundred years” (p.xvii).
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- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1900
References
1. For Sander’s position see Sanders, Thomas G., Protestant Concepts of Church and State: Historical Backgrounds and Approaches for the Future (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965).Google Scholar A review article of this work by Winthrop S.Hudson appears in Church History, 35, 2 (June 1966), pp. 227–234.
2. The angiecans, Nothingarians and Universalists were not pietists while Rogerenes, Christ–ians, Six Principle Baptists, Quakers, Separate Congregationalists and Methodists were.
3. Isaac Backus, A History of New England with Particular Reference to the Denomination of Christians called Baptists. 3 vols.: 1777, 1784, 1796. (The second edition, in two volumes, was edited by David Weston and published by the Backus Historical Society, Newton, MA, 1871.)
4. See John Leland, “The Rights of Conscience inalienable and, therefore Religious opinions not cognizable by Law…” New London, Conn., 1791, in Baker, Robert A., A Baptist Source Book with Particular Reference to Southern Baptists (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1966), pp. 40–42.Google Scholar
5. Miller, Perry, Roger Williams: His Contribution to the American Tradition (New York: Atheneum, 1953),p.254.Google Scholar
6. Robert A. Baker in a paper entitled English Influence upon Early American Baptists, presented at the 1960 Spring meeting of the American Society of Church History, Dallas, Texas, demonstrates conclusively the closeness with which Baptists in the colonies, the overwhelming majority of whom lived in New England, identified with English Baptists. Through numerous ties, personal, confessional and literary, the Baptists in Enland and the colonies considered themselves one people. Even the Six Principle Baptists indicated that Baptists in New England reflected almost immediately controversies which originated in England. Baker writes: “As a matter of fact, it seems likely that Williams had many more antecedents in English Baptists life than is apparent on the surface.” Baker also points out that John Russell, Jr., wrote a tract describing the persecution of the Baptist Church at Boston, which was printed in 1680 and sent to England. In reply English Baptist ministers said: “… the authors of this Apology have declared their perfect agreement with us both in matters of Faith and Worship, as set down in our late Confession.” (Nathan E. Wood, The History of the First Baptist Church of Boston, 1665–1899, Philadelphia, 1899, p. 150).
7. See Dawson, J.M., Baptists and the American Republic (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1956), pp. 82–137Google Scholar,and Lumpkin, William L., Baptist Foundations in the South (Nash-ville: Broadman Press, 1961), pp. 87–120.Google ScholarSweet, William Warren, The Story of Religion in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1950)Google Scholar, discusses this struggle at some length, pp. 190 ff. Mead, Sidney E. discusses this development with fresh insight in The Lively Experiment (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), pp. 55 ff.Google Scholar
8. Marsiglio of Padua may well have been the first to produce a literary attack upon the medieval sacral society. Certainly Balthasar Hubmaier in his Von Ketsern und thern Verbrennern (1524) was the first to spell out clearly in an “absolutist” sense religious liberty and the separation of church and state. Virtually all South German and Swiss Anabaptists who write on the issue assume the same position. Castellio, writing thirty years later, is more in the rationalist tradition. Early English Baptist confessions and tracts by Smyth, Helwys, Busher, Murton and others reflect the Anabaptists understanding of religious liberty and separation, but in Helwys the Baptists assume a more positive stance in regard to the state.
9. Cited by Underwood, A.C., A History of the English Baptists (London: The Carey Kingsgate Press Limited, 1956), p. 47.Google Scholar
10. In this statement, Helwys is echoing the conviction of his mentor, John Smyth, who wrote in his confession of 1612 “that the magistrate is not by virtue of his office to meddle with religion, or matters of conscience, to force or compel men to this or that form of religion, or matters of conscience, to force or compel men to this or that form of religion, or doctrine: but to leave Christian religion free, to every man”s conscience, and to handle only civil transgressions (Rom. xiii), injuries and wrongs of man against man, in murder, adultery, theft, etc., for Christ only is the king, and Lawgiver of the church and conscience (James iv, 12).” (William L. Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith, Chicago: The Judson Press, 1959, p. 140).
11. See Goen, C. C., Revivalism and Separation in New England, 1740–1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962), p. 54 ff.Google Scholar