The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut by M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

M >> M. Louise Greene, Ph. D. >> The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut

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As a side light upon the growth of toleration during twenty years
within the churches of the Establishment, two entries in President
Stiles's diary may be quoted. Writing in 1769, to the Rev. Noah Wells
of Stamford, Conn., with reference to the call of the Rev. Samuel
Hopkins to a pastorate in Newport, R. I., where Dr. Stiles was then
preaching, the latter says: "If I find him (Hopkins) of a Disposition
to live in an honorable Friendship, I shall gladly cultivate it. But
he must not expect that I recede from my Sentiments both in Theology
and ecclesiastical Polity more than he from his, in which I presume he
is immovably fixed. We shall certainly differ in some things. I shall
endeavor to my utmost to live with him as a Brother; as I think (it)
dishonorable that in almost every populous place on this Continent,
where there are two or more Presb.[yterian] or Cong.[regational] Chhs.
[churches], they should be at greater variance than Prot. [estants]
and Romanists: witness every city or Town from Georgia to Nova Scotia
(except Portsm'th) [p] where there are more Presb. chhs than one. The
Wound is well nigh healed here, may it not break out again." [180]
Writing some two years after the appearance of Lewis's book, President
Stiles, commenting upon the fact that each dissenting sect was so
absolutely sure that it alone had the only perfect type of faith and
polity, notes the greater tolerance among the Congregational churches,
for the latter were not as a rule close communion churches, as were
those of the dissenting sects.

Indeed, the intolerance shown towards dissenters was by this time not
so much sectarian, not so much a lack of tolerance toward slightly
varying fundamentals of faith, form of worship, and organization, as
an intolerance based upon the conviction that the body politic must be
protected by a state church. There was, of course, a little of the
exasperating sense of superiority in belonging to the favored
Establishment. The old objection to dissent as heresy--as a sin for
which the community was responsible--had for the most part given way
to opposition to it as introducing a system of voluntary contributions
for the support of religion. And there was a very general and
well-defined fear that such a support would prove inadequate. If so,
deterioration of the state and of its people would follow. For
individual worth and character, many among the dissenters were highly
respected, and the great body of them were esteemed good citizens.
Among the churches, some few of the established ones were beginning to
have their own services occasionally conducted by dissenting
ministers. The First Society of Canterbury entered a vote to this
effect in 1791. As the churches translated more liberally the Articles
of the Saybrook Platform, they approached a polity more in common with
that of Separatist and Baptist. By 1800, the teachings of John Wise of
Ipswich, reinforced by those of Nathaniel Emmons, "the father of
modern Congregationalism," had permeated all New England. Wise, in his
efforts to revive the independence of the single churches, had
exploded the Barrowism which New England usage had introduced into
original Congregationalism, and the rebound had carried the churches
as far beyond the Cambridge Platform towards original Brownism as the
Presbyterian movement had carried their polity away from the Cambridge
instrument. The later Edwardean school had devoted itself to the
discussion of doctrine rather than to polity, and, in the alliance
with Presbyterianism outside of Connecticut, it had affiliated without
attaching much weight to differences in church government. Their
common interest, at first, was to unite against a possible supremacy
of the Church of England, and against the danger to their own churches
and to good government from the increase of dissenters. Later, their
united efforts were directed to forwarding Christian missions in order
that the gospel might not be left out of the civilization on the
frontier. In this later work, they had competitors as soon as the
Baptists and Methodists became strongly organized bodies. Accordingly
Presbyterians and Congregationalists still further sank their
differences of discipline in the Plan of Union of 1801, formed for the
furtherance of the mission work. Thus it was many years before
questions of polity again took front rank in the Congregational
churches. Already their very indifference to it, the long years of the
gradual abandonment of the Saybrook system, together with the
development in civil life of a broader conception of humanity, had
tended to bring back the independence of the individual church, while
custom had preserved the inroojted principle of church-fellowship. It
needed only Nathaniel Emmons to embody practice and opinion in a
system that should break away from the aristocratic Congregationalism,
the semi-Presbyterianized Congregationalism of the eighteenth century,
and give to the nineteenth a democracy in the Church equivalent to
that in the State. Emmons, however, carried his theory to extremes
[q] when opposing ministerial associations; yet with some
modifications modern Congregationalism is essentially that of his
school. Church polity, however, did not become a topic of general
interest for at least half a century more, nor was it formulated anew
until the Albany Convention of 1862 passed "upon the local work and
responsibility of a Congregational Church."

