About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the twenty-first century.
One newspaper reported on Indiana’s original “religious freedom” measure with a three-word headline: Freedom to Discriminate. The subsequent amendment to this Indiana law was described like this: “Pepperoni pizza please; hold the hate.”
Evidently, discrimination is out of fashion. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, followed closely by his counterpart in Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, scrambled to assure anyone listening that the laws to hold harmless those
who want to discriminate against same-sex couples is not a discrimination law; nothing of the kind. The verbal assertion was followed by passage of an amendment meant to reassure.
Whether discrimination is out of fashion because we are more tolerant, or because it is bad for business, is unclear. Whatever the underlying cause the 20 states that passed “Religious Freedom Acts” are rushing to repeal or amend them.
Here’s the thing: we have always been prejudiced. What we are prejudiced against does change, but man’s disapproval of man (and equally woman) is omnipresent. The church has always been the arbiter, and the consequences of disapproval have been more severe than being denied a slice with pepperoni.
In eighteenth century New England life was not a romp through the countryside; it was a sober stroll through Puritan woods. Life was dangerous, and the Church was a bulwark against the wilderness, against loneliness, and an aid in the struggle to survive.
In return for keeping covenant with the church, the church offered their members “our fellowship and communion.” In exchange for living under the articles of the covenant, the church would “treat you affectionately and watch over you faithfully and offer up prayers for you.” The church protected you in this life and ushered you into heaven.
It was important to have a community “living in harmony,” and a place to celebrate the rites of passage from baptism to burial. However, what happened if you did not keep the faith? If you strayed, you could be ousted.
Excommunication was the final, extreme step in a process designed to help you mend your evil ways and bring you back into the fold. Step one was a private chat with the Pastor. “No offense in any brother shall be brought before the Church till the private steps have been taken.” If a private request by the Pastor for confession and repentance did not work, or if “the offense be of a public nature or have become a matter of public notoriety,” then “the confession shall be made before the Church and congregation in full.” If you were unwise enough to commit your sins in public, then you stood before all your neighbors, confessed and repented. You were forgiven if you seemed sincere, but that was not quite enough.
Inherent in the process of confession and repentance was the understanding that you would not sin again. Or, at least, you would not commit the same sin again. The church would formally admonish you not to and if you did not heed the admonishment, then excommunication loomed.
Excommunication was simple by definition: you could not take communion in the church. In practice, it was more than that. Some who were excommunicated were also rejected by the fellowship in the marketplace and socially. Just like in Indiana and nineteen other states today.
Moreover, to the eighteenth century man or woman, excommunication put your immortal soul at risk. Excommunication was serious business that could rob you of heaven.
Now as then the church instructed in what was moral and acceptable behavior and what was not. Today, we seem fixated on the LGBT community (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transvestite) and same sex marriage. What were the sins that led to excommunication over 200 years ago and who were the sinners? According to the “Standing Rules”: all heads of families who did not worship God with their households; any professor of the faith who married “a profane and immoral person”; and any who acted in a manner “prejudicial to the growth of religion or an unhappy influence on society.”
Finally, in the catalog of sins and sinners, we have dancing. Everyone who went to a tavern sooner or later danced. The liquor fueled the revelry and the revelry led to the dance floor. Any professed follower who practiced an amusement that was deemed a sinful waste of time was also deemed a sinner.
To take them in order, members who did not regularly attend church were called to account and admonished to mend their ways. If they did not, they were deemed “strangers,” and were excommunicated. To be proclaimed a stranger meant just what it seemed to mean: no one knew you. No one did business with you, invited you to dine or greeted you on the street.
An unhappy influence on society is harder to explain. A woman in Sheffield was married to a wealthy and prominent man. She was, nonetheless, admonished on several occasions for being an unhappy influence by breeding discontent and disharmony. She was a demanding woman who was never satisfied. Her conversation was laced with complaints against many people and things. She had private meetings called by the Pastor. Once she was admonished publicly for refusing to pay a workman because his work did not please her. She paid up and was not excommunicated. Then the day came when her husband died. The funeral meats were hardly digested when they threw her out with a sigh of relief and good riddance.
A man in Great Barrington married a woman who was an “impenitent whore.” No, she did not run a house of ill repute or stake out a busy corner. She was a Catholic. He was excommunicated for marrying a profane and immoral person. Not long before a woman was excommunicated for marrying a profane and immoral man – accused of not being a professed Christian and an enemy of the church.
Both could confess and repent, but neither could “mend their ways.” That is, they could not cease to be married to profane and immoral persons because divorce was also a sin. So in a way the sin was continued. Yet the man was readmitted to the church after one year and the woman was not. Why?
In the eyes of the church, there is “a material difference in the case of a man marrying a woman of immoral character and a woman marrying a profane man. By the law of nature and the written law of God, a woman is more under the influence and control of the man than man is of the woman.”
The only cases of dancing taken up and punished were when the tavern owner danced and encouraged others to dance for then he was “discouraging the growth of religion in the soul.” Finally, there is the sinful time wasting. Sloth was always a sin, but a sinful waste meant things like gambling and drinking to drunkenness.
It seems an innocent list by today’s standards. Interesting that the social ills we live with and most fear are not mentioned: rape, murder, and acts of terrorism. Were they nonexistent? If so, perhaps life was a romp through the countryside.
