freedom of religion Archives - New England Historical Society

In 1685, a tolerant wind blew briefly through England when James II ascended to the throne. He ordered greater freedom for Roman Catholics and people of other faiths. In his colonies, he ordered the reform of discriminatory laws. Massachusetts legalized Christmas

Samuel Sewall was not pleased.

Samuel Sewall — Puritan, judge, businessman, printer — left voluminous diaries that document his undying dislike of the Christmas celebration. Puritans viewed the celebration as obnoxious and sacrilegious.

Samuel Sewall was not happy when Massachusetts legalized Christmas

Massachusetts complied with the king’s wishes for liberal reform by annulling two laws on the books. The first was a death penalty statute for Quakers returning to the colony after banishment. The second outlawed the “keeping of Christmas.”

Further rubbing salt in the wound, Samuel Sewall had to oversee printing of the new laws. After Massachusetts legalized Christmas, Sewall happily noted in his diary that the holiday in 1685 was less popular than ever despite the new laws.

Massachusetts Legalized Christmas, but…

Dec. 25. Friday. Carts come to Town and Shops open as is usual. Some somehow observe the day; but are vexed I believe that the Body of the People profane it, and blessed be God no Authority yet to compel them to keep it. A great Snow fell last night so this day and night very cold.

Several days later, Samuel Sewall wrote his cousin agreed with him: [there] was less Christmas-keeping than last year, fewer Shops Shut up.

Twelve years later, Sewall continued his anti-Christmas crusade. On Dec. 25, 1697, he wrote: Snowy day: Shops are open, and Carts and sleds come to Town with Wood … as formerly, save what abatement may be allowed on account of the weather. This morning we read in course the 14, 15, and 16 Psalms . . . I took occasion to dehort mine from Christmas-keeping, and charged them to forbear.

Snubbed

Sewall’s Grinch-like view of Christmas did cost him politically. In 1698, Samuel Sewall noted the lieutenant governor invited most of the legislature to his home for dinner on Christmas. However, he “knew nothing of it,” uninvited most likely because he so hated the celebration.

In 1722, Samuel Sewall hinted he might soften his position. He had changed his mind before, having years earlier apologized for his role in the Salem witch trials. He accepted both “blame and shame” for serving as one of the judges at the trials.

By then, Gov. Samuel Shute had appointed Samuel Sewall as chief justice of the Superior Court of Judicature.

In the end, Samuel Sewall held fast on Christmas. His diary tells of his tug-of-war with Shute and the General Court over whether the body should adjourn for a Christmas holiday:

Dec. 19. His Excellency took me aside to the Southeast Window of the Council Chamber, to speak to me about adjourning the General Court to Monday next because of Christmas. I told his Excellency I would consider of it.

Put It to a Vote

Dec. 20. I invited Dr. [Cotton] Mather to Dine with me, not knowing that he preached. After Diner I consulted with him about the Adjournment of the Court. We agreed, that it would be expedient to take a vote of the Council and Representatives for it.

So Samuel Sewall made the suggestion to the governor.

Friday, Dec 21. The Governor took me to the window again looking eastward, next Mrs. Phillips’s, and spoke to me again about adjourning the Court to next Wednesday. I spoke against it; and propounded that the Governor would take a Vote for it; that he would hold the Balance even between the Church and us. His Excellency went to the Board again, and said much for this adjourning; All kept Christmas but we; I suggested King James I to Mr. Dudley, how he boasted what a pure church he had; and they did not keep Yule nor Pasch (Easter).

Mr. Dudley asked if the Scots kept Christmas. His Excellency protested, he believed they did not. Governor said they adjourned for the Commencement and Artillery. But then it is by agreement. Col. Taylor spoke so loud and boisterously for adjourning that it was hard for any to put in a word; Col. Townsend seconded me, and Col. Partridge; because this would prolong the Sessions.

The Debate Rages Even After Massachusetts Legalized Christmas

Where Samuel Sewall and the Governor’s Council argued about adjourning for Christmas.

Sewall argued that the Puritans had come a long way for their freedom to worship, and now the Church of England had its freedom. But, he argued, the Anglicans insisted on putting down the Puritans.

Mr. Davenport stood up and gave it as his opinion that it would not be convenient for the Governor to be present in Court that day; and therefore was for adjourning. But the Governor is often absent; and yet the Council and Representatives go on. Now the Governor has told us, that he would go away for a week; and then returned and if he liked what we had done, He would Consent to it. The Governor mentioned how it would appear to have votes passed on December 25. But his Excellency need not have been present nor signed any bill that day. I said the dissenters came a great way for their Liberties and now the church had theirs, yet they could not be contented, except they might tread all others down…

Saturday Dec. 22. About a quarter of an hour before 12 the Governor adjourned the Court to Wednesday morning at 10 o’clock and sent Mr. Secretary into the House of Deputies to do it there.

Victory in Defeat

Sewall had lost the battle over the General Court, but he happily noted in his diary on the 25th that many people didn’t keep Christmas:

Tuesday, Dec. 25 …. The Shops were open, and carts came to town with wood, hoop-poles, hay, etc. as at other Times. Being a pleasant day, the street was filled with carts and horses.

This story about Samuel Sewall and Christmas was updated in 2022.

Abner Kneeland was a powerful and energetic Universalist minister whose religious doubts and political beliefs sent him to a Massachusetts prison in 1838.

Abner Kneeland

Depending on who you asked, Abner Kneeland was either “a venerable, learned and strictly moral man,” or “hoary-headed apostle of Satan.”

