Religious uniformity
Religious uniformity occurs when government is used to promote one state religion, denomination, or philosophy to the exclusion of all other religious beliefs.
History
[edit]Religious uniformity was common in many modern theocratic and atheistic governments around the world until fairly modern times. The modern concept of a separate civil government was relatively unknown until expounded upon by Roger Williams, a Christian minister, in The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644) shortly after he founded the American colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in 1636.[1][2]
In the United States, the First Amendment to the Constitution (1791) prohibits the federal government from establishing or prohibiting a religion, and in 1947 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states cannot create established state churches in Everson v. Board of Education.
See also
[edit]- Act of Uniformity 1549
- Religious persecution
- Christian debate on persecution and toleration
- Theocracy
References
[edit]- ^ Roger Williams, James Calvin Davis (editor), On religious liberty: selections from the works of Roger Williams, (Harvard University Press, 2008), ISBN 0-674-02685-3, ISBN 9780674026858[1](accessed July 11, 2009 on Google Books)
- ^ James Emanuel Ernst, Roger Williams, New England Firebrand (Macmillan Co., Rhode Island, 1932), pg. 246[2]
