New York

The Flushing Remonstrance

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

December 27, 1657 Peter Stuyvesant, director general of New Amsterdam, tried to block Quaker immigration in Vlissingen (now Flushing, Queens), prompting objections from the non- Quaker residents. They issued the Flushing Remonstrance, one of the first communal articulations of a more universal conception of religious liberty in the New World. They defiantly rejected Stuyvesant’s rules—a shocking bit of civil disobedience—and proclaimed tolerance not only of Quakers and Baptists but even of Presbyterians, “Jews, Turks and Egyptians” because Jesus had instructed…

New York Constitution of 1777

May 31, 2017 Religious Freedom Archive

New York 1777 Declaring that “the bigotry and ambition of weak and wicked priests and princes have scourged mankind,” New York’s Constitution granted broad religious freedom for all faiths, though they included a fascinating clause reassuring the populace that religious freedom couldn’t be used to justify “licentiousness” or disorder. They further banned clergy from serving in public office, a way of preventing a denomination from exerting political control, though the drafters claimed this was to keep the clergy from becoming…