The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3

XII. Ultimate Triumph of Religious Liberty

During the first three hundred years of the Christian Era the Christian church had no legal status with the state. But in 313 Constantine placed the Christian religion on the same legal footing as the worship of the Roman gods. ⁸⁹ This changed the whole status of the church. From Constantine onward, it was increasingly dependent upon the state. But as the state began to disintegrate, the church sought to tree itself from state control. And by the time of Gregory VII, the revolutionary concept of the right of the church to control the state was asserted. PFF3 203.4

Anomalously enough, the rise of Protestantism was accompanied by an outburst of intolerance and cruelty on her part. To the Protestant the Papacy was plainly the Antichrist of prophecy. ⁹⁰ But the national Protestant churches were not only hostile to the Romanists, they were intolerant of the smaller Protestant sects arising about them. ⁹¹ However, Protestant in tolerance was wholly outmatched by the fearful Catholic persecution of Protestants, as in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew and the Spanish Inquisition. PFF3 204.1

Nevertheless, out of the Reformation came a large number of despised and humble groups advocating primitive Christianity and contending for separation of church and state. ⁹² It was always the minority groups that advocated religious liberty, never powerful state churches. But in America the minority attitude toward toleration finally came to be the prevailing one. For the first time in history there had come into being a group of civil states in which there was no majority religion. PFF3 204.2

The Quakers, Baptists, Mennonites, and Dunkards were all advocates of religious liberty in principle. And the Anglicans, Catholics, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Reformed churches, while not opposed to a state church, were on the side of religious liberty where they were not in the privileged situation. ⁹³ Thus it came to pass for the first time in the centuries, that complete separation of church and state, and liberty of conscience, became facts in the Rhode Island colony. ⁹⁴ It was not only a bold experiment but a successful one. PFF3 204.3

There was yet another element. By the end of the colonial period there was an astonishing number of unchurched liberals in America. Membership was not. easily achieved, even where there were state churches. In New England, where Congregationalism was the state church, church membership had actually been for the few, not for the masses. By 1760, Sweet states, only one person in five was a church member, ⁹⁵ and in the middle colonies the percentage was still lower. So by the opening of the Revolutionary War there was an extraordinarily large body of the religiously indifferent. Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin were noted examples among the prominent. ⁹⁶ They were not unfriendly to Christianity, but were not church members. PFF3 204.4

The English philosopher John Locke ⁹⁷ made a marked impress upon many. And Voltaire’s views on religion also found wide acceptance among the American liberals. Thus it was that the political and religious liberalism of eighteenth-century England and France was impressed upon the American colonies by a group of prominent unchurched leaders. ⁹⁸ PFF3 205.1

With the coming of the American Revolution, the long struggle for religious freedom and separation of church and state was virtually won. When independence was declared, it was necessary that new instruments of government be formed. In every instance, except in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire-where Congregationalism had long constituted the majority in religion-separation of church and state, with the peerless principle of freedom of conscience, was written into the new State constitutions, and ultimately into the Federal Constitution itself. ⁹⁹ PFF3 205.2

Picture 1: CONSPICUOUS COLLEGE PRESIDENTS EXPOUND PROPHECY
Increase Mather and samuel langdon, presidents of harvard, aaron burr of princeton, timothy Dwight of yuale, and william linn of queen’s college, all impress prophecy on their students, thus popularizing the interest in and understanding of prophecy
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