This essay analyzes the concept of "liberty of conscience" as implemented in three early American colonies: Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. By comparing the religious policies established by Roger Williams, William Penn, and the Maryland Assembly, the paper argues that each colonial leader articulated limits on religious freedom that reflected their own theological commitments and political circumstances. While all three colonies moved away from the European model of an established state church, their definitions of religious toleration differed significantly. The essay demonstrates that ideological and pragmatic interests shaped religious policy even in colonies founded explicitly on principles of religious liberty.
The New England colonies of Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were founded with the express purpose of moving away from a state church. In this they deviated not only from the other British colonies in the New World but also from their Motherland and indeed all the civilizations of western Christendom to date. Before the founding of Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, a state without an official state church was inconceivable. As the Church of England evolved in Britain, the other British colonies in North America adopted either Congregationalism, Anglicanism, or Presbyterianism as their own "state church." The idea of a state without a state church was unprecedented.
In place of the usual state church, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Maryland adopted a new concept: "liberty of conscience." Here, "liberty" is synonymous with "freedom." By "conscience" our forefathers meant one's personal religious persuasion and its duties, as Roger Williams explained to Governor John Endicott: "I speak of Conscience, a persuasion fixed in the mind and heart of a man, which enforces him to judge (as Paul said of himself a persecutor) and to do so and so, with respect to God, his worship, etc." To the first citizens of Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, civil "freedom of conscience" was the ability to live freely as a member of one's religion—that is, to perform such religious exercises as their faith required without fear of prosecution by the state. Historian Timothy D. Hall describes Roger Williams's concept of religious liberty as "freedom to be ruled by God," whereas William Penn explained "liberty of conscience" as "the free and uninterrupted exercise of our conscience in that way of worship we are most clearly persuaded God requires us to serve Him in."
In each of these three colonies, liberty of conscience took the form of what liberty best suited the religious persuasions of the persons in power in the colony, whether the founder or a governing body. Rhode Island allowed a great deal of religious liberty because Roger Williams, its founder, required much liberty in his own spiritual pursuits. William Penn, a Quaker, drew on his experiences with religious persecution and the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light in organizing the colony of Pennsylvania. The Quakers put minimal bounds on individual spiritual seeking; Penn articulated only the most minimal religious requirements for Pennsylvania's citizens. Finally, the Maryland Assembly—comprised of Catholics who ruled a largely Protestant population—composed the Act Concerning Religious Toleration, which gave liberty of conscience to Christians in general.
Rhode Island was the first polity with absolute religious liberty as its cornerstone. Its founder, Roger Williams, put no limits on his colony's religious liberty because he could not delimit his own religious beliefs. Banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636 for denouncing state-supported Puritanism, the onetime Puritan minister fled to Rhode Island, where he founded and briefly belonged to a Baptist church. But neither the Puritan establishment nor the Baptist congregation—nor, ultimately, any other official version of Christianity—measured up to Williams's exacting standards of faith. Hall explains that Williams's conscience quivered at the slightest stain and the most insignificant spiritual error in religious establishments. Williams's uncompromising spirituality ultimately left him without a church home, yet he remained tolerant of all established churches, since none of them were sufficiently pure.
It was only within such a system that he could practice his own unorthodox Christianity, which he preached to his family at home. He thus founded the colony of Rhode Island "on a moderation toward the spirits and consciences of all mankind, merely differing from or opposing yours with only religious and spiritual opposition." Because religious difference was a "mere" concern in matters of state, government should "leave untroubled the consciences of its citizens." Religion and the state should not mix; citizens should be left to practice whatever faith they wished. For Williams, the absence of state religious authority was not merely toleration but a fundamental principle of religious and civil governance.
