Source: Dutch New York
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In 1626, when Peter Minuit was appointed third Director General of New Netherland, no organized religion existed in the colony. The few religious services that were held were simple and limited. Since there were no ordained ministers, Sebastien Jansz Krol and Jan Huyck were given the role of "comforters of the sick." Religion was not a priority for the directors of the Dutch West India Company. The Dutch Reformed Church was the official public church, but not a state church, though the ties between the church and state were close. The Reformed Church was the only religion allowed to express its views publicly and actually build a public house of worship. Other religious communities were forced to meet secretly. Because New Netherland was a new and developing society, it was believed that permitting religious diversity in public would have detrimental consequences. Authorities believed that the colony would be better served by an orderly and peaceful society, free from public religious conflict.
Peter Stuyvesant, who became governor of New Netherland in 1647, was very concerned about the various religions represented in the colony. He accepted these groups, but made conditions difficult for them. For example, when the group of 23 Sephardic Jews arrived in 1654, he barred them from both buying land and becoming a part of the citizen's militia. The Dutch West India Company, however, put a halt to Stuyvesant's actions by reminding him that many Jews were investors in the company and contributed large sums of money.
Stuyvesant had even less tolerance for the Quakers. The Quakers were one of the most radical among the religious movements that came about during the English Civil War, and Stuyvesant saw their arrival in 1657 as a disturbance to the peace and stability of the colony. Stuyvesant tried to keep them under control by putting them under the supervision of an English minister, Francis Doughty. The Quakers rejected this and continued holding their meetings. Stuyvesant then decided to order the Quakers in the town of Vlissingen (Flushing, Queens) to stop holding their services altogether.
The Quakers were not going to tolerate Stuyvesant's actions, so in December 1657 they drafted a list of grievances. This document, which was later called the Flushing Remonstrance, expressed the Quaker opposition to the harsh ordinances enforced by Peter Stuyvesant and requested that his ban on Quaker worship be removed. Stuyvesant responded by arresting and imprisoning some of the 31 men who signed the document.
In 1662, a man named John Bowne was also arrested for holding Quakers meetings in his home. Stuyvesant banished Bowne to Holland, where Bowne asked the directors of the Dutch West India Company to hear his case. After a month of deliberation, the company agreed to support Bowne and officially rejected Stuyvesant's policies and advised him to grant religious freedom to all settlers.
BARRY LEWIS: We’re here at 55 St. James Place, just southeast of Chatham Square, on the eastern edge of Manhattan’s Chinatown. This is one of the three remaining Sephardic Jewish cemeteries here, on Manhattan Island. In 1654, 23 Jews arrived here in New Amsterdam. These were Sephardic Jews which means their ancestors came from Spain.
They were forced out of Spain because of religious persecution, some of them moved to the Dutch Colony, in what is now Brazil, when that colony is taken over by the Portuguese, these Jews relocate to New Amsterdam.
Stuyvesant doesn’t want them, he orders them to leave. But the directors in Amsterdam contradict him. They write to Stuyvesant about this and I quote, “they, meaning the Jews, may quietly and peacefully carry on their business as before, and exercise, in all quietness, their religion within their houses.”
Dr. CHARLES GEHRING: The Dutch, going back to the 16th Century, when they were fighting the war with Spain, decided that there would be no intolerance of other religious group. And when we talk about intolerance then, we are talking about persecution. We’re talking about forcing people to repent upon pain of torture and death.
The Dutch said that we will never do this again, this will never be done, and people will be free to believe in whatever they wanted. This is freedom of conscience. So everyone in New Netherland had freedom of conscience.
LEWIS: That meant you could practice Catholicism, you could be a Jew, you could be a Quaker, whatever you wanted, in the privacy of your home. But it was only the Dutch Reformed church who could actually build a public house of worship.
Some of the colonists felt this individual freedom of consciousness didn’t go far enough. They wanted to, as we would say today, push the envelope. For example, the Lutherans sent for a minister from Europe, he arrives, Stuyvesant is furious and he sends him back.
The Quakers arrive intending to settle in Manhattan -- Stuyvesant is furious. He exiles them to Long Island to the town of Flushing in today’s modern borough of Queens. The Quakers immediately try to organize a meeting. Remember, in Quakerism, a meeting is their version of a religious service.
One of those organizers was a fellow named James Hodgson. Stuyvesant is furious, he sends out his soldiers to Flushing, the rough up Hodgson. Well, the people in Flushing won’t have this. Stuyvesant has overstepped his boundaries. They fire a complaint. They lodge a list of grievances with the directors in Amsterdam, and amazingly the directors rule in their favor.
That list of grievances we call today The Flushing Remonstrance. Many of us know it’s one of the roots of religious freedom here, in America, but few of us realize it’s also an excellent example that back then, unlike their European neighbors, under the Dutch system, dissent was part of the political process.
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