Copyright © 2001 The Pennsylvania State University.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-271-02105-5
Chapter One
"A THEOLOGICAL SCARE-CROW" OR
"THE INWARD PERSUASION OF THE MIND"?
Conscience and Toleration in
Historical, Philosophical, and Political Perspective
Religious toleration appears near the top of any short list of core liberal values: theorists from John Locke to John Rawls have seen important interconnections between the principles of toleration, constitutional government, and the rule of law. Yet the topic has not received a great deal of historically informed scholarly attention in recent years. The standard account has tended to treat the emergence of toleration as a series of steps, beginning sometime in the sixteenth or seventeenth century and purportedly reaching its pinnacle in the political, philosophical, and constitutional instantiations of contemporary liberalism. Revisiting the historical emergence of religious liberty in Anglo-American political thought, however, reveals, not a series of self-evident or logically connected expansions, but instead a far more complex and interesting picture, one that helps correct traditional understandings of the historical development of toleration while at the same time offering new insights into toleration as it currently exists as a political value. It is that picture—which I shall often describe as representing a recurrent tension between conscience and community—that I seek to evoke in the pages of this book.
Toleration as a theoretical and practical concern—whether pertaining to religion or other divisive social issues—is hardly a historical curiosity. Indeed, several prominent scholars, drawing explicitly on seventeenth-century toleration debates, have suggested that toleration is somehow paradigmatic in American constitutionalism. The issues raised by dissent, conscience, and diversity more generally continue to animate philosophical and political argument, speaking to contemporary issues of constitutional government, civil disobedience and the principled objection to specific laws, and the freedoms of speech, assembly, and press. Scholarly research on "political tolerance" (the willingness of people to support civil liberties for unpopular minorities) explores public hostility to marginalized groups and often emphasizes the precarious nature of the basic liberal protections extended to them. Contemporary societies face increasing levels and types of diversity, prompting intense debate about the acceptable extent, permissible limits, and conceptual foundations of toleration, as well as its relationship to multiculturalism and "identity" politics. Whether we are speaking of narrowly religious issues or the broader social dynamics of liberal societies, then, the phenomenon of toleration is centrally connected to the liberal tradition and retains a vital contemporary importance.
The years under consideration in this book represent a touchstone for nascent liberal ideas, a formative period in the tradition of Anglo-American constitutionalism. Scholars of early modern political thought agree that religious toleration represented a central political and theoretical concern for such important seventeenth-century thinkers as Locke, Milton, and Penn. As my title suggests, I explore how such toleration debates evoke a tension between conscience and community, be it a tension between the several communities of conscience gathered within the boundaries of a single political entity, or the increasing assertion of the individual conscience against collective orthodoxy. Although I touch on a range of issues concerning early modern toleration within these parameters, I address myself more specifically to the English Civil War and Revolution and to the early histories of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. These represent contexts in which arguments about toleration and religious dissent had especially significant repercussions for their specific participants as well as for subsequent developments in the broader Anglo-American tradition.
As evidenced by my subtitle, I argue throughout this book that we need to revisit this formative period in the history of religious toleration. When we do so, and attend closely to the political and philosophical developments that accompanied seventeenth-century toleration debates, we gain a renewed understanding of the specificity that made religious toleration such a divisive issue as well as the more general tension between conscience and community that continues to resonate in contemporary societies. We are left, I contend, with a more complex view of what happened and what it might have meant than is admitted by many contemporary liberal theorists (when they refer to historical developments at all, that is); a view that suggests that we should neither credit seventeenth-century thinkers for the subsequent successes, nor blame them for the subsequent shortcomings, of twentieth-century liberal theory and practice.
In approaching, or rather reapproaching, this familiar topic historically, I seek both to shed new light on the factors that contributed to toleration's rise and to correct conventional misunderstandings of the more specific debates on which I focus. The legacy of early modern tolerationists lies in an increasing theoretical and political reluctance to allow governmental imposition of a particular religious orthodoxy on individuals in society; in other words, a refusal to sacrifice conscience for the sake of community. The eventual success of tolerationist forces contributed to the emergence of societies we now call liberal, fundamentally different from the previously obtaining formulation in which a nation's religion necessarily mirrored that of its sovereign (cuius regio eius religio). Early modern tolerationists sought to replace traditional notions of religious uniformity (as epitomized by cuius regio) with the notion of political or civil unity, in which members of various faiths could work together for the good of the polity even while holding different views on issues of ultimate truth. Tolerationist arguments were almost exclusively negative, seeking not social equality or even equal respect but merely the "negative" freedom to be left alone to worship as they considered most acceptable to God. Early modern tolerationists sought, quite literally, a modus vivendi: a way of living together without descending into the bloodshed that had traditionally settled religious differences.
