Introduction

One of the most concerning prophecy to adventists relates to religious persecution that will begin in United States and will spread throughout the world. These expectations towards American government can be traced even before the foundation of the Seventh day Adventist Church in 1863. In early 1850s Hiram Edison, Joseph Bates, Otis Nichol, John Andrews, and John Loughborough have already expanded the future role of United States as a persecuting power.

When the idea of America turning into a persecuting power was proposed by adventists, religious liberty in America was not completed but it was far advanced. The tree main group of colonies had developed their liberties in different pace but they all were engaged in developments. Jefferson and Madison’s ideals of freedom were still gaining momentum in the republic when Sabbatarian Adventist affirmed a radical change. Studying prophecies they realized that America would play an important role in religious persecution. In order to shed more light on adventists perspective of a persecuting America, there are important questions that need to be answered, including: What kind of changes were expected to take place in order to America become a persecuting religious power? Is it possible that there were elements in American foundation that led Sabbatarian Adventists to suspect a future with dramatic changes?

This article will expose the scenario encountered by adventists pioneers and the reasons that led them to question america’s liberty while the ideals of the Founding Father were still fresh. Although much could be said about the ongoing perspective of religious liberty in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, this article will focus on the main events that formed the early views concerning the persecuting America.

The Religion in the Colonies

The Southern Colonies

The launching of the London Company and the Plymouth Company in 1606 by James I marked the beginning of successful English colonization of the American continent. The church-state relationship in the English colony of Virginia reflected the model of the mother country, and consequently the local government established the Church of England. Despite any preferences or customs of the people, the leaders of the colony did not risk the fragile order they had, in order to adopt an untried model of church-state relationships that might not be successful.¹

The leading planters and the wealthiest men dominated the combined power of church and state in Virginia. They were responsible for the building and operation of churches: the construction and maintenance of the buildings, the hiring of parsons, and charities. They also controlled the governing system, which controlled the liberties of landless freedmen, free men who owned land, and all women.²

The general consensus among the colonizers of the Chesapeake Bay area was that stability in the community depended upon the effective combination of church and state. The intertwining of these powerful institutions strengthened the colony and drove the people to social obedience and religious devotion. Anything that deviated from this standard was inadmissible, for it constituted harm to the existence of the colony.³

The New England Colonies

The establishment of the New Plymouth Colony in 1620 and the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 reflected different issues church and state issues from those of the settlements at Chesapeake Bay. The situation in England changed for the worse after James I died and his son Charles I was raised to the throne in 1625. Charles’s government established relationships with Catholics, which forced the king into a head-on collision with Parliament. Dissenters⁴ from the Church of England who fiercely opposed Charles’s government fled to Massachusetts in fear of persecution. Unlike the settlers of the Chesapeake Bay colony, they were more interested in religious refuge than in becoming rich and owning property and slaves.⁵

John Winthrop, first governor and leader of the Puritans, defined their ideals concerning church and state relationships even before they reached the New World in 1630. Winthrop exhorted the group to enter into a new and special covenant with God to create a holy society; he considered that their task ahead was “to seek out a place of cohabitation and consortship under a due form of government both civil and ecclesiastical. In such cases as this, the care of the public must oversway all private respects, by which, not only conscience, but mere civil policy, doth bind us.”⁶

The Puritan social-religious harmony was broken in 1631, when Roger Williams arrived and started to argue strongly against church-state union. This would eventually lead to his banishment in 1635.⁷ Shortly after his arrival, Williams exposed his opinions when invited to be a teacher at the leading church of the colony. Declaring himself to be an inflexible separatist, Williams considered it wrong to work with a church that had communion with the Church of England, and discouraged members from participating in a corrupt church that reproduced the model of their homeland.⁸

The New England Colonies established the European model of church and state under extreme religious commitment, motivated more by religious concern than those of entrepreneurship. Nevertheless it was religious convictions that led Roger Williams to question the religious government model.