He was also a free thinker and a pantheist, which is what got him into trouble, at least technically. But he was prosecuted as much for telling working people and immigrants to question authority.

His conviction was widely denounced and no one was ever prosecuted for blasphemy in Massachusetts again.

Young Abner Kneeland

Abner Kneeland was born on April 7, 1774 in Gardner, Mass., the sixth of 10 children born to Timothy and Moriah Stone Kneeland. He studied for a year at an academy in Chesterfield, N.H., but then his formal education stopped. Abner and his older brother then moved to Dummerston, Vt., to follow his father’s trade of carpentry. He also taught school and wrote a spelling book. By the age of 27 he joined the Baptist church in nearby Putney, Vt., and began to preach. Within three years he converted to Universalism.

In 1804 he was ordained as an itinerant minister in New Hampshire, and settled down with his wife in Langdon. In 1811 he moved to a promising church in Charlestown, Mass. However, he abruptly resigned the ministry three years later, overcome by religious doubts.

Doubts

Kneeland and his wife then went into the dry goods business in Salem, Mass. His good friend Hosea Ballou, a prominent Universalist theologian, brought him back to the ministry in 1816. He then took up a pulpit in Whitestone, N.Y. But again his doubts asserted themselves.

He moved to a parish in Philadelphia in 1818. Kneeland energetically led the church, publishing sermons and tracts, editing newspapers, compiling a hymnal, translating the New Testament and developing a new system of spelling. He fell under the influence of utopian socialist Robert Owen and began to adopt then-radical ideas about social reform. Before his free thinking got him into trouble in Philadelphia, he moved to a church in New York City.

Federal Street Theater

He began to attract attention, not of the good kind, while preaching in New York. He and his followers broke off from his church, forming the Second Universalist Society, but soon he offended them, too. Kneeland allowed a radical feminist and abolitionist, Frances Wright, to speak from his pulpit when no one else in New York would give her a platform. Universalists from as far away as Maine passed resolutions denouncing him. He questioned the existence of one God and the divinity of Jesus Christ. By 1830, the Universalists kicked him out of the church.

Infidel Orgies

The next year he moved to Boston, where he found a ready audience. As a lecturer for the First Society of Free Enquirers he spoke to 2,000 people on Sunday mornings at the Federal Street Theater and to as many on Wednesdays. Critics called them ‘infidel orgies.’

Two thousand people, mostly poor immigrants, subscribed to his publication, The Investigator. In it, Abner Kneeland criticized the conservative influence of religion on society and supported equal rights for women and all races. He thought women should keep their own names and bank accounts, and he spoke out for birth control, divorce and interracial marriage.

As a member of the Society he believed it wrong to teach children creeds, miracles and religious doctrine. He preached that critical investigation of religious truths was the basis of good citizenship.

Kneeland’s popularity unsettled Boston’s elite. They worried he would influence the laboring classes to disrespect authority and question their humble place in society.

Blasphemy

Abner Kneeland landed in court after declaring his beliefs in 1833. “I am not an Atheist, but a Pantheist; that is, instead of believing there is no God, I believe that in the abstract, all is God,” he said. “[T]he whole duty of man consists in living as long as he can, and in promoting as much happiness as he can while he lives.”

In December 1833 he printed a letter explaining his differences with Universalism. “Universalists believe in a god which I do not; but believe that their god, with all his moral attributes, (aside from nature itself,) is nothing more than a chimera of their own imagination.”

For that, he faced prosecution five times for blasphemy. His first three trials ended in hung juries.

Abner Kneeland used three arguments to defend himself: first, that he never denied the existence of God, he just denied the existence of a god. Second, the law violated the Massachusetts’ Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion. And third, the law violated the guarantee of freedom of the press.

The arguments didn’t impress the Supreme Judicial Court, though it took two years for Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw to issue his decision. Shaw’s decision was criticized as one of the worst of the 2,200 he handed down during his career. In it, he argued Kneeland had blasphemed God with malicious intent. He defended Massachusetts’ blasphemy laws, and he concluded freedom of the press did not gibve a ‘general license for scandal, calumny and falsehood.’ Unlimited freedom of the press would prevent authorities from punishing ‘all incitation to treason, assassination, and all other crimes however atrocious.’

Backlash

Lemuel Shaw decided against Abner Kneeland.

Ralph Waldo Emerson signed a letter defending Kneeland. So did William Lloyd Garrison, Bronson Alcott and Theodore Parker. More people, however, signed letters supporting the court.

Kneeland served all of 60 days in prison – and became a martyr for the cause of free speech.

The London Investigator criticized the prosecution in 1857. It called Kneeland “a venerable, learned and strictly moral man sentenced and carried to jail for publishing his honest belief on matters of religion.”

“Massachusetts, which is so much extolled as being superior to all other States, is probably the only State in the Union where the Christian bigotry that used to burn heretics at the stake is still suffered to disgrace the statute-book,” remarked the Investigator. The Windsor, Vt., Statesman opined, “that if Kneeland could not speak his mind the very cause for which the Pilgrims came was overthrown. ”

After his release, Abner Kneeland moved to Iowa, where he started a utopian community called Salubria. He died August 27, 1844, and the community failed soon afterward.

With thanks to the Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography. This story about Abner Kneeland was updated in 2023.

freedom of religion

In 1685 Massachusetts Legalized Christmas, to Samuel Sewall’s Dismay