William Penn's experiences and beliefs as a Quaker inspired his "holy experiment" with religious liberty in Pennsylvania. First, Penn believed in religious tolerance, having been jailed three times for being a Quaker. The primary recipients of this new tolerance were to be, of course, Quakers, meaning that the colony of Pennsylvania abolished British practices like tithes, oaths, and church courts, and sanctioned Quaker customs of oaths, peace, marriage, and morality. Citizens of other religious persuasions would be subject to governance by Quaker principles. Penn cited the Quakers' troubled history to justify these radical measures: "Liberty of conscience, as thus stated and defended, we ask as our undoubted right by the law of God, of nature, and of our own country. It has been often promised; we have long waited for it; we have written much and suffered more in its defense, and have made many true complaints, but found little or no redress."
While in prison, Penn authored tracts which proposed that a religious principle would guarantee peace in the state despite the presence of many different religions: the diverse beliefs which would result from people following their own consciences would make for secure interests all around. Penn's Quakerism, especially the Quaker doctrine of the Inner Light, shines through this idea. Quakers believed that each person, through the piece of divinity all possess, could encounter the sacred without the mediation of clergy or sacrament. Penn was willing to extend this theology of individual empowerment to the state, yielding a body of citizens whose own individual pursuits would nonetheless make them part of a community. In practice, political self-determinism meant that "no person or persons shall be bound by the act or acts, vote or votes of any majority but only by his or her own free consent."
However, as the self-directed Quakers united themselves via a few central beliefs, so Penn had to articulate certain religious characteristics of the citizenry in the interests of peace. He drew up a series of laws that betrayed the limits of toleration in Pennsylvania. Over several years, these laws were revised multiple times. At first, they required that citizens be monotheists, then theists, and finally trinitarians. Along the way, these laws mandated that the Sabbath be observed on the first day of the week, that voters profess faith in Christ, that only Christians serve in the executive and legislative branches of government, that citizens acknowledge the divine inspiration of holy scripture, and that state officials honor the Act of Toleration, whether by oath or affirmation. Together, these legal codes comprise the limits imposed upon liberty of conscience by William Penn, founder of the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania.
Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, founded the colony of Maryland, and the Catholic majority in the colonial government drafted the "Act Concerning Religion" in 1649. Unlike Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, Maryland was not so much a haven for dissenters, sectarians, or religious anomalies as an experiment in Catholic and Protestant cohabitation. Catholics occupied high governmental posts, but had to share any rights they desired with their Protestant constituents in order to insure political stability—or, as they put it, "for the more quiet and peaceable government of this province, and the better to preserve mutual love and amity amongst the inhabitants thereof." Thus the Maryland Assembly asserted that maintaining political order and Catholic rule was more important than enforcing religious uniformity.
To that end, the General Assembly of Maryland stipulated a handful of Christian behaviors and beliefs as the minimum requirements for Maryland's religious policy. They were, for the most part, held in common by Catholics and Protestants. The Act forbade the blasphemy or denial of the Holy Trinity in any permutation, the blasphemy of the name of the Virgin Mary, the Apostles, the Evangelists, and the like; and the labeling of anyone as a "heretic, Schismatic, Idolator, Puritan, Independent, Presbyterian, Popish Priest, Jesuit, Lutheran, Calvinist, Anabaptist, Brownist, Antinomian, Barrowist, Roundhead, Separatist or any other name or term relating to the matter of Religion." It also mandated the observance of the Sabbath and the profession of faith in Jesus Christ. To venture any further in religious stipulations would mean confronting such sensitive issues as sacraments and divine revelation. The Catholics wisely stopped short of these theological complexities, so as to maintain peace—and Catholic rule—in the colony of Maryland.
In 1791, Congress passed the First Amendment to the Constitution, which prevented the federal government from passing laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. This mandate came only after the experiments of Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Maryland—experiments which exposed the influence of religious people behind the state in matters of religion. Even in these trials of "liberty of conscience," individual ideologies and interests came to the fore, causing each colony to construe religious freedom in a particular way. In Rhode Island, Roger Williams tolerated all churches so that he might explore his own unorthodox theology. In Pennsylvania, William Penn's experiences and theology as a Quaker came to influence state organization. And in Maryland, a Catholic Assembly maintained a minimal Christian framework in order to please its Protestant constituents. Whether three hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, or today, "freedom of religion" can easily become used in the interests of those in power.
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