The Middle Colonies

The Middle Colonies are considered the “incubators” of religious pluralism. The majority of the settlers who entered the Middle Colonies were from European states that were severely disrupted by the Reformation and the religious wars and persecutions that followed. Jews, Quakers, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, German Lutherans, French Huguenots, Amish Anabaptists, and Mennonites formed a complex experience of religious pluralism that demanded tolerance.⁹

In the 1650s, New Amsterdam (later renamed New York) was not as tolerant as old Amsterdam toward Jews, Quakers, and others. In September 1654, when the first Jews arrived in New Amsterdam, Governor Stuyvesant¹⁰ and his people received them with disapproval and promptly requested the Lord Directors to recall the Jews and stop their immigration. Similarly, the Quakers’ arrival in New Amsterdam in August 1657 was initially without “honour and respect” and they soon became an outrageous presence in the colony. Despite Stuyvesant’s and other leaders arguments that New Amsterdam was becoming a religious Babel, the Lord Directors had more interest in populating the colony and the benefit that Jews, Quakers and others could bring.¹¹

In November 1674, following the British capture of the New Netherlands, the new governor Edmund Andros announced that all inhabitants “should enjoy their rights and privileges of which they were in the enjoyment before the war.”¹² However, a new tendency was spreading in New York colony. In 1707, Francis Makemie, a Presbyterian missionary who was traveling through the colonies, came to New York to preach. Makemie was the first to make use of the British Toleration Act of 1689 and legally established a Dissenter church in Virginia in 1699.¹³ But in spite of Makemie’s appeals to the Toleration Act, Governor Cornbury did not want Dissenters preaching in his colony.¹⁴

The Maryland colony was initially proposed by the Roman Catholic George Calvert, the First Lord of Baltimore, who intended it to be a safe haven of religious liberty. But his son, Cecil Calvert, started the colony in 1634 with a greater desire to succeed than to promote religion. Though the Roman Catholics were largely the governing power in the colony, in 1638 a broad oath was imposed requiring colonists to have basically the “faith of a Christian.”¹⁵

Toward the end of the seventeenth century, other colonies, such as New Jersey, Carolina, and Delaware, started to show more concern for religious tolerance. Colonel Richard Nicolls, who was concerned with practical economic and political solutions for the new planters in New Jersey, established several conditions for new planters including liberty of conscience: “In all Territories of his Royal Highness, liberty of conscience is allowed; Provided such liberty is not Converted to licentiousness or Disturbance of Others in the exercise of the Protestant religion.”¹⁶

The middle colonies were considered a melting pot of religions such as Quakers, Catholics, Jews, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Lutherans, and others. The scenario required a model of church and state to accommodate religious tolerance. In spite of difficulties, the middle colonies became pioneers in establishing the freedom of conscience.

The Founding of the Republic

Liberty in the Land

John Locke’s propositions such as “A Letter Concerning Toleration” in 1689 and “The Second Treatise On Civil Government” in 1690, worked as founding political for the American Republic. He reasoned towards a morality that is grasped by ordinary people through Christian revelation, and a morality that is reached by the intellectuals through reason. Under those premises, the teachings of Christianity were not necessarily opposed to reason.¹⁷ Locke’s powerful claims regarding liberty and rights found two major advocates in America, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who were passionately committed to civil and religious liberty even before the War of Independence.¹⁸

As early as 1776, Virginians and others were already seeking to cut the bonds between church and state. They wanted to end the enforcement of belief and behavior by the established church and the use of tax funds to support religious causes. Thomas Jefferson was the main advocate against religious conformity, but overall they preferred a more positive approach rather than simply the disestablishment of religion. In 1777 Jefferson composed the Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, which he proposed in 1779 when he became governor of Virginia. Madison also saw religious freedom as the proper way for the American nation even before the revolution. He considered the religious system in Virginia to be a “diabolical, hell-conceived principle of persecution” that “shackles and debilitates the minds” from any possible progress.¹⁹

