North Carolina was a leader in religious freedom
On July 21, 1669, exactly 349 years ago Saturday, the Carolina colony officially recognized the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina. This document receives little attention, but it positioned North Carolina as leader in the push for religious freedom – ahead of the efforts of well-known figures such as William Penn and Thomas Jefferson. And in today’s divisive climate, it’s a reminder of the truly inclusive heritage of both North Carolina and our nation.
Carolina is one of only three American colonies, along with Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, that never had a functioning legal religious establishment. Non-Anglican religious groups were in theory under certain legal and civil disabilities for some decades, but these disabilities were rarely, if ever, enforced. In other colonies along the East Coast, dissenters were fined, exiled, imprisoned, and occasionally even executed. In North Carolina, however, they were basically ignored. At times, dissenting and minority clergy had their rights to perform marriages or establish schools challenged, but these limits were on paper, and the challenges were generally disregarded.
The Anglican Church was the official church of the colony and supported by the government. But all religious bodies were protected by law if they had at least seven people who believed in a God to be worshipped and provided a basis to swear or affirm truthful statements.
While this may seem a narrow sort of toleration today, at the time it was quite broad, encompassing not just dissenting Protestant sects, but also Roman Catholics, Jews, and pagans, including various native American religions. The constitution explicitly mentioned the protection of “Jews, heathens, and other dissenters from the purity of Christian religion.” Pennsylvania did not establish any state church, but its toleration excluded atheists, and office holders had to believe in Jesus Christ.
Some scholars attribute the remarkable principle in the Carolina constitution to John Locke, well known for his writings on government and religious toleration. But while Locke was working with a large committee, a majority of the Lords Proprietor, the colony’s governing body, had to be on board. The Lords Proprietor included many who were associated with non-conforming and dissenting Protestant thinkers. Its Chairman, Ashley Cooper, was opposed to civil religious authority whether in Catholic or episcopal form, resisting civil enforcement of Anglican orthodoxy against non-conforming Protestant groups.
Cooper famously authored a lengthy pamphlet against a proposed Test Act that would be enforced against Catholics and Protestant dissenters. Entitled Letter from a Person of Quality, it argued that Christ is the head of the church whose kingdom was not of this world. That meant civil powers should not interpret religious texts and beliefs, deciding who oversees the church, what its doctrines should be, and how it should worship.
This problem of religious interpretation was a well-known argument in certain dissenting Protestant circles, including those frequented by other Lords Proprietors. Two of them had founded the New Jersey colony, drafting a document that provided broad freedom of religion. Another proprietor wrote in 1663 that people planning to settle in Carolina “expect liberty of conscience and without that will not go.”
The North Carolina experience shows there was already a broader movement afoot for religious freedom beyond the boundaries of Quakerism and Baptist Rhode Island. This movement may have originated in the dissenting margins of religion, but it had spread to influential parts of English society well before Thomas Jefferson and Virginia “discovered” disestablishment, and even before William Penn founded his Holy Experiment. By then, it was already defended on the ground by common people throughout North Carolina.
Today, across North Carolina, let’s remember that toleration and inclusiveness.