More Great moments in the religious history of a “Christian nation.”
Did they tell you that the Puritans came to America in search of religious freedom?
That part is true. But it was for themselves, not anybody else. Religious dissidents did not fare well in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Just ask Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. They were both banished from Boston.
(My recent blog about Roger Williams: http://www.dontknowmuch.com/2009/10/today-in-history-roger-williams-and-san-francisco/)
But nobody understood the hard facts about the Puritans better than the Society of Friends, or Quakers. On October 14, 1656, the Puritans who ran Massachusetts enacted the first laws against Quakers. The penalty for being a Quaker was ultimately death.
And it wasn’t an empty threat. Late in October 1659, two Quakers were executed by hanging. A third, Mary Dyer, was executed in 1660. And a fourth was hung in 1661. A sister of dissident Anne Hutchinson also became a Quaker. She was spared hanging. The Puritans merely stripped her in public and lashed her.
There is an irony as this date also happen to be the birthday of the most famous Quaker in American history, William Penn, born in 1644. Precisely because the Friends were persecuted in England as well as Massachusetts, Penn received the charter to begin his colony as a haven for Quakers, and other religious dissenters. Under Penn’s liberal leadership which extended to politics as well as religion, Penn’s “Holy Experiment” flourished. (Unfortunately, his son and brother who eventually replaced him did not see things the same way and reversed many of William Penn’s enlightened policies.)
You can read Penn’s “Charter of Libertie” at the Yale Law School Collection of colonial charters and documents. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/pa03.asp
BTW, The man on that box of oats is not William Penn, according to the Quaker Oats company.
Could have fooled me.
