Dissent in the American Colonies before the First Amendment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine A. Brekus
Keyword(s):  
First Amendment ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
Early America ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Freedom Of Conscience ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
The Enlightenment

Many of the early migrants to the American colonies came from Dissenting backgrounds. There were many reasons why it was difficult to enforce religious uniformity across the Atlantic, including the diversity of religious traditions and the rise of the Enlightenment, particularly Locke’s emphasis on the sanctity of conscience. However, the role played by Presbyterians, Baptists, and Quakers in arguing for freedom of conscience needs to be acknowledged as well. Their pressure to create a formal separation of Church and state was vital. The 1689 Toleration Act and the revivals of the Great Awakening undermined the principle of church establishment in early America and led to divisions between different religious groups. In 1789, Dissenters contributed to the passage of the First Amendment, which guaranteed religious freedom and prohibited the establishment of a national church.

scholarly journals Special Solicitude: Religious Freedom at America’s Public Universities

Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
William E. Thro
Keyword(s):  
First Amendment ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Public Universities ◽  
Religious Organizations ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
University Campuses ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Government

Rejecting the Obama Administration’s argument that the First Amendment requires identical treatment for religious organizations and secular organizations, the Supreme Court held such a “result is hard to square with the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations.” (Hosanna-Tabor, 565 U.S. at 189). This “special solicitude” guarantees religious freedom from the government in all aspects of society, but particularly on public university campuses. At a minimum, religious expression and religious organizations must have equal rights with secular expression and secular organizations. In some instances, religious expression and religious expression may have greater rights. The Court’s 2020 decisions in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, and Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, reinforce and expand the “special solicitude” of religion. Indeed, Espinoza and Our Lady have profound implications for student religious groups at America’s public campuses. This article examines religious freedom at America’s public universities. This article has three parts. First, it offers an overview of religious freedom prior to Espinoza and Our Lady. Second, it briefly discusses those two cases. Third, it explores the implications of those decisions on America’s public campuses.

Church and State: Separation or Accommodation?

1981 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha McCarthy
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Public Education ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Parochial Schools ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
State Involvement ◽  
Religious Influences ◽  
State Separation

Martha McCarthy analyzes litigation pertaining to state involvement in sectarian education and religious influences in public education. She maintains that there is some indication that the judiciary is becoming more lenient in allowing state aid to parochial schools and religious accomodations in public schools. Since legislative bodies, responding to the mounting political influence of religious groups, are enacting laws that strain the wall of separation between church and state, she concludes that First Amendment religious guarantees may be in jeopardy.

“The Crisis in Church-State Relationships in the U.S.A.” A Recently Discovered Text by John Courtney Murray

1999 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 675-686 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Komonchak
Keyword(s):  
First Amendment ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Church And State ◽  
First Time ◽  
The U.S ◽  
John Courtney Murray

In October 1950, John Courtney Murray, S.J., wrote for the use of Msgr. Giovanni Battista Montini of the Vatican Secretariat of State a memorandum: “The crisis in Church-State Relationships in the U.S.A.” An attempt by Murray to encourage a development of Catholic teaching on church and state and religious freedom that would enable American Catholics to give support in principle to the First Amendment of the U.S Constitution, the memorandum was submitted to some American churchmen and to the Vatican's Holy Office. The dossier here published for the first time includes the texts of Murray's memorandum and of responses to it written by Samule Cardinal Stritch and Fr. Francis J. Cornell, C.SS.R. The introduction to these texts sets the memorandum in context and explains the Holy Office's actions against Murray.

The Philosophical Legacy of the 16th and 17th Century Socinians

1998 ◽  
pp. 100-105
Author(s):  
Marian Hillar
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Evolutionary Process ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Medieval Theology ◽  
James Madison ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Pierre Bayle ◽  
Secular Power

The doctrines of the Socinians represent a rational reaction to a medieval theology based on submission to the Church’s authority. Though they retained Scripture as something supra rationem, the Socinians analyzed it rationally and believed that nothing should be accepted contra rationem. Their social and political thought underwent a significant evolutionary process from a very utopian pacifistic trend condemning participation in war and holding public and judicial office to a moderate and realistic stance based on mutual love, support of the secular power of the state, active participation in social and political life, and the defense of social equality. They spoke out against the enserfment of peasants, and were the first Christians to postulate the separation of Church and state. The spirit of absolute religious freedom expressed in their practice and writings, ‘determined, more or less immediately, all the subsequent revolutions in favor of religious liberty.’(1) The precursor ideas of the Socinians on religious freedom later were expanded, perfected, and popularized by Locke and Pierre Bayle. Locke’s ideas were transplanted to America by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson who implemented them in American legislation. The rationality of the Socinians set the trend for the philosophical ideas of the Enlightenment and determined the future development of many modern intellectual endeavors.

