My
educated guess is that this statute was only intended to apply to Indians
who lived in, or visited, the colonists' settlements. If so, it was
probably not much more severe (though probably less defensible) than the
restrictions the colonists placed on themselves.
I'm even
more fascinated, though, by one tidbit in the statute: the reference to
banning only "outward worship." This confirms the degree
to which the Puritans had,
at least in their relations with the
Indians, internalized the relatively new ideology that defended
religious coercion, not as a means to assure individual salvation, but
simply as a tool for guaranteeing social order, political cohesion,
protection of others from temptation, etc.
Some have
argued that this focus on the state's interest in "outward
worship" rather than individual salvation contained, if ironically,
the seeds of modern conceptions of religious liberty. Consider, in
this connection, Elizabeth I's famous statement that she had "no
desire to make windows into
men's souls." For Elizabeth
herself, this statement was entirely consistent with her oppression of
the "outward" practice of Catholic worship. Historically,
though, it began the slow process of detaching religious commitment from
the jurisdiction of the state. (It also began the more normatively
complicated process of treating religious faith as merely
"private.") I've also found really interesting here
Janet Halley,
Equivocation and the Legal Conflict Over Religious
Identity In Early Modern England, 3 Yale J.L. & Human. 33 (1991),
which discusses, among other things, the "Church Papists" of
Elizabeth England: Catholics who complied with the law requiring
attendance at Anglican services, and understood such attendance as a
(practical or even possibly commendable) act of "outward"
social duty rather than a violation of their Catholic
principles.
Another
query: How would the Indians have understood the import and
implications of this statute (assuming it was actually enforced),
particularly given the fact, emphasized by historians of the period, that
very few New England Indians, at least in the 17th century, actually
converted to Christianity. (Indeed, the evidence suggests that in
the early years of the New England colonies, significantly more whites
assimilated into native culture and society, than the other way
around. That, in fact, might confirm that the statute had more to
do with controlling whites than controlling Indians.)
Doug Laycock wrote:
Just ran across a 1633
statute that made it a criminal offense for Indians to worship
"their False Gods." I haven't tracked it to an original
source, but James Bradley Thayer has it in a footnote (attached), so I
assume it's reliable.
The statute applied "in any part of our jurisdiction;" I don't
know if that meant all the territory claimed by Massachusetts Bay colony,
or only white towns and farms. It seems likely that practical
enforcement capacity was limited to areas of white settlement, so maybe
this is not quite as stunningly outrageous as it appeared on first
reading. Still, it's pretty remarkable. Maybe they were no
longer dependent on the Indians to feed them by this time.
*******************************************************
Perry Dane
Professor of Law
Rutgers University
School of Law --
Camden
217 North Fifth Street
Camden, NJ 08102
d...@crab.rutgers.edu
Bio:
www.camlaw.rutgers.edu/bio/925/
SSRN Author page:
www.ssrn.com/author=48596
Work: (856) 225-6004
Fax: (856) 969-7924
Home: (610) 896-5702
*******************************************************
_______________________________________________
To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see
http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw
Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private.
Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can
read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the
messages to others.