Subsequent liberal thinkers have been attracted to toleration insofar as it embodies the idea of freely made choices, in which individuals voluntarily affirm the commitments that flow from their deepest ethical, moral, or religious beliefs. The early modern ideal of political or civil unity may seem minimal when compared with twentieth-century notions of equal concern and respect, and no less a liberal theorist than John Rawls claims that a modus vivendi regime represents an insufficient and unstable social arrangement compared with the shared sense of justice he seeks from citizens of his political liberalism (PL, 147-48). A firm commitment to equal protection of law, equal opportunity, and basic civil rights might indeed seem minimal against the background of calls for the celebration of difference and the more robust notions of citizenship championed by contemporary thinkers. But we should not be so hasty, I suggest in Chapter 8, to dismiss the value of a modus vivendi, or the basic toleration that historically accompanied it. This book seeks to provide a historically informed account of the central liberal principle that grew out of the efforts of early modern tolerationists, and to reflect more broadly on the ongoing tension between conscience and community implicated in these developments.
My claim that toleration possesses a continuing vitality, however, departs sharply from many contemporary theorists, who argue that the principles undergirding religious toleration can be generalized to account for the wide variety of ethnic, culture, and sexual differences that characterize twenty-first-century societies. Close attention to the historical development of religious toleration suggests that the phenomenon itself and arguments in its favor are far more specific than such an expansive view would suggest. I do not claim, though, that early modern arguments are inaccessible, and I argue that the idea of "conscience" can be extended from its original, purely theological, meanings to deal with more general notions of belief. In this sense, the tension between conscience and community leads to a vibrant and vital debate, one very much alive in the twenty-first century, about the justification of any state power seeking to curtail an individual's liberty to act upon the basis of deeply held value commitments. Along these lines, Chapters 7 and 8 offer a sustained critique of many contemporary liberal theorists' appropriation of early modern toleration debates as a metaphor for solving a host of other social problems and some reflections on what a modus vivendi toleration might have to offer the twenty-first century.
REVISITING EARLY MODERN TOLERATION AND RELIGIOUS DISSENT: THE HISTORICAL NARRATIVE
In this study, I explore the emergence of religious toleration in seventeenth-century political thought, focusing on events in England as well as the colonies. This focus, of course, leaves out important aspects of the development of tolerationist ideas elsewhere in Europe, and I freely admit to sacrificing breadth for depth in my account. I shall refer the reader as I proceed to the works of other scholars whose work fills in the Continental backdrop to the Anglo-American developments on which I focus. I do comment on the links between prominent thinkers as well as the intellectual history of the ideas considered herein, but in the main I confine myself to England and the early colonial American context. My concern in focusing on England and America is to elucidate the way tolerationist and antitolerationist arguments contributed to a developing and ongoing Anglo-American tradition, one that would later give rise to the revolutionary and constitutional achievements of the eighteenth century.
This study is bounded in time as well as space. I focus on the seventeenth century, for a number of specific reasons. First, the seventeenth century represents, in a real sense, America's founding era, the first sustained and systematic attempt to create English societies in this new land. During the seventeenth century, colonial founders articulated the social, legal, and political foundations by which their communities would be governed for years to come. Of course, colonists continued to think of themselves as English subjects, and would do so for some time. But the opportunities presented by colonization spurred a number of colonial founders to reflect upon the bases of governmental legitimacy, the rights and liberties of their people, and the role of government in the lives of ordinary citizens, all of which influenced debates over religious dissent and toleration. Second, the seventeenth century witnessed the most protracted and contentious attention to issues of religious liberty in all of English history, culminating as it did in the constitutional settlement of 1688, the accession of William and Mary, and the Toleration Act. Between roughly 1630 and 1690, the philosophical, pragmatic, theological, and political grounds of toleration were argued with a vigor—indeed, a ferocity—never witnessed before or since in England. In both the colonies and the mother country, then, religious dissent raised serious issues of order, obedience, authority, and resistance, and the political decisions rulers took influenced the course of events for years to come.
