This is the third part of a four part series.
While these early American leaders were Christians, albeit of many variegated forms, it was their sheer diversity, unheard of in any European country, that spawned the tolerance of differences of opinion in religion, philosophy, politics and every other aspect of private and social life. These few facts at least scratch the surface of the religious, intellectual, and spiritual context for the Harvard’s contribution to the origins of America. Much could also be said, as Nathanial Philbrick does in his book, “Mayflower,” about the influence of Native American religion and society on the white man. Later, the African slave experience would transform and further diversify American Protestantism, particularly, and American society in general. The early Americans were not often lovers of Jews, nor of American Indians, nor Blacks, nor even other Christians, but to consider them uninfluenced by these others would be wrong. Rather, the “cosmic background radiation,” as it were, of American ideologies was enlightening the colonists, and the context was anything but devoid of non-Christian, and sometimes especially Jewish, culture and influence. It was certainly chockfull of diverse and mutually contradictory and incompatible religious views even if one considers only the many Christian doctrines throughout the colonies. We all can celebrate the freedom of conscience that Christians have found here, as we can do for immigrants who came with every other religion, for those who have created new, uniquely American religions, and for those without any religion, those whom the Pew Charitable Trust survey calls the “nones.” Jewish religious freedom in America is inextricably linked with the freedom of thought in American religion, politics and social life.
Of course, the innumerable different ways by which the colonists practiced their religious and social life did not always manifest themselves in a praiseworthy manner. The gulf between the theory and practice of religion everywhere was and remains often so wide as to stupefy comprehension. Consider the religious faith of the terrorists who flew jet airplanes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and the assassination of two Jewish Israeli-Americans at the Capital Jewish Museum on May 21, 2025. We know that Jews, like Quakers and others, were often illegal immigrants into the colonies. Jews were not permitted into the Jamestown Settlement under the Virginia Charter of 1606. Quakers had a hard time of it, except in parts of Pennsylvania, until well after the Revolution. Catholics were often despised and excluded except in their own colony of Maryland, and, like Jews, were murdered by church-going Protestants in the Ku Klux Klan into this author’s lifetime. The idealistic New England Puritans, who, like Cromwell, set out to purify the Church of England of its degradation, burned free-thinking women, whom they called witches, at the stake. So often, in America as throughout the world, one man’s freedom of thought has been purchased at the expense of another’s, and dogmatic adherence to the faith and politics of those in power has been compelled of others. The improvement of human experience has always been and remains pockmarked with vile acts, and not only the Holocaust. The last established church in America, that of Congregationalist Massachusetts and which compelled citizen obedience, was not abolished until 1828, over fifty years after the Declaration of Independence.
America has not always practiced what the better angels of its nature or its most enlightened leaders have preached on freedom. But those who established the intellectual culture of our country gradually came to preach a qualitatively different ideology, a new kind of tolerance, of mutual acceptance, if not always of understanding, of another person’s faith or way of life. Over the centuries since this ideology began gaining its articulate expression, the faith of the Founders has been tested and sometimes disappointed, but it was and remains a shockingly new and hopeful design of human thought, an intellectual foundation unknown in Europe or elsewhere.
Although the utterances of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison with respect to freedom of expression are miraculously tolerant and inspiring, the most outstanding examples of the Spirit of Seventy-Six in the free exercise of thought and conscience are contained in the writings of Washington’s two immediate successors. Products of America’s two oldest colleges, Harvard and William and Mary, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were far apart in social, religious, political party and temperament. But they were united in their unflagging advocacy for freedom of conscience. It is fitting that the outside walls of the Hamilton County Courthouse in Cincinnati are inscribed with lines from the pens of these two men, along with words from the Hebrew prophet Micah. Jefferson and Adams were at one period perhaps the most bitter political and personal foes in American history (at least until the Era of Trump). In their later correspondence with each other long after retiring from public office, Adams and Jefferson give us one of the most affectionate displays of personal tolerance in American, or any, history. Their long exchange of letters ended only by their deaths — on the same day, July 4, 1926, a half-century to the day after they affixed their signatures on the Declaration of Independence.
The one of Puritan (and Harvard), the other of Episcopal (and Virginia), background, both developed identical secular values. They were of one mind in the liberal tolerance. Absolute belief in due process of law and presumption of innocence even before we had a Constitution led Adams to represent the British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre. He was thoroughly educated both in college and law at Harvard.
This is the third part of a four part series. Stay tuned next week for the final part of the history column.
