My Puritan ancestors who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 did not believe in the separation of church and state. In fact, their mission was to establish a society based on the laws of God. I discovered this while researching my current fictional work based on their lives. For over a year, I have been doing an extensive investigation into the colony’s culture from 1630 to 1659, specifically surrounding my 10^th great grandfathers Joseph Weld and Captain John Johnson.

CHURCH AND STATE COMBINATION DISSATISFACTION

The Puritans were upset with the Church of England (controlled by the monarchy) because they felt the church was too ritualistic like Catholicism. Because their protests put them in danger of arrest, they fled to the New World and established what John Winthrop called a “City Upon a Hill.” Their goal was a utopian society, where all could be knit together, practicing an authentic, pure religion.

RESULTS OF COMBINING CHURCH AND STATE

The government was purposely designed to ensure that civil, as well as religious, tenets were followed. Therefore, punishments were routinely meted out for working on the sabbath, slandering the church, failing to attend church, and intoxication. Fines, whippings, stocks, and pillory were common penalties.

Staunch Puritans were not exempt, however. Anne Hutchison and Roger Williams were deeply, devout Christians. However, they had different takes on spirituality that were deemed dangerous and both were banished from the colony. Note: My ancestor Joseph Weld held Hutchison under arrest at his house during her trial.

Banishment was one thing. But when the Quakers showed up, my ancestors were beside themselves. Quakers believed a literal reading of the Bible was not necessary for them to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Heretics!

In fact, according to the Historic Ipswich website, the Puritans were so upset that severe sentences were decreed for that “cursed set of heretics” called Quakers “coming again into this jurisdiction:”

• Beginning in 1656, laws forbade any captain to land Quakers. Any individual of that sect was to be committed at once to the House of Correction, to be severely whipped on his or her entrance, and kept constantly at work, and none were suffered to speak with them.
• The following year it was decreed that any Quaker arriving in the Colony should have one of his ears cut off.
• For another offence, he should lose the other ear.
• Every Quaker woman should be severely whipped.
• For a third offence, the tongue was to be bored through with a hot iron.
• A 1661 law ordered that “any wandering Quakers be apprehended, stripped naked from the middle upward, tied to cart’s-tayle and whipped thro the town.”
• Quakers who persistently returned were to be branded with the letter R on the left shoulder.

Moreover, those pesky Quakers who failed to learn from prior punishments, such as Mary Dwyer, were executed.

Oh, let’s not forget the Native Americans. Their conversion to Christianity was a priority as was enslaving them to work in the Colony or to sell to Caribbean plantation owners.

DISSENT ON COMBINING CHURCH AND STATE

Roger Williams later founded Providence Colony in present-day Rhode Island based on religious toleration, believing separating church and state was important to preserve the honor of the church. While the Quakers offended him, he felt that forced worship nettled God.

THOUGHTS ON SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

Our founding fathers were obviously aware of what had happened only one hundred years earlier and believed the separation of church and state was a best practice for our fledgling country.

There are those today, however, who insist that our country’s inception was ordained by God and that our laws and institutions should be interwoven with Christianity. They are pressing us to return to the ideals of my Puritan ancestors.

But whose version of Christianity will be embraced? What happens to Christians who believe otherwise?

Listen to our founding fathers. They were a bunch of wise men!

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