The historical narrative, in which I revisit and explicate the emergence of religious toleration in seventeenth-century political thought, constitutes Chapters 2 through 5 of this book. There was nothing preordained about the developments that took place between roughly 1630 and 1700, nothing teleological or logically necessary about the ascendancy of tolerationist ideas. Understanding what did happen, how religious toleration achieved a tenuous foothold in Anglo-American political thought and practice, is impossible without appreciating the many options that were potentially available to early modern regimes. The promise of comprehending, in the broadest and deepest sense, what toleration meant to these societies demands that we evoke its many different meanings for those whose lives were intimately bound up with the age's religious discord. Within the broad contours of this narrative, then, I focus most heavily upon Massachusetts and Pennsylvania in the colonial context, and the Civil War and Revolution in England, exemplars that epitomize the issues raised by toleration and religious dissent.
In my account of New England, I am primarily concerned with exploring the relationship between the intentions of the first settlers (informed largely by their experiences in England and the larger context of post-Reformation politics) and the first significant instances of religious dissent. In Chapter 2, I explore the religious dissent that arose in Massachusetts Bay, in the persons of Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams, and the strife occasioned by the early Baptist and Quaker movements. The dissent that these groups raised went to the heart of Massachusetts Puritans' communal self-understandings, raising questions about their community's basic meaning and mission. This communal self-understanding prevalent among Massachusetts leaders necessitated certain limitations on the exercise of individual conscience. Hutchinson and Williams found these limitations unacceptable; and not surprisingly, the Puritan commonwealth viewed both as dangerous breeders of dissent, banishing each during the colony's first decade. Yet as far as we can tell, neither Hutchinson nor Williams articulated any theory of liberty of conscience at the time of their dissent in Massachusetts, making their careers in the colony highly ambiguous chapters in the story of American religious freedom.
The banishment of Williams and Hutchinson represent both the end of one story—the career of religious dissent in Massachusetts Bay during the settlement's first decade—and the beginning of another. If the early suppression of religious dissent in Massachusetts represents a successful political and ideological opposition to toleration and religious dissent, then Rhode Island, as a colony committed to religious liberty, provides another view of the political implications of radical Puritanism. I explore the challenges faced by Williams and other members of the Rhode Island communities who sought to create civil order in a heavily religious culture while maintaining a non-theistic governmental sphere.
Moving from America back to England in Chapter 3, we see that English affairs during the 1640s and 1650s represent a significant locus of toleration debate in their own right, perhaps the single most fertile period of English thought about religious liberty. Religious issues, whether or not one gives them causal primacy in spurring the disputes that led to civil war, are crucial to understanding the strife of the 1640s: most English Dissenters remained in England (emigration to Massachusetts notwithstanding) to work for their ideals of a reformed church and society. Throughout that decade, debate over a religious settlement went hand in hand with the search for a political solution to the conflict between king, Parliament, and (later) the New Model Army. Oliver Cromwell's eventual ascendance led to the retention of a creedal state church, with a circumscribed parameter of official profession, along with wide latitude for Dissenting congregations outside this framework. Nonetheless, the fact that religious liberty resulted (however briefly) under Cromwell's regime tells us nothing about the intentions of those who initiated the conflicts of the 1640s. I stress that no major political or religious groups desired toleration during the run-up to the English Civil War, and that the Protectorate's extensive religious freedom was the unintentional, unintended result of Parliament's inability to control its own army.
Oliver Cromwell's regime did not long outlast his death in 1658, and King Charles II was restored in 1660. Charles attempted to implement toleration by royal decree. Parliament opposed the king on both procedural and substantive grounds, taking issue with his assumption of extralegal authority and suspecting (with some good reason) Catholic influences at court as the real forces behind tolerationist policies. Parliament enacted harsh penalties for Dissenters during the 1660s and barred Catholics and many Dissenting Protestants from holding office through the Test Act of 1673 (mandating oaths of allegiance and denials of Catholic doctrine by public officials). The association of sectarian Protestants with the religious enthusiasm of the Civil War and Cromwell's Protectorate cast toleration in a highly unfavorable light during the early Restoration: growing Whig concerns (especially during the Exclusion Crisis of 1679-81) about the possible reign of a Catholic king, while redescribing the perceived threat to English liberties, did not increase the prospects for toleration during those years either.
