REASONS AMERICA🇺🇸 DOES NOT HAVE A STATE CHURCH

(Taken from: The Church in History; Stanford Murrel)

“The absence of an official state church in America may be due to several considerations:

The wide variety of emigration to the colonies after 1690. There were Huguenots and Quakers. There Were 200,000 Germans of Lutheran and Reformed persuasion. There were Pietists, and Presbyterians of Scotch-rish descent from Northem Ireland. By 1760 there were more than 2,500,000 people in the colonies, a third of which were bom outside the American colonies. This great diversity discouraged the establishment of an official state church over all the colonies.

The effect of the proprietary colonies also hindered the establishing of a State Church. The desire to make a colony successful demanded cooperation of people from all walks of life and religious persuasions.

The great revivals of the colonies discouraged the preferring of one state church over another: Denominational lines are always transcended when the love of God and the grace of Christ are manifested.

A spirit of rugged individualism which the American experience encouraged does not blend well with the spirit of institutionalism which an established religion demands. There were many people who did not belong to any church due to the westward movement of the frontier. The number of churches needed could not keep pace with the growing population moving west.

Philosophical societies arose to challenge formal religion and hinder the establishing of a state church. John Locke in his Letters on Toleration (1689-1706) argued persuasively for the separation of church and state, as did men like Thomas Jefferson. When given the opportuni-ty, they wove their religious biases into the fabric of the documents they wrote on behalf of the country.

The Anglican Church offended many when the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel agitated for the appointment of a bishop.

There was great resentment from the Congregational and Presbyterian churches, who had come to America to escape this very thing in England. If the English Parliament could appoint a bishop, if Parliament could establish a religion in the colonies, then it could also impose excessive taxes and pass other repressive laws against people who were looking for more freedoms, not more legislation.

One by one, all the colonies, territories, and states passed legislation separating the state from the church. The Congregational Church was the last to be separated from the state. This happened in New Hampshire in 1817, in Connecticut in 1818, and in Massachusetts in 1833.”