American Minute with Bill Federer
Penn's Holy Experiment - "the seed of a nation."
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William Penn
was arrested and imprisoned several times for sharing his politically incorrect views which were not in agreement with the government's agenda.
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Once he was imprisoned in the
Tower of London
for eight months.
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While in London's notorious
Newgate Prison,
William Penn
wrote 1670:
"By Liberty of Conscience, we understand not only a mere Liberty of the Mind ... but the exercise of ourselves in a visible way of worship, upon our believing it to be indispensably required at our hands, that if we neglect it for fear or favor of any mortal man, we sin, and incur divine wrath."
Penn
wrote in
England's Present Interest Considered,
1675:
"Force makes hypocrites, 'tis persuasion only that makes converts."
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Another dissenter in
London's Newgate Prison
was an
early Baptist leader Thomas Helwys,
who wrote in 1612:
"The King is a mortal man, and not God, therefore he hath no power over the mortal soul of his subjects to make laws and ordinances for them and to set spiritual Lords over them."
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Thomas Helwys
who died in the
Newgate Prison
in 1616, had written
A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity:
"If the Kings people be obedient and true subjects, obeying all humane laws made by the King, our Lord the King can require no more: for men's religion to God is betwixt God and themselves; the King shall not answer for it, neither may the King be judge between God and man."
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Later,
Baptist minister John Leland,
who helped found Baptist churches in America, wrote in
Rights of Conscience Inalienable,
1791:
"Every man must give account of himself to God, and therefore every man ought to be at liberty to serve God in a way that he can best reconcile to his conscience.
If government can answer for individuals at the day of judgment, let men be controlled by it in religious matters; otherwise, let men be free."
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Penn's
father,
Admiral Sir William Penn, Sr.,
died in 1670.
In repayment of a debt owed to the
Admiral,
King Charles II,
in 1682, surprisingly gave to his son,
William Penn,
land in
America
recently acquired from the Dutch and Swedes -- 45,000 square miles.
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King Charles
named this enormous amount of land, 29 million acres,
"Pennsylvania."
As a result of
Charles II's
generosity, young
William Penn had become the largest non-royalty landowner in the world.
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While most countries demanded that citizens believe as the government dictated,
William Penn
started his colony in the New World as a place where
persecuted Christians and Jews of Europe
could join in a
"Holy Experiment"
of living together in religious toleration.
Penn
wrote in his
Charter of Privileges for Pennsylvanians
1701:
"... because no people can be truly happy though under the greatest enjoyments of civil liberties if abridged of the freedom of their consciences as to their religious profession and worship."
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Soon there arrived in
Pennsylvania:
Quakers,
Mennonites,
Pietists,
Amish,
Anabaptists,
Lutherans,
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Reformed,
Moravians,
Scotch-Irish Presbyterians,
Dunkers (German Baptist),
Brethren, Schwenckfelders,
French Huguenots.
and other Protestant Christians.
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William Penn
died on JULY 30, 1718.
He had named his capital city
Philadelphia,
which means
"Brotherly Love."
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Lutheran missionary Johannes Campanius
dedicated
Philadelphia's first church, Gloria Dei "Old Swede's" Church
in 1646.
Penn's
religious tolerance allowed the church to continue, and they erected their present church building in 1698.
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Johannes Campanius
translated the very first book published in the Algonquin Indian language,
Martin Luther's Small Catechism.
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In 1695, the
Merion Friends (Quaker) Meeting House
was built. It is the
oldest church building in Pennsylvania
and second oldest Friends meeting house in the United States.
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In 1695,
Philadelphia's Christ Church
was built.
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It is called
"the Nation's Church"
as
George Washington, Betsy Ross, Benjamin
and
Deborah Franklin,
and their daughter,
Sarah Franklin Bache,
worshiped there.
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Others who worshiped at
Christ Church
included
signers of the Declaration of Independence: John Adams, Benjamin Rush, Francis Hopkinson, Joseph Hewes, Robert Morris, James Wilson
and
George Ross.
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In 1711,
Old Trinity Episcopal Church
was built in
Philadelphia.
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In 1732, the
Seventh Day Dunkers (German Baptist Brethern)
built
Ephrata Cloister
near
Philadelphia.
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They had the second German printing press in America.
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They published
"Martyrs Mirror,"
the largest book printed in America prior to the Revolutionary War,
listing Christian martyrs from Christ until 1660.
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Rev. Richard Denton brought the Presbyterian faith to American in 1644.
In 1692, just ten years after the arrival of William Penn, the
first Presbyterian Church
was organized in Philadelphia, in a building called "Barbadoes Warehouse," being shared with Baptists and Congregationalists.
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In 1704,
Philadelphia's First Presbyterian Church
moved to the corner of Bank Street and High Street (Market), where they build their first church building.
Members of the church included signers of the Declaration of Independence:
James Wilson, Dr. Benjamin Rush,
and
Thomas McKean.
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On May 21, 1789, the
first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America
was held at the church in
Philadelphia.
