Desire For Religious Freedom Precipitated Revolutionary War

[PoliticalChic]

1. Of course, the reason for the Revolutionary War was unfair taxation, and the impetus was the desire for political liberty….sort of. Overlooked was the religious nature for the war. The Puritans, later known as Congregationalists, fled the King…and the Anglican Church.

a. John Dickinson’s “Letter form a Farmer in Pennsylvania” appears in the Boston Chronicle of December 21, 1767, in which he argues that Parliament had no right to impose taxes for the purpose of raising revenue. His compelling polemic against said taxation was the most influential American pamphlet before Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.”

b. Calvinist Samuel Adams, liberty-activist, thought it unfortunate that Dickinson gave so much attention to the financial and political issues of taxation without representation, but ignored the threat to religious liberty: “What we have above everything else to fear is POPERY.” Adams was railing against what he saw as the threat of the imposition of the Catholic Church by the royal government in Massachusetts. He believed that the Stamp Act and the Townshend Duties would lead to religious oppression. Kidd, “God of Liberty,” p. 58.

c. These acts were “contrived with a design only to inure the people to the habit of contemplating themselves as the slaves of en; and the transition from thence to a subjection to Satan, is mighty easy.” Samuel Adams, ‘Boston Gazette,’ April 4, 1768, Cushing, “The Writings of Samuel Adams,” vol.1, p. 201.

2. Many colonists transposed their hatred of the Catholic Church to a new enemy, the political actions of the British.

3. Between 1761 and 1775, matters of religion were intimately connected to two issues: he potential appointment of an Anglican bishop for American, and the British policy toward Catholics in Canada, as reflected in the 1774 Quebec Act.

a. American Protestants fiercely resented the thought that Britain would take away their religious liberty, since the Congregationalists’ Puritan forefathers had left the Anglican Church when they migrated to New England in the 1630’s. They saw imposition of an Anglican bishop as the next step in forcing an Anglican establishment on New England.

b. Because of these feelings about Catholicism, the reaction to the Quebec Act of 1774 was understandable. As a result to the Seven Year’s War, Britain needed to accommodate the conquered Quebecois, it reinstated the French legal system, and granted the French Canadian Catholics freedom of religion. And, they moved Quebec’s border down to the Ohio River, which appropriated land claimed by Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia.

c. A young New York Lawyer, Alexander Hamilton, viewed the Quebec Act as a British plan to encircle the colonists with hostile Catholics. He joined a volunteer militia company to prepare for the defense of New York. Alexander Hamilton, “Remarks on the Quebec Bill,” June 15, 1775, in “The Papers of Alexander Hamilton,” by Harold Syrett, vol. 1, p. 166, 173.

4. After April 19, 1775, Lexington and Concord, anti-Catholicism, pragmatically, toned down. Patriots sought alliance with Canadian Catholics, and sizable Catholic groups in Pennsylvania and Maryland.

a. George Washington forbid anti-Catholicism in the Continental Army, and wondered how anyone could be “so void of common sense, as not to see the impropriety of such a step as this juncture.” George Washington quoted in “The Founders on Religion,” Hutson (ed.), p. 43.

 

[Avatar4321]

some people like to pretend that religion wasnt involved or didnt matter. i guess it helps them feel better somehow.

 

[uscitizen]

Freedom from mandated religion.

Keep all religion out of government.

 

[Revere]

Government does not obligate you to practice religion.

 

[Samir]

There is only Allah. Governing is by Allah and his Prophet.

 

[Granny]

The Huguenots also fled France and came here because of religious persecution and there were some Jews who also came.

 

[Avatar4321]

Freedom from mandated religion.

Keep all religion out of government.

Naturally, you have it completely backwards.

Keep government out of religion.

 

[HUGGY]

Desire For Religious Freedom Precipitated Revolutionary War

Ya...The religious freedom to own human beings...AKA....slaves.

 

[Avatar4321]

Desire For Religious Freedom Precipitated Revolutionary War

Ya...The religious freedom to own human beings...AKA....slaves.

