History of the Jewish People in America (Vol.1-7). Peter Wiernik

General Assembly of the State of Connecticut, may be cited as an instance. Dr. Stiles took for his text Deut. XXVI, 19: “And to make you high above all nations which he has made, in praise, and in name, and in honor, etc.” This sermon takes up one hundred and twenty closely printed pages, and assumes the proportions of a treatise on government from the Hebrew Theocracy down to the then present, showing by illustration and history that the culmination of popular government had been reached in America, transplanted by divine hands in fulfilment of Biblical prophecy from the days of Moses to the land of Washington; and discussing from an historical point of view “the reasons rendering it probable that the United States will, by the ordering of heaven, eventually become this people.” He referred to the new nation as “God’s American Israel” and to Washington as the American Joshua who was raised up by God to lead the armies of the chosen people to liberty and independence.12

      The committee which was appointed on the same day the Declaration of Independence was adopted, consisting of Dr. Franklin, Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson, to prepare a device for a seal for the United States, at first proposed that of Pharaoh sitting in an open chariot, a crown on his head and a sword in his hand, passing through the dividing waters of the Red Sea in pursuit of the Israelites: with rays from a pillar of fire beaming on Moses, who is represented as standing on the shore extending his hand over the sea, causing it to overwhelm Pharaoh.13

      Great religious animosity was also aroused by the “Quebec Act,” which was passed by the British Parliament in 1774, for the purpose of preventing Canada from joining the other colonies. It guaranteed to the Catholic Church the possession of its vast amount of property, and full freedom of worship. The object which it was intended to effect by the passage of this act was purely one of State policy, and as far as Canada herself was concerned it was a wise and diplomatic step. But with the exception perhaps of the Boston Port Bill, it was the most effectual in alienating the colonies. It was construed as an effort on the part of Parliament to create an Established Church, and not that alone, but the establishment of that Church which was most hateful to and dreaded by the great majority of the people in the colonies.

      It was not due to lack of religious sentiment that the ultimate bond between the colonies was a strictly secular one, and that Church and State were forever separated in the Constitution of the United States. It was rather due to the great and insurmountable differences in the religious beliefs among the various parties to the confederation; it may be said that it was strong sectarianism which forced upon them a non-sectarian government. The religious complexion of no two of the American colonies was precisely alike. The various sects at the time of the Revolution were grouped as follows: The Puritans in Massachusetts, the Baptists in Rhode Island, the Congregationalists in Connecticut, the Dutch and Swedish Protestants in New Jersey, the Church of England in New York, the Quakers in Pennsylvania, the Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians in North Carolina, the Catholics in Maryland, the Cavaliers in Virginia, the Huguenots and Episcopalians in South Carolina, and the Methodists in Georgia. Owing to these diversities, to the consciousness of danger from ecclesiastical ambition, the intolerance of sects as exemplified among themselves as well as in foreign lands, it was wisely foreseen that the only basis upon which it was possible to form a Federal union was to exclude from the National Government all power over religion.

      The separation of Church and State was therefore a practical necessity, based on causes which were deeply rooted in the life of the people. It was almost a forced step on the way of development, not an enthusiastic outburst in favor of an abstract principle. This is why the ground which was then gained was never lost again, why there was no reaction and no reversion to the former order of a religious establishment as happened in France after the great revolution which began in 1789. The moderate, self-restrained liberalism of the colonists held its own after the struggle was over and kept on progressing slowly. The violent radicalism of the older country went so far that many steps had to be retraced, and the fight of separating Church and State had to be fought out all over again in our own time, more than a century after all religion was abolished during the reign of terror.

      A letter sent by an unnamed German Jew on behalf of himself and his brethren to the President of the Continental Congress, in which the wretched condition of the Jews in Germany at that time is depicted, and their desire to become subjects of the thirteen provinces is expressed, appeared in the Deutsches Museum of June, 1783, and four years later a separate edition of it was published under the title, Schreiben eines deutschen Juden an den Nord Amerikanischen Präsidenten.14 As there is no record of its reception or discussion in America, it probably attracted very little attention. The same is also true of the letter which Jonas Phillips (b. in Rhenish Prussia, 1736; d. in New York, Jan. 28, 1803), of Philadelphia, sent to the Federal Convention in relation to the removal of the test oath in Pennsylvania which discriminated against Jews and those who did not subscribe to Christian doctrines (Sept. 7, 1787). When the fundamental law of the land was adopted there were no exciting debates about the question of religious liberty. The clause abolishing religious tests in the Federal Constitution passed almost unanimously; the State of North Carolina alone voted against it, and as there were hardly any Jews there at that time, the fear of the Roman Catholics was the only cause for the illiberal stand taken by its representatives. The extent of that fear can be understood from the fact that when the State Convention of North Carolina to adopt the Federal Constitution convened in Hillsborough, in July, 1788, pamphlets were circulated “pointing out in all seriousness the danger of the Pope being elected President should the Constitution be adopted.” (See Hühner, Religious Liberty in North Carolina, “Publications,” XVI, p. 42). The time for religious liberty as well as for independence in national affairs had come and was accepted as a matter of course, and it is the exceptional glory of the American Revolution that all the liberties won were retained and the young nation was enabled to continue on the way of progress unhindered by post-revolutionary reaction, and to devote its energies to the solution of the problems which the Revolution left unsolved, and to new problems which arose after that period.