In 1649, in the English colony of Maryland, a law was issued

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1 Lord Baltimore An Act Concerning Religion (The Maryland Toleration Act) Issued in 1649; reprinted on AMDOCS: Documents for the Study of American History (Web site) 1 A seventeenth-century Maryland law sets the stage for future religious freedoms In 1649, in the English colony of Maryland, a law was issued by Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baron of Baltimore ( ; known as Lord Baltimore), the governor of the colony, banning criticism of various forms of Christianity and allowing people to practice their Christian religion freely. It was the first law establishing freedom of religion (or at least, Christianity) in North America. The law, the Maryland Toleration Act, helped set the stage for the freedom of religion that would mark the independent United States 140 years later. The act was issued at a time when England was in the midst of a civil war in which religion was a central issue. The act made Maryland a refuge for English Catholics who were often persecuted for their beliefs during the English civil war ( ). Inforceing of the conscience in matters of Religion hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous Consequence in those commonwealthes where it hath been practiced. The 1600s were a time of religious and political turmoil in England and throughout Europe, and consequently in England s North American colonies. The religious unrest had begun in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517, when a German priest named Martin Luther ( ) posted on a church door a list of ninety-five objections to various teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic religion. Luther insisted that the Roman 1

2 Martin Luther, leader of changes in the Roman Catholic Church, called the Reformation. New York Public Library. Catholic Church should be reformed, and the movement he launched is called the Reformation. Eighteen years later, in 1535, the king of England, Henry VIII ( ; reigned ), declared that he, and not the pope, would be head of the Christian church in England. The English king had a different motivation: he had asked Pope Paul III ( ), leader of the Roman Catholic Church, to grant him a divorce so that he could leave his wife and marry another woman who might be able to give him a son and an heir to his throne. The pope refused to grant the divorce, in part because it violated church teaching and in part because without another heir, the throne of England stood to come under Spanish control. Henry VIII s first wife was Catherine of Aragon ( ), his older brother s widow and the daughter of King Ferdinand V ( ) and Queen Isabella ( ) of Spain. The two events Luther s religious challenge to the teachings of the Catholic Church and King Henry VIII s establishment of the new Church of England demonstrated how closely linked religion and politics were in the sixteenth century. Kings depended on the pope to give his blessing to their political power, and the pope depended on kings to enforce adherence to the one and only permitted religion. This system, which had been in place for hundreds of years, was destroyed by both Luther and Henry VIII. Within a few years, other theologians and rulers joined the dispute. A variety of religious theorists published their own objections and alternatives to Catholic teachings, and attracted followers who preferred to worship outside the regular church. Rulers chose sides in the dispute between Luther and the pope, resulting in wars over religious preferences. In England, the struggle over whether the Roman Catholic Church should be the official religion of the country carried on for over 150 years during the reigns of the next five 2 U.S. Immigration and Migration: Primary Sources

3 monarchs: King Edward VI ( ; reigned ); Queen Mary I ( ; reigned ); Queen Elizabeth I ( ; reigned ); King James I ( , reigned ); and King Charles I ( ; reigned ). Their reigns were marked by continuing controversy and violence over whether the Church of England should remain separated from the Roman Catholic Church or whether England s official religion should revert to Roman Catholicism. Queen Mary and King Charles, both of whom were Catholics, were in fact each executed. On top of the argument about the official religion were the teachings of several different theologians. Some wanted to establish new, separate churches. Some wanted to reform the Church of England to rid it of influences left over from the Roman Catholic religion. The religious disputes in England were also reflected in England s colonies along the Atlantic coast of North America. Early English immigrants in the colony of Virginia (named after Queen Elizabeth, who never married and was known as the Virgin Queen) were primarily pursuing wealth. But followers of various Protestant religious leaders emigrated for a different reason: They seized on the opportunity to establish settlements in North America where they could worship according to their religious convictions without interference by authorities in England. The best known of these religious groups in North America were the Pilgrims, who established a settlement at Plymouth in 1620, called the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Pilgrims were so-called Separatists, meaning they wanted to establish a church separate from the Church of England rather than reform it. A larger group of religiously motivated settlers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony were the Puritans, who established the town of Salem in (Two years later, a larger group of Puritans founded another town, Boston, also in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.) Although these early settlers are sometimes described as seeking religious freedom, this did not mean freedom for everyone. The Puritans, in particular, were intent on having an official church the Church of England that was purified of Roman Catholic influence. Four years after the Puritans established their outpost in Salem, a Catholic aristocrat in England, Lord Baltimore, received a charter, or permission, from King Charles to establish a colony in North America, to be called Maryland in Lord Baltimore 3

4 Lord Baltimore. honor of the King s wife, Queen Henrietta Maria. (At the time, the king of England claimed control over a broad stretch of North America along the Atlantic coast; in turn, he granted charters to companies or individuals, as in the case of his friend Lord Baltimore, to organize settlements.) Lord Baltimore founded Maryland as a safe haven for Catholics who were persecuted by Puritans in New England and Church of England settlers in the colony of Virginia. But Protestants in other colonies, who strongly disapproved of establishing a Catholic colony in North America, moved into Maryland, soon leaving Catholics as a minority representing only a quarter of the population. As a result, Lord Baltimore felt compelled to persuade the colonial assembly to pass a law in 1649 that allowed Christians of all persuasions to practice their religious beliefs in peace. At about the same time, a religious civil war had broken out in England, pitting the Puritans, who had gained control over Parliament, against the Catholic King Charles I. The king was overthrown and executed in The Puritans abolished the monarchy and established a commonwealth, a form of government based on the common good of the citizens rather than the rule of a monarch. For the next twenty years, a civil war raged in England, pitting the Puritans against Catholics and loyalists of the monarchy. Although the English civil war seemed to be about religion, it also took in two different views of the nature of government. King Charles I had believed that whatever powers the Parliament held were, in essence, a gift of the king. Members of Parliament, on the other hand, felt just the opposite: that the real authority in the country should rest with the elected members of Parliament, who might then grant the king some authority. In the decade before, armed conflict broke out between forces loyal to King Charles I and forces 4 U.S. Immigration and Migration: Primary Sources

5 loyal to the Puritan-controlled Parliament, the two sides had argued continually over the king s power to levy, or charge, taxes, and the Parliament s unwillingness to raises taxes as a tool to limit the power of the king. Things to remember while reading An Act Concerning Religion: The notion of freedom of religion contained in the act did not mean residents of the colony were entirely free; it meant that various forms of the Christian faith were permitted to coexist. People caught criticizing religion in general, or specific beliefs of religious sects (such as the importance of the mother of Jesus, which was a central belief of the Catholic religion) were subject to being fined, imprisoned, or whipped in public. The act was designed in part to calm passions over religion. It prohibited people in Maryland from calling one another names that were based on religious conflicts and that might be viewed as leading to conflict, names like roundhead, idolator (worshiper of idols, or statues), or even Brownian (a follower of English theologian Robert Browne) or Lutheran, a follower of Martin Luther. Such terms carried much more emotional weight at the time than they do in the twenty-first century. The text of An Act Concerning Religion reflects the conventions of the mid-seventeenth century, when there was no universal agreement on how to spell words. King Charles I. Library of Congress. Lord Baltimore 5