It was also religious movements that pushed to end slavery.

But I guess its convenient to ignore history.

 

[HUGGY]

Desire For Religious Freedom Precipitated Revolutionary War

Ya...The religious freedom to own human beings...AKA....slaves.

It was also religious movements that pushed to end slavery.

But I guess its convenient to ignore history.

True..there in lays one of the causes of the "split.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Freedom from mandated religion.

Keep all religion out of government.

Citi, a study of the writings of Thomas Jefferson would disabuse you of the error of your thinking: his view was to keep government out of religion.

 

[paperview]

Desire For Religious Freedom Precipitated Revolutionary War

Ya...The religious freedom to own human beings...AKA....slaves.

It was also religious movements that pushed to end slavery.

But I guess its convenient to ignore history.

It was also religion in the southern pulpits that was used to justify slavery.

 

[paperview]

Freedom from mandated religion.

Keep all religion out of government.

Citi, a study of the writings of Thomas Jefferson would disabuse you of the error of your thinking: his view was to keep government out of religion.

When Jefferson said Wall, he meant Wall - not a one way hinged door.

 

[paperview]

No one could come away after reading the context of that all important letter and think anything different.

"The unedited draft of the Danbury Baptist letter makes it clear why Jefferson drafted it: He wanted his political partisans to know that he opposed proclaiming fasts and thanksgivings, not because he was irreligious, but because he refused to continue a British practice that was an offense to republicanism.

To emphasize his resolve in this matter, Jefferson inserted two phrases with a clenched-teeth, defiant ring: "wall of eternal separation between church and state" and "the duties of my station, which are merely temporal." These last words -- "merely temporal" -- revealed Jefferson's preoccupation with British practice. Temporal, a strong word meaning secular, was a British appellation for the lay members of the House of Lords, the Lords Temporal, as opposed to the ecclesiastical members, the Lords Spiritual. "Eternal separation" and "merely temporal" -- here was language as plain as Jefferson could make it to assure the Republican faithful that their "religious rights shall never be infringed by any act of mine.""

REALLY WORTH READING: 'A Wall of Separation' (June 1998) - Library of Congress Information Bulletin

 

[JWBooth]

1. Of course, the reason for the Revolutionary War was unfair taxation, and the impetus was the desire for political liberty….sort of. Overlooked was the religious nature for the war. The Puritans, later known as Congregationalists, fled the King…and the Anglican Church.

a. John Dickinson’s “Letter form a Farmer in Pennsylvania” appears in the Boston Chronicle of December 21, 1767, in which he argues that Parliament had no right to impose taxes for the purpose of raising revenue. His compelling polemic against said taxation was the most influential American pamphlet before Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense.”

b. Calvinist Samuel Adams, liberty-activist, thought it unfortunate that Dickinson gave so much attention to the financial and political issues of taxation without representation, but ignored the threat to religious liberty: “What we have above everything else to fear is POPERY.” Adams was railing against what he saw as the threat of the imposition of the Catholic Church by the royal government in Massachusetts. He believed that the Stamp Act and the Townshend Duties would lead to religious oppression. Kidd, “God of Liberty,” p. 58.

c. These acts were “contrived with a design only to inure the people to the habit of contemplating themselves as the slaves of en; and the transition from thence to a subjection to Satan, is mighty easy.” Samuel Adams, ‘Boston Gazette,’ April 4, 1768, Cushing, “The Writings of Samuel Adams,” vol.1, p. 201.