From the politico-ecclesiastical point of view, the legislative
measures in the history of Connecticut, during the fifteen years after
the colony became a state, that are of chief importance are the
Certificate Laws and Western Land bills. In order to properly
appreciate their significance this summary of the industrial, social,
and religious life of the Connecticut people during the years
following the Revolution was necessary.

FOOTNOTES:

[a] Five towns were laid out in 1785; from 1784 to 1787, twenty-one in
all; from 1787 to 1800, ten; and from 1800 to 1818,
eleven.--Hollister, _Hist, of Connecticut_, pp. 469-70.

[b] Of the seven hundred members of the Susquehanna Land Company,
formed in 1754, six hundred and thirty-eight were Connecticut men. A
summer settlement was made on the Delaware in 1757 and on the
Susquehanna in 1762. The first permanent settlement was in 1769. At
the close of the Revolution, renewed attempts to colonize resulted in
a reign of lawlessness and bloodshed.

[c] Horses, cattle, beef, pork, stages, flour, grain. During the
European wars, the United States exported foodstuffs in great
quantities, to feed both French and English armies, amounting to over
100,000 men.

[d] President Stiles was interested in silk culture and in the
manufacture of silk. His commencement gown in 1789 was of Connecticut
make. Through the efforts of General Humphreys (1784-94) attempts were
made to introduce the Spanish merino sheep and to establish factories
for fine broadcloth. Iron works were set up in different parts of the
state. The earliest cotton factories centred about Pomfret. Clocks,
watches, cut shingle-nails, paper, stone, and earthenware pottery,
were among the manufactures started in Norwalk between 1767 and 1773,
while in Windham, hosiery, silk and tacks were manufactured.

[e] In 1701 the General Court enacted that the May session of the
Legislature should be held at New Haven, and the October one at
Hartford. This was a concession to the former sovereignty of the New
Haven Colony. The arrangement continued until 1873. The biennial
sessions, introduced by the constitution of 1818, alternated between
the two capitols.

[f] "Mr. Dwight is enlarging hia School to comprehend the Ladies,
... promising to carry them through a course of belles Lettres,
Geography, Philosophy, and Astronomy. The spirit for Academy making is
vigorous."--_Stiles Diary_, iii, 247.

Of the academies, the more famous were Lebanon, Plainfield, Greenfield
(under Dr. Dwight), Norwich, Windham, Waterbury (for both sexes), and
Stratfield from 1783 to 1786. There was also a second school in
Norwich from 1783 to 1786. See _Stiles Diary_, iii, 248.

[g] Harvard Divinity School was established 1815; Yale, 1822.
Previously both universities had each a professor of divinity.

[h] "For three years and three months before his [Bellamy's] death he
was disabled by a paralytic Shock, we impaired his Intellect as well
as debilitated his Body. Few were equal to him in the Desk & he was
Communicative and instructive in Conversation upon religious
Subjects." The passage closes with the prophecy, "His numerous noisy
Writings have blazed their day, and one Generation more will put them
to sleep."--_Stiles Diary_, March 16, 1790 (on hearing the news
of Bellamy's death). See vol. iii, pp. 384-385. See Trumbull, ii, 159,
for a more favorable opinion.

[i] Referring to the successor of Dr. Wales in the Yale chair of
divinity, Pres. Stiles wrote, "An Old Divinity man will be acceptable
to all the Old Divy. _Ministers & to all the Churches_: a New
Divt man will be acceptable to all the New Divy. Ministers and to
_None of the Churches_, as none of the Chhs. in New Engl. are New
Divt."--_Stiles Diary_, iii, 506, note (Sept. 8, 1793). See also
under date of Nov. 16, 1786, where churches are said to take New
Divinity pastors "because they can get no others, but persons in the
parish know nothing of the New Theology."

[j] "Law Reports of the Superior and Supreme Courts, 1785-1788, by
E. Kirby. Just published at this office and ready for subscribers and
gentlemen disposed to purchase, for which most kinds of country
produce will be received."--Advertisement in _Litchfield Monitor_
of Apr. 13, 1789.