The Declaration of Independence in July 1776 and the American Revolutionary War that ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1883 decisively achieved both political and religious liberty for the new nation. Because the British model of government had featured great political and religious impositions, the Americans broke away by eliminating the combined political-religious system that the colonies considered a vicious tyranny. In short what worked for England was reject by the new republic.²⁰

From Disestablishment to Separation

Jefferson, Madison, and Patrick Henry were at the center of the religious freedom debates in 1784-1786. Henry’s proposed bill, Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion, wanted that all Christian churches to have the same privileges that the established church did. One of the problems with this proposition was that it still required the government to support churches with taxes and to determine the definition of “Christian church” in order to provide the benefits. While Henry’s bill appealed to the Anglicans, other religions like Baptists, Presbyterians, German Lutherans, and Quakers were still unhappy to see the government ruling on spiritual matters.²¹

Although Thomas Jefferson left to Paris 1785, James Madison, Jefferson’s close friend and political ally, remained as vigorously opposed to government intrusions into religious dealings as Jefferson was. In June 1785, Madison wrote his famous “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments,” in which he presented 15 reasons why government should not become involved in the support of any religion.²²

The American Constitution, drafted in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 and ratified in 1788, was purposely intended to be silent about God and religion. This celebrated secular document makes one nominal mention of religion in negative form in Article 6: “No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any office or public Trust under the United States.” But religious minorities feared the lack of a clear statement on religious establishment and free exercise of their belief. Despite the promises of a Bill of Rights, the religious minorities believed that having no laws on religious matters would leave them unprotected and at the mercy of the new government.²³

The assurances given to Jews, Quakers, Roman Catholics, Baptists, Presbyterians, and others were codified in the First Amendment to the Constitution, introduced by James Madison as part of the Bill of Rights in June 1789. This was the fulfillment of Madison’s promise to the Virginians,²⁴ and the precise wording of the First Amendment was modified and refined several times in order to appropriately express the country’s ideals for religious liberty. Madison initially started with “The Civil Rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship,” then changed it to “No religion shall be established by law,” but finally the definite text was formulated: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”²⁵

Understanding the new dynamic, Moses Sexias, one of the leaders of the synagogue in Rhode Island, wrote a letter to George Washington expecting “a Government which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance—but generously affording to All liberty of conscience, and immunities of citizenship.” In those characteristics he saw “the work of the Great God.” In response, Washington borrowed Sexias’s own words to assure religious freedom in the new nation. “For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.”²⁶

The processes of separation of church and state in America sparked by the disestablishment progressed differently throughout the country. In 1791, seven states including Connecticut and Massachusetts, continued to support Christian churches through tax funds but this was soon to change. Connecticut abandoned church establishment in 1818 when its new state constitution was ratified. Massachusetts was the last state to abandon church establishment entirely in 1833.²⁷

Religious minority groups that had been formerly working under the social and political disadvantages experienced dramatic growth under the new policy. Many other new religious organizations and movements would spring up in this period of voluntary participation. The new nation entered a period of expansion and revival, which later gave rise to the Sabbatarian Adventist.²⁸

The Controversy about the Republic

The Roots of Adventist Interest on Liberty

The Restorationist Movement, raised during the Second Great Awakening, was disseminating a new model of Christianity in America when became actively engaged in religious liberty issues in New England. In 1808 Elias Smith started the Herald of Gospel Liberty in New England, in 1826 Barton Stone started the Christian Messenger in Kentucky, and in 1820 Alexander Campbell started the Christian Baptist in Pennsylvania, which became the Millennial Harbinger in 1830. There were so many new periodicals springing up that Campbell observed, “we have entirely too many editors or what is the same thing too many periodicals. There is a sort of editorial mania abroad in the land.”²⁹

