Lord Baltimore's Pious Enterprise: Toleration and Community in Colonial Maryland, 1634-1724.

Abstract

This thesis blends social and intellectual history to argue that while Lord Baltimore's provision for religious toleration through his refusal to establish any state church was intended to remove the state from "matters of conscience" and equalize all religious groups by forcing them to depend only upon their membership for support, toleration favored in practice religious dissenters who had necessarily adapted to survive in the hostile ecclesiastical world of England itself. Baltimore's policy forced the various denominations to compete for membership, and the early advantage in Maryland (before the establishment of the Church of England in 1692) went to denominations which had already adopted missionary or evangelical strategies that they could bring to Maryland. Further, because the disabilities of the English establishment did not extend to Maryland, dissenters there were able to form tightly-knit communities based in religion which helped confer economic, political, and social prominence upon their members, and also helped them to withstand in part the stresses of early Chesapeake life. These clear advantages combined with the virtual monopoly the dissenters held on public worship in early Maryland to greatly aid in attracting members. Initially, Catholics were especially favored, however unintentionally, owing to their history of survival under the active persecutions of the Elizabethan era and the presence in Maryland of the Jesuits, a highly trained missionary clergy. The appearance of Quaker missionaries after 1655 solved for dissenting Protestants the chronic problem of a lack of ministers, a condition from which all Protestants suffered. These missionaries were the midwives of Maryland's Quaker community, the dissenting-Protestant counterpart of Maryland's Catholic community. The contrast between the vital dissenter churches and the anemic condition of the Church of England before 1692 fed mainline Protestant discontent and formed one of the bases for Maryland's own "Glorious Revolution" of 1689. However, the strength of the dissenter communities also was an important part of the context in which the Church of England was established in Maryland following the repeal of Baltimore's policy of toleration after that revolution.