[k] Calhoun, Woodbury, Mason, Clayton, and Hubbard. Judge Reeve
retired in 1820; Judge Gould in 1833.

[l] Reporters were admitted to the national House of Representatives
in 1790 and to the Senate in 1802.

[m] Bishop Seabnry was consecrated by the Scotch non-juring bishops,
Nov. 14, 1786. The latter, about four years later, were restored to
their position as an integral part of the Anglican
hierarchy. Meanwhile, Dr. Samuel Provoost of New York and Dr. William
White of Pennsylvania, on Feb. 4, 1787, were consecrated by the
Archbishops of Canterbury and York, assisted by the Bishops of Wells
and Peterborough, after a special Act of Parliament permitting the
consecration to take place without the usual oaths of allegiance to
the King as head of the church. In 1789, Bishop Seabury became
president of the House of Bishops thus formed in America. The
following year, James Madison of Virginia was consecrated by the
English bishops, thus giving to the United States three bishops after
the English succession, so that the validity of the Scottish rite
should hot be questioned in the consecration of future American
bishops.

[n] The eighty dollars proposed for privates would not go far toward
mending broken fortunes, or care for broken constitutions and crippled
bodies.

At the Middletown Convention, Sept. 3, 1783, delegates from Hartford,
Wethersfield, and Glastonbury met to denounce the Commutation Act. At
its adjourned meeting on Sept. 30 fifty towns, a majority in the
state, disapproved the Act in an address to the General Assembly, and
called attention to the Society of the Cincinnati. At the last
meeting, March, 1784, an address to the people of the state was framed
which condemned both the Commutation Act and the Cincinnati.--
J. H. Trumbull, _Notes on the Constitution_, p. 18. Noah Webster,
_History of the Parties in the United States_, pp. 317-320.

[o] Methodism was twenty-eight years old, when, in 1766, Robert
Strawbridge introduced it into New York, and Philip Embury preached
his first sermon in a sail-loft. In 1771, Francis Asbury, later Bishop
Asbury, was appointed John Wesley's "Assistant" in America. In 1773,
the first Annual Conference was held. Methodism rapidly spread in the
Middle and Southern states. By the year 1773-74, the year's increase
in members was nine hundred and thirteen; in 1774-75, ten hundred and
seventy-three. The preachers traveled on foot or on horseback,
preaching as they went; living on the smallest allowance; sleeping
where night overtook them; and meeting often with grudging
hospitality, suspicion, and, sometimes, open violence.

Methodism "began when Episcopacy was at its lowest point, both in
efficiency, and in the good-will of the people." It agreed with
Jonathan Edwards on the nature of personal religion, and separated
from the Church of England in this, the Methodist's central principle
of "conscious conversion" or "emotional experience." Later in New
England, Wesley's missionaries united in Methodist societies many of
the converts to the Edwardean theology.

At the opening of the Revolution, the whole body of Methodists were
within the Church of England. Of the English missionaries only Asbury,
Dempster, and Wharcott remained in America to carry on, with native
preachers, the work of proselytizing. It was "the only form of
religion that advanced in America during that dark period, and during
the war, it more than quadrupled both its ministry and members." At
the beginning of the war, it had eighty traveling preachers, beside
local preachers and exhorters; a membership of one thousand, and
auditors ten thousand. In 1784, there was a year's increase of
fourteen thousand nine hundred and eighty-eight members, and of one
hundred and four preachers to rejoice in the consecration of Bishop
Asbury. In the November of that year, Bishops Coke and Asbury,
organizing the "American Episcopal Church," in spite of Wesley's
anathemas probably led out one hundred thousand souls as the nucleus
of the new church.

For a while the Connecticut authorities refused to recognize "as sober
Dissenters" any converts other than the stationed preachers and their
charges. The persecutions which the Methodists suffered were those of
slander, the refusal to them of halls, churches, or public buildings;
the refusal to permit their ministers, unless located, to perform the
marriage ceremony; and petty fines, with occasional unjust
imprisonment.

[p] Portsmouth, N. H.

