THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG 88
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interests; and the people are religious and Christian as no other, and express their sentiments in different ways—by the voluntary support of their very numerous churches and sects; by benevolent, organizations of every kind; by attendance upon church, and regard for the ministry (who are second to none in dignity and influence); by a respect for the Sabbath which is not equaled elsewhere, except in Scotland (see Sunpay, OBSERVANCE OF); by constant zeal for home and foreign missions; by reverence for the Bible; by a steady stream of edifying books, tracts, and periodicals; and by public morals. Congress nominates chaplains, of different confessions naturally, and opens every sitting with prayer. The President appoints chaplains for the army and navy. Fast-days have been frequently observed in particular emergencies (see Fast Day): thus in 1849, during the cholera; in 1865, on the assassination of President Lincoln; and in 1881, on the death of President Garfield. Thanksgiving Day (q.v.) is yearly celebrated in November in all the states, on the proclamation of the president and the concurrent action of the different governors. Indeed, religion has all the more hold upon the American character because it is free from political control. No one is forced to make a religious profession; that is a matter of personal conviction and voluntary action.
As far as the individual states are concerned, Church and State are now separated; but this has not been the case from the beginning. Nor is the separation the consequence of independence of Eng-
land. In some colonies it existed long
3. Attitude prior to that event; so it was (at first) of Some in Maryland, founded in 1634 by the States. Roman Catholic Lord Baltimore; in Rhode Island, settled in 1636 by Bap-
tists under Roger Williams (q.v.), and in Pennsylvania, which William Penn (q.v.) acquired in 1680 from the English crown in payment of a debt, making the region an asylum for his persecuted Quaker coreligionists and all other Christian brethren. Each of these three representatives of Christian toleration adopted it, not in consequence of vague philosophical theories, still less out of religious indifferentism, but because of bitter experience of intolerance and of practical necessity. And this toleration was limited to the different confessions of the Christian faith, and did not apply to infidels or blasphemers, who were excluded from civil rights. In the other and older colonies, Church and State were from the beginning closely connected. In Massachusetts and the other New England colonies, except Rhode Island, the Congregational form of Puritanism was the state religion; and civil rights, in imitation of Jewish theocratic principles, were dependent upon a certain religious adherence. Not only was the Roman Church excluded, but, until the close of the seventeenth century, all Protestants who could not accept the established creed were dealt with as strictly as the Pilgrim fathers had themselves been by the bishops of Old England. Massachusetts banished the Baptist Roger Williams and other Baptists, and the followers of the Antinomian Anne
2. Effects upon Religious Life.
Hutchinson (see ANTINOMIANISM AND ANTINOMIAN Conrroversins, II., 2); the Quakers were tried, and condemned to public scourging, ear-slitting, nose-boring, and even (by a vote of twelve to eleven in the Boston Legislature) to the gallows (see Frienps, Socrgty or, I, § 3). It should be remarked, however, that the Quakers in New England between 1658 and 1660 had acted fanatically. They had publicly denounced, in the churches and upon the stfeets, the civil and spiritual authorities. They thus provoked persecution and martyrdom by their impetuous zeal. Four such fanatics (one a woman), who had already been banished as Antinomians, obstinately rushed into martyrdom, and were hanged in 1660. But the people were opposed even then to such treatment; and the authorities were obliged to defend their action in a published statement, in which they justified themselves by quotations from the Old Testament and by the English laws against the Roman Catholic Church. The Quakers, thus driven out, found a retreat in Rhode Island until the establishment of Pennsylvania. Gradually the bond between Church and State was in New England relaxed; but in Connecticut it was first broken in 1816, while in Massachusetts the last traces remained until 1833. In Virginia and other southern colonies the Church of England was the State Church, and all other denominations felt the pressure of the English laws against dissenters. Nevertheless, the latter increased, especially the Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, and, later, the Methodists; and it was from them that the first impulse in Virginia proceeded to separate Church and State. Even before the declaration of independence, the Presbyterians and Baptists presented petitions to the colonial legislature to that intent. The measure found a defender in Thomas Jefferson, who in the interest of free-thinking, not out of any sympathy with the dissenters or out of love for Christianity, favored putting faith and unfaith upon the same political level. Through the exertions of the dissenters, the liberal Episcopalians, and the unbelieving Jefferson, the principle of separation between Church and State was, in Dec., 1776, and, more completely, in 1779, 1785, and the following decade, carried through the Virginia legislature. See Liserty, RELIGIOUS.
Soon after the close of the War of Independence (1783), and the adoption of the national constitution by the several states, the connection between Church and State in Maryland, New York, and South Carolina, and the other colonies where the English Episcopal Church was the predominant State Church, was broken, and complete religious freedom proclaimed. Last of all, and only very gradually, did the New England states, where Puritanism was deeply rooted in the mass of the people, adopt the new order of things. Now the principle of entire separation is universally operative. Only among the Mormons (q.v.) in Utah are Church and State combined. But the Mormons are powerless to prevent other sects coming among them; more than 150 churches other than Mormon are found in the state, twenty-five of them in Salt Lake City.
_ IIL. Voluntary System of Church Support: There is in the United States no obligatory baptism or