Beyond the Persecuting Society: Religious Toleration Before the Enlightenment

11. The Problem of Toleration in the New Israel: Religious Communalism in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts

II The Problem of Toleration in the New Israel: Religious Communalism in Seventeenth- Century Massachusetts H. Frank Way THE EARLY EFFORTS TO ESTABLISH the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a Christian community present in microcosm one of the more enduring issues in Western history. A vision of a religiously based community is deeply rooted in Christian history. In Acts 13:47, St. Paul reported that the Lord said to him, "I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth." Eventually, the Roman Catholic Church's hope for a universal Christian community approached a degree of reality. Increasingly, however, the Catholic Church faced a host of countermoves to restore the less centralized primitive Christian communities of the early church. This thirst for Christian community exploded in the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Yet the Reformation could never completely fulfill this dream, if for no other reason than that Protestanism is based on a dynamic that is unable to put a period to religious individualism.The BayColony thus presents us with an opportunity to examine the dynamics and social statics of religious communalism : Protestant pluralism and dissent, religious individualism, and religious coercion. In the centuries following the founding of the Bay Colony (1630), countless closed religious communities, such as the Shakers and the early Mormons, acted on their dreams of community. But even the broader 252 The Seventeenth Century based religious groups of the early nineteenth century, such as Presbyterians , Congregationalists, and Baptists, all shared a dream of building a Protestant Christian nation. The ideal of Christian community or even a Christian nation remains a part of the social and political agenda of America. This study will allow us to see something of the complexities of this ceaselessquest for Christian community, for a religiously united social and civil order in which individuals find their release by submission to norms thought to be derived from the Bible.1 The most expeditious route to unraveling religious communalism in the Bay Colony is to focus on the leadership of the colony as revealed through the views of its Puritan ministersand the religious activitiesof the governing body of the colony, the Massachusetts General Court. In the course of this study, we will look at the support for and the role of coercion in maintaining religious unity in the early BayColony, and the contextual factors that help to explain the shift toward toleration that occurred by the early 16905. Religious communalism and the preservation of religious truth were central to the founding of the Bay Colony. Puritan leaders such as Governor John Winthrop and the Rev. John Cotton viewed the colonization of Massachusetts as an opportunity to establish a pristine Bible-centered community.The unsettled wilderness coupled with the vastAtlantic Ocean offered the founders protection against the contamination of what they considered to be an increasinglyCatholic-leaning Anglican church. In the wilderness they could restart the Reformation by ridding themselvesof the Romanish rituals of the Anglican church and the interferenceof its bishops . Calvinism could once again triumph over the corrupting doctrines of the English church and religious truth be fostered and preserved. They would build a community infused with Christian love, piety, and truth; a community based on self-discipline,personal sacrifice, brotherhood, and respect for the social order. In short, Winthrop and his company would build a New Zion. John Winthrop was elected governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company in London by the other merchant investors in 1629, several months before he led a fleet of ships to the recently established colony. He justified the founding of the new colony by, among other reasons, arguing that "It wilbe a service to the Church of Great Consequence to carry the Gospel into those parts of the world, and to raise a bullwarke against the kingdom of Antichrist which Jesuits labour to rear up in all places of the world."2 On the other hand, a reading of the transactions of the Bay Way / Communalism in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts Company while it was still situated in London during 1629 suggests that provisioning the expedition, raising money, and establishing a basis for the future allotment of Massachusetts land were among the Company's most pressing concerns. Provision was made, however, to send over ministers to Salem and among the provisions purchased were Bibles,Calvin's Institutes, tracts against separatists, atheists, and Catholics, and...