[q] "A pure democracy which places every member of the church upon a
level and gives him perfect liberty with order." Under such a
definition of a church as this, its pastor becomes only a moderator at
its meetings, and every church is absolutely independent. It would
follow that from its decisions there could be no appeal. Emmons was
fond of declaring that "Association leads to Consociation;
Consociation leads to Presbyterianism; Presbyterianism leads to
Episcopacy; Episcopacy to Roman Catholicism, and Roman Catholicism is
an ultimate fact."

In spite of his teaching as to democracy, Emmons was as intolerant of
it in the State as he was earnest for it in the Church.

CHAPTER XIII

CERTIFICATE LAWS AND WESTERN LAND BILLS

And make the bounds of Freedom wider yet.--Alfred Tennyson.

The legal recognition of conscience, the acknowledgment of fundamental
dogmas held in common, the gradual approachment of the various
religious organizations in polity, their common interest in education
and good government, would seem to furnish grounds for such mutual
esteem that the government would willingly do away with the
objectionable certificates. On the contrary, the old conception of a
state church, and of its value to the body politic, was so strongly
intrenched in the hearts of the majority of the people that they felt
it incumbent upon them to require the certificates as guarantees that
those who were without the Establishment were fulfilling their
religious duties. Particularly was this the case when new sects
continued to increase and radical opinions to spread among the
masses. And as the government saw these apparently destructive ideas
permeating the people, it endeavored, rather unwisely, to hem dissent
in closer bounds, and to favor still more Cougregationalists and
Presbyterian-Congregationalists.

The aggressively successful proselytizing by the Methodists revived
the old dislike of rash exhorters and itinerant preachers, and the old
contempt for an ignorant and unlearned ministry. The proselytizing
movement had also created a suspicion that it was hypocritical, and
that it was masking a deliberate attempt to undermine the
Establishment. Outside this Methodist propaganda there were also all
sorts of unorthodox ideas that were spreading notions of Universalism,
Arianism, deism, atheism, and freethinking, and making many
converts. These proselytes were frequent among the untutored and
irresponsible members of society who caught at the doctrines of
greater freedom, and sometimes translated them, theoretically at least,
into principles of greater personal license; and where they did not do
this, the authorities felt sure that they would soon, and if
unrestrained by ecclesiastical law, would quickly become lawless,
first in religious affairs and then, as a consequence, in moral
ones. Not only in this radical class, but among the recognized
dissenters and among a minority of other, religious folk, there was a
tendency to question both the authority and the justice of the
government in its restrictive religious laws, its ecclesiastical
taxation, and its Sabbath-day legislation. Particularly was there
opposition to the fine for absence from public worship on Sunday,
unless excused by weighty reasons, and to the assessment upon every
one of a tax for the support of some form of recognized public
worship, even though the tax-payer had no personal interest or liking
for that which he was obliged to support. The feeling that such
injustice ought not to continue was strong among some members of the
Establishment. They found a powerful advocate in Judge Zephaniah Swift
of Windham, the author of the "System of the Laws of the State of
Connecticut."

Judge Swift was a thorough-going Federalist, but so bitter an opponent
of the union of Church and State that his enemies, and even members of
his own party, taunted him with being a freethinker,--a serious charge
in those days. Nevertheless, Judge Swift held the loyalty of a county
and of one rather tolerant of dissent. "The Phenix or Windham Herald,"
founded in 1790, though Federal in politics, became Judge Swift's
organ; and so acceptable were his opinions, taken all in all, to the
community, that from 1787 to 1793 it returned this arch-enemy of the
Establishment as its deputy to the House, and then his congressional
district honored him with a seat in the national council until
1799. He became chief justice in 1806, and died in 1819, having lived
to see the charter constitution set aside and Church and State
divorced.

The small Anti-Federal party in the state, though making but very few
converts at this time, and though of very little importance
politically, were the pronounced advocates of a wider suffrage, a
larger tolerance, and of radical changes in the method of
government. The last they believed necessary before any great
improvement in the terms of the franchise or in those of religious
toleration could be secured. "An Address to the Baptists, Quakers,
Rogerines, and all other denominations of Christians in Connecticut,
freed by law from supporting what has been called the 'Established
Religion,'" went the rounds of the newspapers urging continued
resistance to the support of any religious system that enforced a
tax. The "Address" closed with the cheerful prediction that, as their
numbers were increasing very rapidly, they might hope yet "to carry
the vote against those who have put on haughty airs and affected to
treat us as their inferiors."

