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[9] It was not until the passage of the signed First Amendment to the Constitution over a century later that religious freedom was enshrined as a fundamental guarantee, [3] but even that document echoes the Toleration Act in its use of the phrase, "free exercise thereof". Thus, despite its lack of a full guarantee of religious freedom or broad ...
The 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery was the first protest against enslavement of Africans made by a religious body in the Thirteen Colonies. Francis Daniel Pastorius authored the petition; he and the three other Quakers living in Germantown, Pennsylvania (now part of Philadelphia), Garret Hendericks, Derick op den Graeff, and Abraham op den Graeff, signed it on behalf of the ...
Rhode Island, under the leadership of Roger Williams allowed freedom of religion for all faiths upon its founding. Maryland was an example of religious toleration in a fairly intolerant age. The Act of Toleration, issued in 1649, was one of the first laws that explicitly defined tolerance of varieties of religion. [3]
Many of the British North American colonies that eventually formed the United States of America were settled in the 17th century by men and women, who, in the face of European religious persecution, refused to compromise passionately held religious convictions (largely stemming from the Protestant Reformation which began c. 1517) and fled Europe.
The colonies of Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Delaware, and New Jersey went further than the Act of Toleration by outlawing the establishment of any church and allowing a greater religious diversity. [6] Within the colonies in the year 1700 Roman Catholics were allowed to practice their religion freely only in Rhode Island. [13]
During the American colonial period a freeman was a person who was not a slave. The term originated in 12th-century Europe. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a man had to be a member of the Church to be a freeman; in neighboring Plymouth Colony a man did not need to be a member of the Church, but he had to be elected to this privilege by the General Court.
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This effort failed when non-Anglicans gave their support to Thomas Jefferson's "Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom", which eventually became law in 1786. With freedom of religion the new watchword, the Church of England was dis-established in Virginia. When possible, worship continued in the usual fashion, but the local vestry no longer ...