Theocracy: the Origin of American Democracy

thomasbrewton.com ^ | July 31, 2006 | Thomas E. Brewton

[Dr. Eckleburg]

The very notions of religious tolerance and freedom of conscience are rooted not in "secular" teachings (which are not tolerant of but hostile to religion) but rather in Christian religious teachings.

We have freedom of religion not because religious ideas have been purged from government, but rather precisely because of the Christian influence over our form of government.

Precisely.

As John Adams wrote...

"The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity...I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and the attributes of God." -- [June 28, 1813; Letter to Thomas Jefferson]

"We recognize no Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!" -- [April 18, 1775, on the eve of the Revolutionary War after a British major ordered John Adams, John Hancock, and those with them to disperse in "the name of George the Sovereign King of England."

[tacticalogic]

The ban on religious tests on the national level was actually meant to protect state religious tests from encroachment by some national test.

Can you provide any supporting evidence that the Founders considered such "tests" to be desireable, that they wanted them protected?

[x]

Since the Massachusetts Bay Company was not founded until 1630, why are the Pilgrims lumped with the Puritans?

Theologically, I think the Pilgrims and Puritans were more or less similar. The Pilgrims, though, were separatists who wanted a more radical break with the Church of England. The Puritans were more comfortable with the idea of hierarchy, though they were no friends to the established Anglican system.

The most obvious difference between the Pilgrims and the Puritans is that the Puritans had no intention of breaking with the Anglican church. The Puritans were nonconformists as were the Pilgrims, both of which refusing to accept an authority beyond that of the revealed word. But where with the Pilgrims this had translated into something closer to an egalitarian mode, the "Puritans considered religion a very complex, subtle, and highly intellectual affair," and its leaders thus were highly trained scholars, whose education tended to translate into positions that were often authoritarian. There was a built-in hierarchism in this sense, but one which mostly reflected the age: "Very few Englishmen had yet broached the notion that a lackey was as good as a lord, or that any Tom, Dick, or Harry...could understand the Sermon on the Mount as well as a Master of Arts from Oxford, Cambridge, or Harvard" (Miller, I: 4, 14). Source

You can see parallels between the Pilgrims and churches like the Baptists, Quakers, and the Methodists (who came along later). They might have disagreed and even hated each other, but they shared a democratic "low church" dislike of hierarchies and pretensions.

But the Puritans with their intellectual emphasis and haughtiness did a lot to provide leadership for the colonies and the country. The "Old Colony" of Plymouth was weak and submissive enough to allow itself to be absorbed by the Puritans' Massachusetts Bay Colony. Even today, originally Baptist Rhode Island takes a backseat to its Puritan neighbors, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Intellectual historians forget about the Pilgrims because they weren't assertive enough to put the kind of stamp on America that the Puritans did.

[Tailgunner Joe]

The Founders had differences of opinion about this. That's why they left it up to each state to decide for themselves.

[tacticalogic]

If you want to qualify the argument as only being relevant to State governments, and not applicable to the federal government, then we may come to some agreement. It remains that the protection of religious freedom relies on protecting the government from being influenced by any particular religious sect.