2. Many colonists transposed their hatred of the Catholic Church to a new enemy, the political actions of the British.

3. Between 1761 and 1775, matters of religion were intimately connected to two issues: he potential appointment of an Anglican bishop for American, and the British policy toward Catholics in Canada, as reflected in the 1774 Quebec Act.

a. American Protestants fiercely resented the thought that Britain would take away their religious liberty, since the Congregationalists’ Puritan forefathers had left the Anglican Church when they migrated to New England in the 1630’s. They saw imposition of an Anglican bishop as the next step in forcing an Anglican establishment on New England.

b. Because of these feelings about Catholicism, the reaction to the Quebec Act of 1774 was understandable. As a result to the Seven Year’s War, Britain needed to accommodate the conquered Quebecois, it reinstated the French legal system, and granted the French Canadian Catholics freedom of religion. And, they moved Quebec’s border down to the Ohio River, which appropriated land claimed by Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia.

c. A young New York Lawyer, Alexander Hamilton, viewed the Quebec Act as a British plan to encircle the colonists with hostile Catholics. He joined a volunteer militia company to prepare for the defense of New York. Alexander Hamilton, “Remarks on the Quebec Bill,” June 15, 1775, in “The Papers of Alexander Hamilton,” by Harold Syrett, vol. 1, p. 166, 173.

4. After April 19, 1775, Lexington and Concord, anti-Catholicism, pragmatically, toned down. Patriots sought alliance with Canadian Catholics, and sizable Catholic groups in Pennsylvania and Maryland.

a. George Washington forbid anti-Catholicism in the Continental Army, and wondered how anyone could be “so void of common sense, as not to see the impropriety of such a step as this juncture.” George Washington quoted in “The Founders on Religion,” Hutson (ed.), p. 43.