Every Foreign Land is Their Native Country, and Every Land of Birth is a Land of Strangers

2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-194
Author(s):  
Abraham van de Beek
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Solid Base ◽  
Roman Emperor ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Modern Idea ◽  
Foreign Land ◽  
Plural Society ◽  
The Difference

AbstractThe author compares three models of the relation of church and state. The Hungarian king Stephen(± 1000 AD) pleads for a plural society with different cultural and ethnic traditions. Different religious traditions easily fit into this model. The model of the Roman Emperor Constantine (beginning of the 4th century) provides an intertwining of church and state. The unknown author of the epistle to Diognetus (± 200 AD) describes a church that is spread among the nations and does not identify itself with any one nation. The first and the last model are compatible while both exclude Constantine's. The difference with the modern idea of religious freedom is that this idea deals with individual believers while the model of Stephen and Diognetus speaks of a plurality of communities. That is a more solid base for human dignity because the community provides people a place to be at home.

Religious Culture & Natural Rights: Understanding the “Paradox” of Early America

2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-395
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Grenda
Keyword(s):  
First Amendment ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Establishment Clause ◽  
Early America ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
The Relationship

Analyses of religious liberty in eighteenth-century America often seek to uncover legal principles concerning the relationship between church and state. Many such analyses focus on the Revolutionary-era writings of famous American founders and include among recent worksThe Founders on God and Government, Jefferson and Madison on the Separation of Church and State, and Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation between Church and State. Related work on religious liberty in early America examines that liberty in conceptual categories derived from the First Amendment's establishment clause which states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Scholarship in this field includesThe Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment and The First Freedoms: Church and State in America to the Passage of the First Amendment.Although such scholarship has yielded important, though conflicting, results, the general search for legal principles concerning the relationship between church and state sometimes obscures important complexities in the historical sources. One such complexity is the combination of a political culture of natural rights and the religious culture of an evangelically rooted Protestantism in much of the public discourse on religious liberty in early America. Consider, for example, the two states at the American founding that scholars usually cite as representing two contrasting legal principles on the relationship between church and state, Massachusetts and Virginia. The new state of Massachusetts maintained a religious establishment supported by public taxes while the new state of Virginia did not.

scholarly journals American Religious Liberty: An International Perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 99-122
Author(s):  
John Witte, Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Church And State ◽  
International Perspective ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Free Exercise ◽  
American Law ◽  
Human Rights Norms

This Article compares United States religious freedom jurisprudence with prevailing international human rights norms.  I distill these international religious freedom norms and evaluate how selected US Supreme Court cases both follow and depart from these norms. Part I identifies six principles of religious freedom defended by the American framers who crafted the First Amendment in 1791: liberty of conscience; free exercise of religion; religious pluralism; religious equality; separation of church and state; and no establishment of religion.  Part II summarizes the mostly parallel norms of religious freedom in the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the 1981 UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, and the 1989 Vienna Concluding Document.  Part III shows how the US Court’s cases on freedom of conscience, free exercise, and religious equality compare favorably to international standards, although some religious minorities have often not fared well. Some of the Court’s cases defending the principle of separation of church and state mesh well with international concerns for religious autonomy.  But the Court’s establishment clause cases have gone well beyond international norms in expunging religion from public schools and removing state aid for religious groups and services. The Article concludes that religious freedom remains a strong constitutional value in American law and culture, but it needs to be better integrated; international religious freedom norms offer valuable lessons to that end.

scholarly journals Le droit étatique des minorités religieuses

2005 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacques Zylberberg
Keyword(s):  
Church And State ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Freedom Of Conscience ◽  
Religious Minorities

For religious minorities, freedoms are best guaranteed by the principle of non-interference, a kind of « right to indifference ». There is no question of denying the existence of oppressed groups, but rather of being opposed to some « class » right for religious groups. The author highlights from the time of Roman history onwards the emancipation and repression of individuals and groups in areas of freedom of conscience and religious practice. He is quite critical towards our era as he underscores the deficiencies in the Canadian and Québec charters in coming to grips with legislative discrimination. According to his conclusions, the non-separation of Church and State and the introduction of statutes on minorities perpetuates discriminated-against minorities.

scholarly journals Pluralism, Dialogue, and Freedom: Professor Robert Rodes and the Church-State Nexus

2007 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 503-525
Author(s):  
Richard W. Garnett
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Church And State ◽  
World War ◽  
World Record ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
Train Of Thought ◽  
Fundamental Values ◽  
The Church

President George H.W. Bush caused a few chuckles—and, more than likely, a few groans—when, out on the trail during the 1988 presidential campaign, he recalled being shot down over the South Pacific in World War II: Was I scared floating in a little yellow raft off the coast of an enemy-held island, setting a world record for paddling? Of course I was. What sustains you in times like that? Well, you go back to fundamental values. I thought about Mother and Dad and the strength I got from them—and God and faith and the separation of Church and State.Mother, Dad, God, faith—“and the separation of church and state.” This train of thought probably strikes us as a bit absurd. And yet, it is entirely American. That “God” and “faith” could not be invoked by the future President, as “fundamental values,” without the addition of “the separation of church and state” speaks volumes about how we Americans think about the content and implications of religious freedom, our “first freedom.” Indeed, Professor Daniel Dreisbach observed not long ago that “[n]o metaphor in American letters has had a greater influence on law and policy than Thomas Jefferson's ‘wall of separation between church and state.’” For many Americans, this metaphor supplies—in Professor Philip Hamburger's words—the “authoritative interpretation” of the First Amendment's Religion Clauses; and “vast numbers of [us] have come to understand [our] religious freedom in terms of Jefferson's phrase. As a result, Jefferson's words often seem more familiar than the words of the First Amendment itself.”

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