On this very date in 1657, in the Dutch colony of New Netherland, 30 residents of Flushing (in what is today New York City) signed a petition, the Flushing Remonstrance, requesting an exemption to the ban on Quaker worship imposed by Peter Stuyvesant, the colony’s director-general.
None of the signers were themselves Quakers; they were English citizens opposed to the prohibition of religions other than the Dutch Reformed Church.
The Remonstrance stated:
You have been pleased to send unto us a certain prohibition or command that we should not receive or entertain any of those people called Quakers because they are supposed to be, by some, seducers of the people.…
Wee desire therefore in this case not to judge least we be judged, neither to condemn least we be condemned, but rather let every man stand or fall to his own Master.…
Therefore if any of these said persons come in love unto us, we cannot in conscience lay violent hands upon them, but give them free egresse and regresse unto our Town, and houses, as God shall persuade our consciences, for we are bounde by the law of God and man to doe good unto all men and evil to noe man.
Four of the signers were arrested; two, who refused to recant, imprisoned. Years later, signer John Bowne was arrested for allowing Quakers to meet in his house. He petitioned the directors of the Dutch West India Company, which ultimately “advised” Stuyvesant to end his religious persecution in the colony.
The Flushing petition served as an important precedent to the First Amendment’s provision guaranteeing freedom of worship. Americans of all religions (or none) owe those brave petitioners a debt — a debt best repaid by taking good care of our current freedoms.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
3 replies on “A Gift to Remember”
Off topic.
Mr. Jacob, you’be been spammed.
.… Every American of any religion or of none, owes those brave petitioners a debt — one best repaid by taking good care of our current freedoms .…
Oh that your admonition was not, my dear Mr Jacob, written, apparently, in some sort of vacuum.
For out here in the real world Judaism and Christianity and the very Western/Human Civilization our culture both vanguards and has long guarded are already so viciously under attack and the psychopathologically-hesperophobic forces of evil arrayed against us so insidiously and so murderously rampant, that I tremble our very Civilization might be over-run. Let alone our individual Faiths.
Surely Mankind is facing the very real threat we be swept into a new dark age. One from which we are unlikely ever to emerge.
And one that note, Sir, may I thank you for your work and wish you and everyone you love a Blessed New Years and 2012! And may the G‑d of Israel take care of all our needs.
The emporer does not take kindly to those who point out his nudity and absurdity. Only the children can do it with impunity. And only they can safely build it to a ruckus that ultimately can no longer be ignored. Lesson for our time?