From Albert Nock Our Enemy The State

[SIZE=+2]II[/SIZE]​

It was said at the time, I believe, that the actual causes of the colonial revolution of 1776 would never be known. The causes assigned by our schoolbooks may be dismissed as trivial; the various partisan and propagandist views of that struggle and its origins may be put down as incompetent. Great evidential value may be attached to the long line of adverse commercial legislation laid down by the British State from 1651 onward, especially to that portion of it which was enacted after the merchant-State established itself firmly in England in consequence of the events of 1688. This legislation included the Navigation Acts, the Trade Acts, acts regulating the colonial currency, the act of 1752 regulating the process of levy and distress, and the procedures leading up to the establishment of the Board of Trade in 1696.[11] These directly affected the industrial and commercial interests in the colonies, though just how seriously is perhaps an open question - enough at any rate, beyond doubt, to provoke deep resentment.
Over and above these, however, if the reader will put himself back into the ruling passion of the time, he will at once appreciate the import of two matters which have for some reason escaped the attention of historians. The first of these is the attempt of the British State to limit the exercise of the political means in respect of rental-values.[12] In 1763 it forbade the colonists to take up lands lying westward of the source of any river flowing through the Atlantic seaboard. The dead-line thus established ran so as to cut off from predmption about half of Pennsylvania and half of Virginia and everything to the west thereof. This was serious. With the mania for speculation running as high as it did, with the consciousness of opportunity, real or fancied, having become so acute and so general, this ruling affected everybody. One can get some idea of its effect by imagining the state of mind of our people at large if stock-gambling had suddenly been outlawed at the beginning of the last great boom in Wall Street a few years ago.
For by this time the colonists had begun to be faintly aware of the illimitable resources of the country lying westward; they had learned just enough about them to fire their imagination and their avarice to a white heat. The seaboard had been pretty well taken up, the free-holding farmer had been pushed back farther and farther, population was coming in steadily, the maritime towns were growing. Under these conditions, "western lands" had become a centre of attraction. Rental-values depended on population, the population was bound to expand, and the one general direction in which it could expand was westward, where lay an immense and incalculably rich domain waiting for predmption. What could be more natural than that the colonists should itch to get their hands on this territory, and exploit it for themselves alone, and on their own terms, without risk of arbitrary interference by the British State? - and this of necessity meant political independence. It takes no great stress of imagination to see that anyone in those circumstances would have felt that way, and that colonial resentment against the arbitrary limitation which the edict of 1763 put upon the exercise of the political means must therefore have been great.
The actual state of land-speculation during the colonial period will give a fair idea of the probabilities in the case. Most of it was done on the company-system; a number of adventurers would unite, secure a grant of land, survey it, and then sell it off as speedily as they could. Their aim was a quick turnover; they did not, as a rule, contemplate holding the land, much less settling it - in short, their ventures were a pure gamble in rental-values.[13] Among these pre-revolutionary enterprises was the Ohio Company, formed in 1748 with a grant of half a million acres; the Loyal Company, which like the Ohio Company, was composed of Virginians; the Transylvania, the Vandalia, Scioto, Indiana, Wabash, Illinois, Susquehannah, and others whose holdings were smaller.[14] It is interesting to observe the names of persons concerned in these undertakings; one can not escape the significance of this connexion in view of their attitude towards the revolution, and their subsequent career as statesmen and patriots. For example, aside from his individual ventures, General Washington was a member of the Ohio Company, and a prime mover in organizing the Mississippi Company. He also conceived the scheme of the Potomac Company, which was designed to raise the rental-value of western holdings by affording an outlet for their produce by canal and portage to the Potomac River, and thence to the seaboard. This enterprise determined the establishment of the national capital in its present most ineligible situation, for the proposed terminus of the canal was at that point. Washington picked up some lots in the city that bears his name, but in common with other early speculators, he did not make much money out of them; they were appraised at about $20,000 when he died.
Patrick Henry was an inveterate and voracious engrosser of land lying beyond the deadline set by the British State; later he was heavily involved in the affairs of one of the notorious Yazoo companies, operating in Georgia. He seems to have been most unscrupulous. His company's holdings in Georgia, amounting to more than ten million acres, were to be paid for in Georgia scrip, which was much depreciated. Henry bought up all these certificates that he could get his hands on, at ten cents on the dollar, and made a great profit on them by their rise in value when Hamilton put through his measure for having the central government assume the debts they represented. Undoubtedly it was this trait of unrestrained avarice which earned him the dislike of Mr. Jefferson, who said, rather contemptuously, that he was "insatiable in money."[15]
Benjamin Franklin's thrifty mind turned cordially to the project of the Vandalia Company, and he acted successfully as promoter for it in England in 1766. Timothy Pickering, who was Secretary of State under Washington and John Adams, went on record in 1796 that "all I am now worth was gained by speculations in land." Silas Deane, emissary of the Continental Congress to France, was interested in the Illinois and Wabash Companies, as was Robert Morris, who managed the revolution's finances; as was also James Wilson, who became a justice of the Supreme Court and a mighty man in post-revolutionary land-grabbing. Wolcott of Connecticut, and Stiles, president of Yale College, held stock in the Susquehannah Company; so did Peletiah Webster, Ethan Allen, and Jonathan Trumbull, the "Brother Jonathan," whose name was long a sobriquet for the typical American, and is still sometimes so used. James Duane, the first mayor of New York City, carried on some quite considerable speculative undertakings; and however indisposed one may feel towards entertaining the fact, so did the "Father of the Revolution" himself - Samuel Adams.
A mere common-sense view of the situation would indicate that the British State's interference with a free exercise of the political means was at least as great an incitement to revolution as its interference, through the Navigation Acts, and the Trade Acts, with a free exercise of the economic means. In the nature of things it would be a greater incitement, both because it affected a more numerous class of persons, and because speculation in land-values represented much easier money. Allied with this is the second matter which seems to me deserving of notice, and which has never been properly reckoned with, as far as I know, in studies of the period.

It can quite easily be said that many reasons were used to stir up the populace, but British polices that restricted the economic schemes of these leaders were the causes of the revolution itself.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Desire For Religious Freedom Precipitated Revolutionary War

Ya...The religious freedom to own human beings...AKA....slaves.

It was also religious movements that pushed to end slavery.

But I guess its convenient to ignore history.

Clearly you are well versed on the subject.

Only public religious beliefs- that would be religious beliefs that had public, political implications- united the revolutionaries of 1776. This is because America was already a nation of many religious persuasions. The religious ideas that connected the various denominations included…

1. An idea Jefferson himself designed : the doctrine of a creator God as the guarantor of fundamental human rights. Unlike the European tradition, it was our common creation that served as the primary basis for the political liberties of all humanity. And, of course, Jefferson articulated this concept in the Declaration of Independence, as “all men are created equal” and that “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”Thomas S. Kidd, "God of Liberty"


a. This ideas serves as one of the most cogent arguments against slavery.

