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Quaker Pennsylvania: Refuge from Priestcraft?
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Calvert – 2
creed. Everyone could be saved, but consciences could not be coerced. Liberty of conscience was imperative since everyone needed to come to God voluntarily.
4
Given their stripped-down Christianity and their very successful practical experiment in
liberty of conscience in Pennsylvania, it seems that only a wild imagination could equate Quakers with Catholicism and popery, as happened in seventeenth-century England, or priestcraft, as in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. By what logic, then, were such accusations levied? And should these charges be taken into account when considering the Quakers’ contribution to early American political culture?
Priestcraft was the idea that there are priests, or other representatives of a powerful
religious organization, conspiring behind the scenes in government to oppress the people and manipulate policy for their own (usually economic) gain. In seventeenth-century England, the charge was generally meant to brand people with the label of Catholicism, and was often implied when polemicists used words such as popery to attack their opponents. In eighteenth-century America, where there were few Catholics, the term was usually applied to Anglicans and the attempts representatives of the Church of England made to establish an ecclesiastical polity in the colonies.
The charge of priestcraft suggested an illegitimate relationship between the church and
state. However, the lack of separation of church and state did not necessarily mean the existence of priestcraft. An established church was the norm in the Anglo-American world. It was the quality of the relationship between the two that mattered. In Massachusetts where the Congregational Church was established, church ministers and colonial politicians did not share roles; neither did the priests and politicians in the Southern colonies where Anglicanism was established. Although religious liberty in those colonies was restricted when residents were required by law to pay tithes to support the churches, attend services, and face economic and corporal punishment for dissension, these churches never quite insinuated themselves completely into the governments. Even in seventeenth-century Puritan New England, theocracy was something to be guarded against and, accordingly, civil magistrates were not subordinate to the church.
5
Although some Anglicans and Puritans made attempts to gain more control and
establish a theocracy, they were unsuccessful. Such efforts “reached far beyond limits acceptable to most Americans.”
6
Quaker Pennsylvania was an anomaly for two reasons. First, it was the only one of the
major colonies that had an official policy of religious toleration and no formally established church. Second, Pennsylvania was the closest thing to a theocracy that existed in eighteenth-century America. It proved that the lack of an established church did not necessarily mean the absence of religious domination. A close consideration of Pennsylvania as a Quaker colony will suggest that not only are religious toleration and charges of priestcraft not incompatible there, but also, in light of their compatibility, that we should reconsider our understanding of Pennsylvania’s contribution to the origins of the disestablishment clause of the First Amendment. I will suggest that when considering Quaker Pennsylvania, historians need to make a sharper distinction between religious liberty and separation of church and state.
4
See Howard Brinton, The Religious Philosophy of Quakerism: The Beliefs of Fox, Barclay, and Penn as Based on
the Gospel of John (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill, 1973).
5
Perry Miller, “The Puritan State and Puritan Society,” in Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University, 1956), 150; Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (Harper Collins Publisher, 1958), 95-96.
6
See Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faith, Ideas, Personalities and Politics, 1689-1775 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 76.
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Calvert – 2
creed. Everyone could be saved, but consciences could not be coerced. Liberty of conscience
was imperative since everyone needed to come to God voluntarily.
Given their stripped-down Christianity and their very successful practical experiment in
liberty of conscience in Pennsylvania, it seems that only a wild imagination could equate
Quakers with Catholicism and popery, as happened in seventeenth-century England, or
priestcraft, as in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. By what logic, then, were such accusations
levied? And should these charges be taken into account when considering the Quakers’
contribution to early American political culture?
Priestcraft was the idea that there are priests, or other representatives of a powerful
religious organization, conspiring behind the scenes in government to oppress the people and
manipulate policy for their own (usually economic) gain. In seventeenth-century England, the
charge was generally meant to brand people with the label of Catholicism, and was often implied
when polemicists used words such as popery to attack their opponents. In eighteenth-century
America, where there were few Catholics, the term was usually applied to Anglicans and the
attempts representatives of the Church of England made to establish an ecclesiastical polity in
the colonies.
The charge of priestcraft suggested an illegitimate relationship between the church and
state. However, the lack of separation of church and state did not necessarily mean the existence
of priestcraft. An established church was the norm in the Anglo-American world. It was the
quality of the relationship between the two that mattered. In Massachusetts where the
Congregational Church was established, church ministers and colonial politicians did not share
roles; neither did the priests and politicians in the Southern colonies where Anglicanism was
established. Although religious liberty in those colonies was restricted when residents were
required by law to pay tithes to support the churches, attend services, and face economic and
corporal punishment for dissension, these churches never quite insinuated themselves completely
into the governments. Even in seventeenth-century Puritan New England, theocracy was
something to be guarded against and, accordingly, civil magistrates were not subordinate to the
church.
Although some Anglicans and Puritans made attempts to gain more control and
establish a theocracy, they were unsuccessful. Such efforts “reached far beyond limits
acceptable to most Americans.”
Quaker Pennsylvania was an anomaly for two reasons. First, it was the only one of the
major colonies that had an official policy of religious toleration and no formally established
church. Second, Pennsylvania was the closest thing to a theocracy that existed in eighteenth-
century America. It proved that the lack of an established church did not necessarily mean the
absence of religious domination. A close consideration of Pennsylvania as a Quaker colony will
suggest that not only are religious toleration and charges of priestcraft not incompatible there,
but also, in light of their compatibility, that we should reconsider our understanding of
Pennsylvania’s contribution to the origins of the disestablishment clause of the First
Amendment. I will suggest that when considering Quaker Pennsylvania, historians need to make
a sharper distinction between religious liberty and separation of church and state.
4
See Howard Brinton, The Religious Philosophy of Quakerism: The Beliefs of Fox, Barclay, and Penn as Based on
the Gospel of John (Wallingford, PA: Pendle Hill, 1973).
5
Perry Miller, “The Puritan State and Puritan Society,” in Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge: The Belknap
Press of Harvard University, 1956), 150; Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop
(Harper Collins Publisher, 1958), 95-96.
6
See Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faith, Ideas, Personalities and Politics, 1689-1775 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 76.
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