The close ties between Joshua Himes and Elias Smith, one of the Restorationist publishers, became essential to push the religious liberty interest beyond the Restorationist (Christians) into the Millerite Movement. “Elias Smith, an innovative publisher who in turn was a close associate of Joshua Himes, the man who made William Miller, the prophet of Christ’s second coming”.³⁰ Besides publisher, Himes was a preacher for the Christian church in Chardon Street, Boston who was actively engaged in the social-political issues of his days. It was in November 1839, right after the annual meeting of the Non-Resistance Society, which Himes was a director, that he met William Miller and heard his message of the coming return of Jesus. Since them, Himes put Miller’s propositions into a new and higher level until its disappointment in October 22, 1844.³¹

Other social political activists like Joseph Bates and George Storrs later joined Himes and the Millerite’s message. They stood the issues from a Christian perspective applying religious principles to civil matters like abolitionism: “I could not be a consistent Christian if I stood on the side of the oppressor, for God was not there. Neither could I claim his promises if I stood on neutral ground.” James White who became part of the Sabbatarian Adventist also joined the Millerite Movement in his early twenties and familiarized with the political religious discussions.³²

The Proponents of American Persecution

Sabbatarian Adventists made the early propositions of United States as a persecuting power after their breaking from the Great Disappointment. They were offspring of the Millerite Movement initially led by the Joseph Bates, James and Ellen White that began in a relatively very small group. The ideals of the Christian church embraced by Joseph Bates and James White, including church-state relationship, later passed into the Sabbatarian Adventist movement. Bates initially gave bible studies to the White couple that accepted the seventh day Sabbath. Later White mentored John Andrews and Uriah Smith, who later became leaders in the Sabbatarian Adventist movement and the Seventh-day Adventist church. Their relationship “has been compared to that of the apostle Paul and his convert Timothy.”³³

Otis Nichols and John Loughborough are also main participants in the initial group of Sabbatarian Adventists in their views of America in prophecy. Nichols was associated to Bates and Ellen Harmon (White); he is considered one of the earliest Millerite to accept Bates’s teachings of the seventh-day Sabbath. Also Ellen became so close to Nichols that lived nearly eight months in his home in Dorchester, MA before she was married to James White.³⁴

Loughborough came to the Sabbatarian Adventism in 1852 through the preaching of Andrews in Rochester, NY. Both became close friends, although Loughborough was only three years younger, “he looked upon Andrews as his spiritual father.” Loughborough became one of the main leaders and minister of the Sabbatarian Movement.³⁵

Joseph Bates, Otis Nichols, James White, Uriah Smith, John Andrews, and John Loughborough had life developments that made them the first proponents of the American role in prophecy. According to Bert Haloviak, there is a direct relationship between the early Adventist viewpoints on religious liberty and the teachings of the Christians (Restorationists). Haloviak proposition traced the influence from Elias Smith and other American Restorationists, passing through Joshua Himes, linking him with the Millerite movement, then Bates, White and later, the Sabbatarians Uriah Smith and John Andrews.³⁶

The Proposal of Persecuting America

The major difficulty faced by Sabbatarian Adventists with United States came from interpretation of the two-horned beast of Rev 13:11. In February 1844, Himes proposed that the “beast is the symbol of ‘the European system’ under Napoleon, who at the same time wielded the scepter of France and Italy.”³⁷ In September 1850, Hiran Edson a Sabbatarian Adventists studying the issue of Babylon in prophecy arrived at a new theory that suggested a combination of power between the church and state.³⁸ In May 1851, J. N. Andrews gave further thought to Edson’s argument: “We regard this two-horned beast, then, as the symbol of a civil and religious power, differing in many respects from those which have preceded it.” Andrews went so far as to give strong indications that the United States could be such a beast but did not conclude.³⁹