2."But history is a complex and curious process. While the Enlightenment may be seen as a reaction to the abuses of clerical authority, it must be remembered that the biblical imprecation that all humanity was equal, having been fashioned in the image of God, provided the template for liberty. And many Enlightenment thinkers were religious, albeit many were less Christians, but rather deists who believed in an impersonal god who did not interfere in human life." Melanie Philips, "The World Turned Upside Down."

 

[Granny]

Freedom from mandated religion.

Keep all religion out of government.

I had no idea that government has mandated any kind of religion that all must follow. On the other hand, it might not be an altogether bad idea to keep all religion out of government. Let's strike down and repeal all the laws government has already passed that restrict and ban religious images, public prayer, prayer in school, singing Christmas carols in public, etc., etc..

The fact that these things are offensive to non-believers should not override the rights of everybody else who does believe.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Freedom from mandated religion.

Keep all religion out of government.

Citi, a study of the writings of Thomas Jefferson would disabuse you of the error of your thinking: his view was to keep government out of religion.

When Jefferson said Wall, he meant Wall - not a one way hinged door.

Do you know why and when he said it? Without context one would be left with your view...
here, let me help:

As for the famous “separation of church and state,” the phrase appears in no federal document. In fact, at the time of ratification of the Constitution, ten of the thirteen colonies had some provision recognizing Christianity as either the official, or the recommended religion in their state constitutions.

a. From the 1790 Massachusetts Constitution, written by John Adams, includes: [the] good order and preservation of civil government essentially depend(s) upon piety, religion, and morality…by the institution of public worship of God and of the public instruction in piety, religion, and morality…”Massachusetts Constitution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

b. North Carolina Constitution, article 32, 1776: “That no person who shall deny the being of God, or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority of either the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State, shall b e capable of holding any office, or place of trust or profit, in the civil department, within this State.” Constitution of North Carolina, 1776

c. So, the Founders intention was to be sure that the federal government didn’t do the same, and mandate a national religion. And when Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists in 1802, it was to reassure them the federal government could not interfere in their religious observations, i.e., there is “a wall of separation between church and state.” He wasn’t speaking of religion contaminating the government, but of the government contaminating religious observance.

d. Madison and Jefferson and many liberal Christian groups fought for the disestablishment of particular denominations, and the freedom of each in the colonies.4. While the personal view of the Founders differed greatly, the essential idea that they shared was that the state should assure the religious liberty of all its citizens: no Christian denomination would be singularly privileged. The Baptists of New England saw Jefferson as a political ‘savior’ of sorts. Religious dissenters like the Baptists had long suffered persecution in Congregationalist New England, and received Jefferson’s assurance that the new nation would respect their religious perspectives.

A fascinating exposition of the place of the various denominations in colonial America can be found in Thomas Kidd's "God of Liberty."

 

[paperview]

Desire For Religious Freedom Precipitated Revolutionary War 1. Of course, the reason for the Revolutionary War was unfair taxation, and the impetus was the desire for political liberty….sort of. Overlooked was the religious nature for the war. The Puritans, later known as Congregationalists, fled the King…and the Anglican Church.
...

And those Puritans proceeded to set up a Theocracy which excluded all religion but their own.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Freedom from mandated religion.

Keep all religion out of government.

I had no idea that government has mandated any kind of religion that all must follow. On the other hand, it might not be an altogether bad idea to keep all religion out of government. Let's strike down and repeal all the laws government has already passed that restrict and ban religious images, public prayer, prayer in school, singing Christmas carols in public, etc., etc..

The fact that these things are offensive to non-believers should not override the rights of everybody else who does believe.

You know, Granny, Justice Thomas has an interesting take on this: government should be allowed to promote religion, in general, as long as no particular religion is favored.