The first sermon at that assembly was preached by
John Witherspoon, the president of Princeton University
and a
Signer of the Declaration of Independence.
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In 1807, the
first African Presbyterian Church
was founded in former slave
John Gloucester.
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At the time of the Revolution:
98 percent
of the country was
Protestant;
a little over
1 percent
Catholic;
and
just
one-tenth of one percent Jewish.
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There were only
seven Jewish congregations
in the colonies prior to the Revolution, and two of those were in
Pennsylvania:
Mikveh Israel, begun in
Philadelphia in 1740; and
Shaarai Shomayim begun in
Lancaster in 1747.
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The first Jews in America were
Sephardic,
having fled from
Spain,
to
Portugal,
to
South America
and the
West Indies.
From the
West Indies,
Sephardic Jews
came to the colonies of
North America,
the first of which was
New Amsterdam,
which became
New York.
When the
British
captured
New York
in 1776, many
Jews
fled to
Pennsylvania.
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Mikveh Israel congregation
built the
first synagogue building i
n Philadelphia in 1782.
Contributors to the building fund included
Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris
-Signer of the Declaration, and
Haym Solomon,
Polish Jew financier of the American Revolution.
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Beginning in 1845, Rabbi
Isaac Leeser of Mikveh Israel synagogue
produced the
first Jewish translation of the Bible
in
English
to be
published in the United States.
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When
Mikveh Israel synagogue
burned in 1872,
Philadelphia's Christ Church
contributed to rebuild it.
The two congregations have a long custom of sharing a fellowship-dinner once a year which alternates between their two buildings.
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In 1795, the
first Ashkenazic Jewish synagogue
in the Western Hemisphere was founded in Philadelphia,
Congregation Rodeph Shalom.
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During the colonial era,
Catholics
were mostly in just
two colonies:
Maryland
and
Pennsylvania.
Bishop John Carroll, founder of Georgetown University and cousin of Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration, wrote to Rome in 1790:
"The thirteen provinces of North America rejected the yoke of England, they proclaimed, at the same time,
freedom of conscience ...
Before this great event, the Catholic faith had penetrated t
wo provinces only, Maryland and
Pennsylvania. In all the others the laws against Catholics were in force."
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In 1733,
Philadelphia
allowed the
first English-speaking Catholic Church in the world after the Reformation - St. Joseph Church.
It was the
only place
in the
entire British Empire
where a
public Catholic church
service took place
legally.
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During the
Revolution,
French Generals
Marquis de Lafayette
and
Comte de Rochambeau
worshiped there.
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Pennsylvania's Quakers
and
Mennonites
led the
state
to be the
first
in the nation to pass
legislation to end slavery.
America's first abolition society,
The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage,
was founded in
Philadelphia
in 1775.
After the Revolutionary War, it was reorganized in 1784 with
Benjamin Franklin
as its
first president.
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Philadelphia
is the birthplace of the
Methodist Episcopal churches
in America, with
St. George's Church,
built in 1769, being
the denomination's oldest church building
in
continuous service i
n the world.
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John Wesley,
the founder of Methodism, sent the church a communion chalice.
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St. George's
pastor,
Francis Asbury,
was the
first Methodist bishop.
He traveled 270,000 miles on horseback and
ordained
more than 4,000 ministers, including
Richard Allen
and
Absalom Jones,
the
first African American Lay Preachers
of Methodism
in 1785.
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In 1792,
Absalom Jones
started the
African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas,
being the
oldest black Episcopal congregation in the United States.
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In 1794,
Richard Allen
started the
African Methodist Episcopal Church,
building
"Mother Bethel,"
the
first A.M.E. Church in America.
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In 1796, also out of
St. George's,
Rev. "Black Harry" Hosier
started the
African Zoar Church.
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St. George's
appointed Mary Thorne as the
first woman class leader.
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The
Charter
that
King Charles II
signed and gave to
William Penn
on March 4, 1681, stated:
"Whereas our tru
sty and well beloved subject, William Penn, esquire, son and heir of Sir William Penn,
deceased, out of a commendable desire to enlarge our English Empire ...
and also to reduce the savage natives by gentle and just manners to the
love of civil society and Christian religion,
hath humbly besought leave of us to transport an ample colony unto ... parts of America not yet cultivated and planted."
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After receiving the
Charter,
William Penn
wrote:
"It is a clear and just thing, and my God who has given it me through many difficulties, will, I believe, bless and make it the seed of a nation."
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William Penn's "Holy Experiment"
of
"Brotherly Love"
resulted in
Philadelphia
providentially being the birthplace of the nation, as it was there that the
Continental Congress
met, the
Declaration of Independence
was signed, the
U.S. Constitution
was written, and where the
nation's first Capital
was located.
Psalm 133:1
"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!"
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American Minute is a registered trademark of William J. Federer. Permission is granted to forward, reprint, or duplicate, with acknowledgment.
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Schedule Bill Federer for informative interviews & captivating PowerPoint presentations: 314-502-8924
wjfederer@gmail.com
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