In the same year of 1851, Joseph Bates and Otis Nichols continued the debate by openly proposing that the United States was the beast.⁴⁰ Loughborough further studied the arguments for the U.S. being the two-horned beast and made additional propositions that raised awareness and lit up the debate. Later, in April 1854, Loughborough released a fifty-two-page tract on the subject, refining the understanding of the two-horned beast as the United States.⁴¹ In April 1855, J. N. Andrews revised and expanded his article and reached a definite conclusion: “The only civil government that has ever existed, exhibiting the lamb-like appearance of this symbol is the United States.”⁴²

The propagation of this understanding continued to be sharply emphasized by writing and preaching. Uriah Smith, who in December 1856 considered the two-horned beast to be at “full maturity,” consistently wrote about the implications of the new prophetic understanding and the developments of the two-horned beast.⁴³

Massachusetts and the Social Political Movements

“Religious freedom was always a subject of strong interest with the people of Massachusetts.”⁴⁴ The words of Alden Bradford put in perspective how Restorationist and later Sabbatarian adventist were inserted into a larger context. While the celebrated Virginians began their quest for religious liberty around 1776, the Bay staters had been exposed to debate since early 1630. Roger Williams, a puritan pastors in Massachusetts Bay Colony, contested the theological arguments for church and state cooperation within the colony and was banished in 1635.⁴⁵

From early 1700 to 1833, there was an escalation of litigation related to religious liberty in Massachusetts. In many cases the temporary decisions involving Baptists, Quakers, Anglicans, Unitarians and other minorities “created as many problems as they solved”. The debate involved taxpayers from different beliefs and Court ruling fueled the interested in religious liberty. The Constitutional conventional of 1820 tried to make peace with the conflicting legislation from the Religious Freedom Act of 1811 but caused even more commotion.⁴⁶

The delay in the establishment of religious freedom in New England generated a heated debate that not even the final disestablishment in 1833 was able to quench it. The society was poised in religious and political terms; while in one hand reformed Churches called for separation affirming that “religion needs no beggarly conduct for its support.” On the other hand the supporters Rev Ezra Stiles Ely trusted his boast boasting of “power over half a million voters in the Union belonging to the Presbyterian interest”. Likely, this was associated to his famous discourse “The Duty of Christian Freemen to Elect Christian Rulers.”⁴⁷

The social religious debate in Massachusetts did not dissipate after the Disestablishment of 1833. The Bay staters mass media continued very active promoting social religious causes like religious liberty, slavery, temperance, the soon return of Jesus, etc. They called out for organized societies, meetings and radical events such as riots that indicated the high level of engagement in their society.⁴⁸

Conclusion

Although the quest for religious liberty began in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635, the Disestablishment Movement prospered faster in the states from the southern colonies. After the independence, by the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 the ideas of Jefferson and Madison were outlining the liberty in the new republic and six of the thirteen colonies remained with established religions. It took another forty-six years to Massachusetts reach religious freedom.

The religious liberty proposed by Jefferson and Madison arrived too late in Massachusetts and it did not land alone. The delay in disestablishing religion fostered a strong interest for social religious debate among Bay staters. While still deprived, the society grew engaged in issues like religious liberty, slavery, temperance, etc. The scenario furnished a perfect opportunity to Restorationists like Elias Smith who combined in his publishing talents with a cause for religious liberty, a New Testament Christianity, and temperance.

The appealing causes reached other figures like Joshua Himes, Joseph Bates, and James White who became even more concerned with the soon coming of Christ. Although the Great Disappointment split the group, Bates and White moved on to further causes with the same spirit influencing others like John Andrews and Uriah Smith.

The proposition of America as a persecuting power by Sabatarian adventists was not a foreign concept to their experience of struggling over political religious issues. In fact it was a not change in their perspective, but a continuation of their known pattern. Although Haloviak correctly pointed to the inherited influences of Christian Restorationist Roots in Adventism social political views, he failed to consider the combative spirit in Massachusetts caused by the delay in disestablishing a state religion.

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