Chapter 4 explores the English Revolution of 1688, the upshot of the increasing tension between the Stuart kings and Parliament. The Toleration Act, passed in the following year, ensured Dissenting Protestants the right to assemble and worship publicly, contributed to an explosion in the number of Dissenting congregations, and is rightly considered a landmark in the history of liberty of conscience. Still, as I point out in Chapter 4, the Toleration Act granted considerably less religious liberty than either James II's Declarations of Indulgence (1687 and 1688) or Cromwell's Protectorate. Indeed, one of the key factors in the desertion of James II by English political and religious elites lay in his tolerationist efforts on behalf of English Catholics and Protestant Dissenters. On the philosophical level, the 1680s were entirely derivative: not one argument in favor of toleration was advanced during those years that had not been voiced during the 1640s and 1650s.
In 1681, against the backdrop of Restoration religious politics, concerns about a "popish plot" to impose Catholicism on England, and the Exclusion Crisis, Charles II granted William Penn a charter for Pennsylvania. Penn had figured prominently in Restoration religious debates: his apologia in defense of Quakerism and his attacks on religious persecution argue with great passion the value of toleration as a necessary component of legitimate government. Having spent time in prison for his Quaker activities, Penn saw in his colony the promise of a "holy experiment" for the cause of toleration. Chapter 5 examines the founding and early development of Pennsylvania, the degree to which Penn was successful in realizing his tolerationist commitments in actual practice. I highlight both the importance of Penn's achievement—a thriving colony in which adherents of many religious faiths lived together in relative peace—as well as the important issues of toleration raised by the civil prosecution of dissident Quakers during the Keithian schism of 1692-94. That episode, brief but explosive, was seized upon by Penn's opponents to discredit Quakers as incompetent, unjust, and hypocritical, and Pennsylvania politics assumed a place in the religious and political debates of England.
Consideration of developments regarding toleration on both sides of the Atlantic sheds light on the broader relationship between England and America, two societies whose fates have been inextricably linked. For example, a number of prominent individuals played important roles in both English and American toleration debates. The Puritan migration to New England was greatly influenced by the resurgence of heavy-handed Anglican ceremonialism under Charles I and Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud; and the hostility to Puritan ideas within the Church of England in the late 1620s and 1630s played a crucial role in spurring that migration. Several important Massachusetts Puritans (e.g., Roger Williams, Henry Vane), having lived in New England during the 1630s, returned to England to participate in the next decade's conflict, which (in their view) promised the rule of the godly for which they had striven so long. Such cross-Atlantic activity is not confined to the earlier cases: William Penn occupies a key role in the history of religious freedom as much for his efforts to gain toleration for Quakers in Restoration England as for his role in founding and governing the "holy experiment" of Pennsylvania. The nemesis of Pennsylvania Quakers, George Keith, came to prominence in Scotland and England, journeyed to Pennsylvania, returned to England where he converted to Anglicanism, and traveled back to Pennsylvania, once again engaging in religious and political debate with those whose views he found wanting.
This dialectical relationship between the mother country and its colonial offspring raises the more general question of how English theorists and actors viewed America itself. Colonial America was, in a sense, a great laboratory for English colonizers. The idea of a "fresh start," and the possibility of actually achieving what in England seemed impossible (be it Massachusetts's godly commonwealth or Penn's tolerationist community), animated many settlers to make the arduous ocean crossing. Clearly Pennsylvania and Massachusetts differed dramatically. In Massachusetts, the search for a better world was designed to unite that world under a common faith. In Pennsylvania, that search was animated by a commitment to toleration as a basic, intrinsic good. In both cases, however, plans for American institutions were formulated in response to problems identified in England. The success or failure of the ensuing institutions depended upon a host of factors often far removed and far beyond colonists' control. But the ideal of America (and its presentation in English debates) and the ideal of England (its usage in American debate) suggest the complex interplay of hopes and expectations that the new continent represented for the English and bears heavily on developments in the field of toleration.
(Continues...)