Such seething opposition among various classes induced the government
to enact some special legislation; but it was unfortunately not of a
conciliatory character. In May, 1791, a law was passed varying the old
requirement that certificates, after being signed by a church officer,
should be lodged with the Society clerk, to the demand that they be
signed by two civil officers, or, where there was only one, by the
justice of the peace of the town in which the dissenter
lived. Considering that the justices were mostly Congregationalists,
the enactment amounted to an intrenchment of the Standing Order at the
expense of the dissenters. With these officers lay full power to pass
upon the validity of the certificates and upon the honesty of intent
on the part of the persons presenting them. The certificates read:--

We have examined the claim of ---- who says he is a Dissenter from
the Established Society of ---- and hath joined himself to a
church or Congregation of the name of ----; and that he ordinarily
attends upon the public worship of such Church or Congregation;
and that he contributes his share and proportion toward supporting
the public worship and ministry thereof, do upon examination find
that the above facts are true.

Dated

Justice of the Peace. [182]

A veritable doubt, spite, malice, prejudice, or mistaken zeal, might
determine the granting of the certificate to the dissenter.

The authorities defended this measure upon the ground that it was the
_civil_ effect of preaching that gives the _civil_
magistrate jurisdiction. "The law," they said, "has nothing to do
with _conscience_ and _principles_." [183] They further
declared that there were persons who were taking undue advantage of
the certificate exemptions, and that there were good reasons, to doubt
the validity of many of the certificates.

This Certificate Act roused the dissenters throughout the state. "In
public society meetings and in speaking universal abroad, sensible
that their numbers though scattered were large," they strove to create
a sentiment that should send to the next legislature a "body of
representatives who would remember their petition and see that equal
religious liberty should be established."

In regard to the certificates, a writer in the "Courant" exclaims:--

It is sometimes said that the giving of a certificate once a year
or once in a man's life is but a trifle, and none but the
obstinate will refuse it as none but the covetous desire it. True
it is but a trifle--ten times as much would be but a trifle if it
was right. If it must be done, let them who plead for it do the
little trifle; they have no scruples of conscience about
it.... The certificate law is as much worse than the tax on tea as
religious fetters are worse than civil. [184]

The Rev. John Leland's "The Rights of Conscience inalienable;
therefore Religious Opinions not cognizable by Law; Or The High flying
Churchman, stript of his legal Robe appears a yaho" was a powerful
arraignment of the government and defense of the right of all to
worship as conscience bade them. Leland had recently come from
Virginia and settled in New London. In the southern state he had been
one of the most influential among the Baptist ministers and a great
power in politics. In Virginia he had seen the separation of Church
and State in 1785, and had witnessed the benefits following that
policy. After the publication of his "Rights of Conscience" the
question before the Connecticut people became one of establishment or
disestablishment, because Leland, not content with showing the falsity
of the position that civil necessities required an established church,
or with a logical demonstration of the inalienable rights of
conscience, proceeded to boldly attack the Charter of Charles II as
being in no rightful sense the constitution of the state of
Connecticut. He maintained that, "Constitution" though it was called,
it was not such, because it had been enforced upon the people by a
mere vote of the legislature [a] and was a "constitution" never
"assented to further than passive obedience and non resistance" by the
people at large; a constitution--

contrary to the known sentiments of a far greater part of the
States in the Union; and inconsistent with the clear light of
liberty, which is spreading over the world in meridian splendor,
and dissipating those antique glooms of tyrannical darkness which
were ever opposed to free, equal, religious liberty among men.

Leland arraigns a union of Church and State that presupposes a need of
legislative support for religion, which the example of other states
has proved unnecessary; and which the experience of communities,
persisting in such union, has shown to be productive of evil, of
ignorance, superstition, persecution, lying and hypocrisy, a weakness
to the civil state, and a conversion of the Bible and of religion to
tools of statecraft and political trickery.

Government has no more to do with religious opinions of men than
it has with the principles of mathematics.... Truth disdains the
aid of law for its defence, ... it will stand upon its own
merit.... Is it just to balance the Establishment against the
rights guaranteed in the charter, and to enact a law which has no
saving clause to prevent taxation of Jew, Turk, Papist, Deist,
Atheist, for the support of a ministry in which they would not
share and which violated their conscience? [185]

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