In the contemporary world, the separation of church and state has become normative in the West. However, in the era of British colonialism in North America, religion was deeply interwoven with politics. It is not surprising that the religious conflicts that contributed to revolution and civil war in England also influenced the American colonies. The Plymouth Colony and the Massachusetts Bay Colony were not the only British colonies that were deeply impacted by religion. A number of other colonies in New England and the Mid-Atlantic regions were established as a result of religious motivations. The colony of Rhode Island was founded by religious dissidents exiled from Massachusetts. The colony of Pennsylvania was founded by Quakers seeking a safe-haven to practice their faith freely. Other colonies such as Connecticut and New York were also shaped, in part, by religion.
Religious Colonization
Despite the turmoil in Britain, colonial settlement grew considerably throughout the seventeenth century, and several new settlements joined the two original colonies of Virginia and Massachusetts.
Religion was a motivating factor in the creation of several other colonies as well, including the New England colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island. The settlements that would eventually comprise Connecticut grew out of settlements in Saybrook and New Haven. Thomas Hooker and his congregation left Massachusetts for Connecticut because the area around Boston was becoming increasingly crowded. The Connecticut River Valley was large enough for more cattle and agriculture. In June 1636, Hooker led one hundred people and a variety of livestock in settling an area they called Newtown (later Hartford).
New Haven Colony had a more directly religious origin, as the founders attempted a new experiment in Puritanism. In 1638, John Davenport, Theophilus Eaton, and other supporters of the Puritan faith settled in the Quinnipiac (New Haven) area of the Connecticut River Valley. In 1643 New Haven Colony was officially organized with Eaton named governor. In the early 1660s, three men who had signed the death warrant for Charles I were concealed in New Haven. This did not win the colony any favors, and it became increasingly poorer and weaker. In 1665, New Haven was absorbed into Connecticut, but its singular religious tradition endured with the creation of Yale College.
Religious radicals similarly founded Rhode Island. Roger Williams, a Puritan minister, was exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for preaching against the religious and political establishment of the colony. Williams asserted that the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony had stolen land from Native Americans and established an unjust theocratic government in the colony. After his exile from Massachusetts, Roger Williams created a settlement called Providence in 1636. He negotiated for the land with the local Narragansett sachems Canonicus and Miantonomi. Williams and his fellow settlers agreed on an egalitarian constitution and established religious and political freedom in the colony.
Anne Hutchinson also played a crucial role in the development of the Providence colony. Hutchinson was exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony based on her opposition to the leaders of the colony. Hutchinson asserted that she received revelations from God, organized women into religious study groups, and questioned the piety of the Puritan ministers of the colony. She posed a direct challenge to the patriarchal government of the colony. Following her exile, Anne Hutchinson and her followers settled near Providence.
Others dissidents soon arrived in Providence, and the colony of Rhode Island was granted a charter by Parliament in 1644. Persistently independent and with republican sympathies, the settlers refused a governor and instead elected a president and council. These separate communities passed laws abolishing witchcraft trials, imprisonment for debt and, in 1652, chattel slavery. Because of the colony’s policy of toleration, it became a haven for Quakers, Jews, and other persecuted religious groups. In 1663, Charles II granted the colony a royal charter establishing the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
Until the middle of the seventeenth century, the English neglected the area between Virginia and New England despite obvious environmental advantages. The climate was healthier than the Chesapeake and more temperate than New England. The mid-Atlantic had three highly navigable rivers: the Susquehanna, Delaware, and Hudson. The Swedes and Dutch established their own colonies in the region: New Sweden in the Delaware Valley and New Netherland in the Hudson Valley.
Compared to other Dutch colonies around the globe, the settlements on the Hudson River were relatively minor. The Dutch West India Company realized that in order to secure its fur trade in the area, it needed to establish a greater presence in New Netherland. Toward this end, the company formed New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island in 1625.
Although the Dutch extended religious tolerance to those who settled in New Netherland, the population remained small. This left the colony vulnerable to English attack during the 1650s and 1660s, resulting in the hand-over of New Netherland to England in 1664. The new colony of New York was named for the proprietor, James, the Duke of York, brother to Charles II and funder of the expedition against the Dutch in 1664. New York was briefly reconquered by the Netherlands in 1667, and class and ethnic conflicts in New York City contributed to the rebellion against English authorities during the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89. Colonists of Dutch ancestry resisted assimilation into English culture well into the eighteenth century, prompting New York Anglicans to note that the colony was “rather like a conquered foreign province.”
After the acquisition of New Netherland, Charles II and the Duke of York wished to strengthen English control over the Atlantic seaboard. In theory, this was to better tax the colonies; in practice, the awarding of the new proprietary colonies of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the Carolinas was a payoff of debts and political favors.
In 1664, the Duke of York granted the area between the Hudson and Delaware rivers to two English noblemen. These lands were split into two distinct colonies, East Jersey and West Jersey. One of West Jersey’s proprietors included William Penn. The ambitious Penn wanted his own, larger colony, the lands for which would be granted by both Charles II and the Duke of York. Pennsylvania consisted of about 45,000 square miles west of the Delaware River and the former New Sweden. Penn was a member of the Society of Friends, otherwise known as Quakers, and he intended his colony to be a “colony of Heaven for the children of Light.” Like New England’s aspirations to be a City Upon a Hill, Pennsylvania was to be an example of godliness. But Penn’s dream was to create not a colony of unity, but rather a colony of harmony. He noted in 1685 that “the people are a collection of diverse nations in Europe, as French, Dutch, Germans, Swedes, Danes, Finns, Scotch, and English; and of the last equal to all the rest.” Because Quakers in Pennsylvania extended to others in America the same rights they had demanded for themselves in England, the colony attracted a diverse collection of migrants. Slavery was particularly troublesome for some pacifist Quakers of Pennsylvania on the grounds that it required violence. In 1688, members of the Society of Friends in Germantown, outside of Philadelphia, signed a petition protesting the institution of slavery among fellow Quakers. The Pennsylvania soil did not lend itself to the slave-based agriculture of the Chesapeake.
Source: The American Yawp. A Free and Online, Collaboratively Built American History Textbook, 2017-2018 Edition.
Religious Colonization – vIDEO
New England Colonies
Oberlander, H. Massachusetts Bay and the New England Colonies. (2017, December 4). [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yel9t9PibY0
Mid-Atlantic Colonies
Oberlander, H. Pennsylvania and Mid-Atlantic Region. (2017, December 6). [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3czTV_prxKA
Summary
Religion played a central role in the establishment of several British North American Colonies. Religious dissidents who opposed the Anglican Church in England sought to establish safe-havens in the New World where their coreligionists could practice their faith freely. One clear example of this is the founding of Pennsylvania by William Penn. William Penn was a devout Quaker who sought to establish Pennsylvania as a state open to Quakers and members of other dissenting religious groups. Other colonies were founded as a result of religious disputes that erupted in America. A number of Puritans dissented from the religious and political leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Religious dissenters such as Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson played a crucial role in establishing the colony of Rhode Island. Roger Williams purchased the area that became Providence from Native Americans and permitted members of various dissenting religious groups to settle in the colony.. For better or worse, religion and politics were interwoven in colonial America.
