On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 11:26 AM, farmelantj at juno.com <farmelantj at juno.com>wrote:
>
>
> In Massachusetts the end of the establishment
> of the Congregationalists came when that
> church underwent a schism over the Trinity.
> By the late 18th century, many Congregationalists
> were already questioning the doctrine of the
> Trinity. This was apparently something that
> was going on through much of the Calvinist
> world, since Jean-Jacques Rousseau maintained
> that many of the clergy in his native Geneva
> were quietly skeptical of that doctrine too.
> By the early 19th century, the Congregationalists
> in Massachusetts went through a full-blown
> schism with those members who were skeptical
> of the Trinity, breaking away to form the
> Unitarian Church. Since these people included
> most of the economic and political elite in
> Massachusetts, they took most of the oldest
> and wealthiest Congregationalist churches with
> them. Then, to add insult to injury, an alliance
> of Unitarians and Catholics campaigned successfully
> to disestablish the Congregationalists, so that
> was the end of an established church in Massachusetts.
>
> Jim Farmelant
> http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant
>
> ---------- Original Message ----------
> From: Jeffrey Fisher <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com>
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Texas school board drops Jefferson, adds Calvin
> Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:51:18 -0500
>
> On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 10:08 AM, farmelantj at juno.com
> <farmelantj at juno.com>wrote:
>
> > It should be kept in mind that the
> > anti-establishment clause only applied
> > to the Federal government. Back then,
> > the states could, and many did, have
> > their own established churches. For
> > example, in Virginia, the Episcopal
> > church was the official state church.
> > That remained the case, until Jefferson
> > and Madison successfully led a campaign,
> > strongly supported by the Baptists, to
> > disestablish it.
> >
>
> Yes. Baptists used to get beat up by Episcopalians, as I hear it told. It's
> also the Baptists fighting with the Congregationalists in Mass.
>
>
> > Massachusetts, at that
> > time (and on to the 1820s) had the
> > Congregationalists as its official state
> > church. Other states also had established
> > churches too.
> >
>
> As I understand it, Massachusetts was the last holdout, abandoning the
> setup
> in 1833, but I admit I don't know dets, and looking at teh wikipediaz
> didn't
> help. It sounds like others here might know more.
>
>
> > I believe that it was
> > only in the twentieth century, that
> > the SCOTUS began to apply the anti-establishment
> > clause to the states, although by
> > then, almost every state constitution had
> > some sort of anti-establishment clause
> > in it.
> >
>
> I gather from teh
> wikipediaz<
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_religion#United_States_of_America>that
> you're thinking of a 1947 case in which the SCOTUS understands the
> fourteenth amendment as embodying/extending the first amendment. But by
> this
> time I don't believe there are any more established churches anywhere. The
> case Emerson v BoE was about tax funding for private religious schools.
>
> j
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