RELIGIOUS CONFLICTS, ALL STARTED FROM HERE

                Throughout its history, the United States has characteristically remained a country of two things: a country of immigrants, and a country of unmatched religious diversity.  And yet when compared with the rest of the world – where these two very factors alone have so often engendered horrible religious wars and decades of enduring conflict – the history of religious conflict in the United States seems almost nonexistent.

That is not to say the United States has been immune to its share of conflict explicitly rooted in religion.  This paper explores the various manifestations of religious conflict throughout the history of the United States, from the Revolutionary War to the attacks of September 11^th and their fallout.  A distinction is drawn between religious intolerance, which is not the focus of this paper, and outright religious persecution or violence.  Similarly, the paper reflects efforts made to de-conflate religious conflict from ethnic and racial conflict, which has been much more prominent throughout the history of the United States.  In examining the history of religious violence, intolerance, discrimination, and persecution in the United States, we arrive at some possible explanations for why the United States has seen such minimal religious conflict despite being so religiously diverse.



                                       The Revolution

It has been said that the United States is a nation founded on religious conflict.  The colonies were settled by those escaping religious persecution in Europe.  There is even some evidence that religion played a major role in the American Revolution and that revolutionaries believed it was willed by God for the Americans to wage war against the British.[1]

As the Church of England was striving to establish one, uniform religion across the kingdom, colonial America was divided, each of the colonies being dominated by their own brand of Christianity.  Due to the distance from England and the room in the colonies, many religions were able to establish themselves in America, colony by colony.  For example, Anglicans, who conformed to the Church of England, populated Virginia. Massachusetts was home to the Puritans.  Pennsylvania was full of Quakers.  Baptists ruled in Rhode Island.  And Roman Catholics found a haven in Maryland, where they could establish themselves amid the other colonists’ protestant majority.  Each of these colonies maintained a distinct religious character and favored one religious denomination’s power.

            The American colonists saw the revolution not only as a war for political independence, but to protect the religious diversity of the thirteen colonies.  Put in other terms, it was a war for religious independence and freedom.  To sever ties with Mother England would be to ensure that the various Christian denominations could co-exist on the American continent.  The conflict was, in part, a conflict that pitted the various American religious denominations against the Church of England, who wanted to impose a uniform, Anglican religion on the colonies.



Early Religious Persecution

The period after the Revolutionary War saw a lot of infighting between the various states and Christian denominations.  Virginia, which was home to the largest portion of Anglicans loyal to the Church of England, was the scene of notorious acts of religious persecution against Baptists and Presbyterians.  Anglicans physically assaulted Baptists, bearing theological and social animosity.  In 1771, a local Virginia sheriff yanked a Baptist preacher from the stage at his parish and beat him to the ground outside, where he also delivered twenty lashes with a horsewhip.  Similarly, in 1778, Baptist ministers David Barrow and Edward Mintz were conducting services at the Mill Swamp Baptist Church in Portsmouth, Virginia.[2]  As soon as the hymn was given out, a gang of men rushed the stage and grabbed the two ministers, took them to the nearby Nansemond River swamp, and dunked and held their heads in the mud until they nearly drowned to death. 

The period during and soon after the Revolutionary War also saw abundant political manifestations of religious conflict.  At the time, some states abolished churches, while supporting others, issued preaching licenses, and collected tax money to fund and establish state churches.  Each state constitution differed in its policy on religious establishment, or state-supported religion.  It would not be until well after the adoption of the Constitution of 1789 and the First Amendment religion clauses that the disestablishment for which the United States is so recognized became the de facto practice.



1800s

The early part of the 19^th Century was relatively quiet in terms of religious conflict in America.  The religious conflict that stands out in this period involves tensions between Catholics and Protestants, culminating in violence directed at Irish Catholic immigrants.  The surge in immigration from Europe during the 19^th Century coincided with and influx of Catholics and the rise of activist Protestantism in the U.S.  As strong Protestant values permeated the country, immigrants who were Catholic also became viewed as outsiders and undemocratic.  These views are separate from, but on top of, the harsh anti-Irish sentiment that also spread during the period. 

In the 1830s and 1840s, anti-Catholic violence broke out in the Northeast and elsewhere.  In 1835, one incident was ignited by a speaking tour by Lyman Beecher, who published Plea for the West, a book about a Catholic plot to take over the U.S. and impose Catholic rule.  After Beecher’s speaking tour passed through Charlestown, Massachusetts, a mob set fire to the Ursuline convent and school.[3]  In Philadelphia in 1844, pitched gun battles broke out between “native” Americans and mostly Irish Catholics.  Martial law had to be declared in order to end the violence.[4]



The Mormon War, the Utah War

Around the same time as anti-Catholic violence broke out in the Northeast, another religious group was being chased out of the same area.  The Mormons, who emerged after the 1830 discovery of The Book of Mormon, were a religious community chased out of New York, out of Ohio, out of Missouri, and out of Illinois, to Utah, where they finally settled.

In Illinois in 1839, the Mormons settled Nauvoo and built a thriving Mormon town there, complete with a large Mormon temple.  In the short period of three years, the Mormons prospered, announced the doctrine of polygamy, and founder Joseph Smith announced his candidacy for president of the United States.  Locals were intimidated and envious.  Smith and his brother Hyrum were arrested on morals charges and held in jail.  On June 27, 1844, an anti-Mormon mob attacked Nauvoo and burned it to the ground.[5]  They also invaded the jail cells where Smith and his brother were being held, and executed them.

Shortly after the sacking of Nauvoo, Brigham Young announced his leadership of the Mormons and led them to Utah, where they flourished.  In 1857, fears of a religious state of Mormons grew and the president ordered federal troops to enforce the installation of federal judges and a new non-Mormon governor.  At some point in the interim, this is still a subject of debate, the infamous Mountain Meadow Massacre happened – in which local Mormons slaughtered a group of 120 California-bound pioneers who were openly hostile toward their religion and making threats to return from California to attack them.[6]

The massacre only fueled anti-Mormon sentiment.  Tensions escalated. The Mormon army, also known as the Nauvoo Legion, was called out to respond to the imminent arrival of 2,000 U.S. Army troops.  Salt Lake City was evacuated on standing orders to burn the city should an invasion occur.  No violence was to break out, as attention was diverted to the Civil War.

As the federal government focused its energies on fighting the Civil War, legal sanctions and political oppression of the Mormons continued that virtually dissolved the church by 1887.  It wasn’t until the 1890s, when the Mormons ended the practice of polygamy, that Utah finally achieved statehood in 1896