Religion and Social Stratification in Colonial America

Introduction: Religious Diversity and Social Power in Colonial America

Colonial America was a diverse mixture of religious communities. The Quakers had been given Pennsylvania by William Penn, whose father had held ties with the King of England (Fantel). The Puritans were in New England. Baptists established themselves in the South. Catholics had been in the Northern territories and in the Southwest well before the Protestant surge, and they also established the first Catholic state in Maryland — before it was later taken over by Protestants who banned Catholicism (Laux). In short, there was little religious unity broadly speaking, but religion nonetheless played an important role in the structuring of society and class when it came to local organization.

Hawthorne and Melville — the two premier authors of the 19th century — described this experience of social stratification within a religious context with considerable insight. But there are numerous historical signs and examples of how it existed and persisted. This paper will show that religion was used as a means of dividing the social structure into classes and pockets of power, so that religious institutions determined the organization of society from top to bottom.

Quakers, Anglicans, and the Politics of Religious Difference

As Pyle and Davidson point out, "religious adherence was [central] in the allocation of power, privilege, and prestige during the colonial period" (57). Those who wanted to secure a position of power and privilege in society necessarily had to abide by the rules of the religious institution of the community. The Quakers had rules about swearing, gambling, drinking, and theater-going. They also had rules about how true religion should be practiced — beliefs based upon their reading and interpretation of the Bible (Fantel). Quakers were heavily involved in the government of Pennsylvania in the 1700s; however, many Quakers gradually came to feel conflicted about the duties expected of them as politicians and the duties expected of them as Quakers and pacifists.

For example, the Quakers initially sought to respect the human rights of the Native Americans, but the American colonies were not united in this view. The Virginia House of Burgesses, dominated by Anglicans, wanted to abrogate the treaty between the Crown and the Native Americans: Virginia landowners wanted to push further west and expand their territory (Holton). There was thus a clear distinction between what the Anglican community viewed as politically correct and what the Quaker community could tolerate.

Quakers had suffered persecution in Europe and so they sought to respect most other religions in Pennsylvania. Catholics were, for the most part, the only religious community not tolerated by the Protestant communities in the early American colonies.

Maryland, Catholics, and the Limits of Toleration

Maryland was founded as a refuge for Catholics, but the Catholic community was always rather small in the colony, as the number of Catholic settlers was actually fewer than the number of Protestant indentured servants (Laux). Maryland was founded to give Catholics persecuted under the Protestant Crown in England a place to go. Lord Baltimore was its governor, and Catholics were given positions of authority in society. The local social structure was set up so that Catholics were landowners and their servants were Protestants.

More and more Protestant settlers came to Maryland, whose Catholic leaders practiced religious liberty under the Toleration Act — meaning no rule banned other religions from establishing themselves. When by the mid-1600s the Puritans took over the colony, Lord Baltimore temporarily lost his rights to it and anti-Catholicism spread for decades. Catholics were denied the same rights they had previously extended to Protestants. As Graham notes, Catholics were "virtually excluded from political life and new faces filled important provincial offices" when the Puritans took over the colony (197).

Conclusion: Religion as the Architecture of Colonial Hierarchy

In conclusion, religion affected the social structure of colonial America in different ways depending on the religion of the community. The Quakers in Pennsylvania were pacifists, but their political duties seemed to contradict their religious beliefs, which meant that though they initially held political positions, they eventually abandoned those posts. The New England Puritans created a social structure in which shrewdness was rewarded, as they linked salvation with worldly success. The Anglicans and Deists saw themselves as the Elect and everyone else as beneath them. The Catholics promoted equality and religious tolerance but were not tolerated in turn by Protestants. Women, Blacks, and Natives were all assigned a subordinate position, socially speaking, to the male WASPs who seized control of the social, political, and economic spheres in colonial America.

Works Cited

Fantel, Hans. William Penn: Apostle of Dissent. NY: William Morrow & Co., 1974.

Graham, Michael. "Polish Plots: Protestant Fears in Early Colonial Maryland, 1676–1689." The Catholic Historical Review 79.2 (1993): 197–216.

Holton, W. Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

Laux, John. Church History. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1933.

Melville, Herman. Clarel. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015005201424&view=1up&seq=9

Milder, R. Herman Melville. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

Pyle, Ralph E., and James D. Davidson. "The Origins of Religious Stratification in Colonial America." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 42.1 (2003): 57–75.