Although the idea of separating church and state is most frequently attributed to Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island, and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison who worked to adopt the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom that disestablished the Episcopal Church in Virginia, they had the support of many others. William Tennent III (1740-1777) was among the most influential.
Tennent, a patriot pastor who supported the cause of liberty, was also a leader in the movement in South Carolina to disestablish the Church of England (or Anglican Church) and provide more freedom to Protestants. He died at age 37 before this cause was won.
Tennent was born into a distinguished family of educators and pastors in New Jersey in 1740 and educated at the College of New Jersey — today’s Princeton, which was preceded by the Log College of Pennsylvania that was run by his grandfather. He received a master’s degree from Harvard. Tennent became a Presbyterian minister and pastored congregational churches in Hanover, Virginia and Norwalk, Connecticut. He then pastored a church in Charleston, South Carolina, where he was both a fervent advocate of the patriot cause and of religious disestablishment.
Tennent was a member of South Carolina’s provincial Congress and its General Assembly, during which time he authored “An Address, Occasioned by the Late Invasion of the Liberties of the American Colonists by the British Parliament.” He was sent to persuade local militiamen in rural areas of the state of the justice of the Patriot cause. An address by the Rev. Richard Furman (1755-1825), a Baptist minister, was also influential in this cause.
Tennent as patriot pastor
Tennent outlined his support for the Patriot cause in his published Address to his congregation that was based on Lamentations 3:11. It records that “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.” This passage precedes the verse that says of God, “great is thy faithfulness.”
Expressing some reluctance about introducing “political subjects ... to the pulpit,” Tennent observed that “to direct to a right Improvement of the Times is the Duty of every Minister of the Gospel” (p. 6; f’s changed to s’s where appropriate). Tennent believed the “unnatural dispute” between the colonies and Britain involved nothing less that “whether we shall continue to enjoy the Privileges of Men and Britons, or whether we shall be reduced to a State of the Most abject Slavery” (p. 6). He further described such slavery as “a general and perpetual Evil” (p. 6). Although Tennent believed that God would vindicate America, he thought that it was important for Americans to recognize their own sins, noting that whereas individuals could be punished in the afterlife, “it is in this World only that GOD has erected a Tribunal for the Trial and Punishment of national Vices” (p. 9).
Whereas one might expect that God might be most likely to punish Americans who traded in or owned slaves, Tennent focused on the sins of religious infidelity and impiety and observed how few people attended church or had their children baptized and how many only evoked God when attempting to secure an estate or taking an oath of office. Further detailing the immorality of the people of his state, Tennent noted how many South Carolinians profaned the sabbath, engaged in swearing and cursing, overindulged in alcohol, and caroused at night.
Probably thinking of the Intolerable Acts, Tennent noted that if God was already bringing judgment upon New England, which had been more clearly founded on godly principles, the people of South Carolina would not be spared, especially if they did not repent. After noting that “We have more to dread from our Iniquities than our Enemies,” he asked his congregation, to attend to their duties of “CONFESSION, PRAYER, and REFORMATION,” which would at least save their individual souls if not the state or country as a whole.
Tennent as supporter of tea boycott
Tennent further displayed his Patriot convictions in a letter in the August 2, 1774, issue of the South Carolina Gazette; and Country Journal addressed “To the Ladies of South Carolina.” In that letter, he urged them to support Boston and the American cause by boycotting tea, which he described as “that East Indian poison” (Tennent and Jones I, 1960, 136).
Associating such tea with ruining the nerves and degrading human health, he was far more concerned about the political message that drinking tea represented. As he viewed the English tax on tea, it was “the very means of enslaving America” (137). He noted that previous taxes on wine, a proportion of which “is absolutely necessary in these climates for the health and comfort of the ladies as well as gentlemen,” was but “a regulation of commerce for the benefit of England and America both,” whereas the tax on tea was enacted simply to assert the English power to tax (138).
Tennent’s work to disestablish South Carolina’s established church
In colonial times, South Carolina, like other southern states, recognized the Anglican Church as the established church, to which it provided financial support. It was the only church that was allowed to incorporate, and the only church authorized to perform wedding. Tennent headed a group of dissenting ministers who wanted this recognition to end.
He was not the first. In 1704, South Carolina colonists had recruited the novelist Daniel Defoe to oppose a new Exclusion Act, which had required all members of the state's House of Assembly to take communion in an Anglican Church. Although this opposition had been successful, other privileges had remained.
On January 11, 1777, Tennent accordingly introduced a petition to the state House of Assembly, in which he called for religious disestablishment. He observed this this had resulted in “an odious discrimination” and in unfair “partiality” that encroached on “religious liberty,” which he considered to be “the most valuable of all” (Tennent and Jones 1960, II,194).
The petition specifically called for adding a provision to the state constitution providing “That there never shall be any establishment of any one religious denomination or sect of Protestant Christians in this state by way of preference to another; that no Protestant inhabitant of this state shall by law be denied the enjoyment of any civil right merely on account of his religious principles, but that all Protestants demeaning themselves peaceably under the government established by the constitution shall enjoy free and equal civil and religious privileges” (II, 195).
In speaking on behalf of the petition before the House of Assembly, Tennent noted that he dissented from the Church of England “upon the most liberal grounds,” which included respect for both “Freedom and Equality” (p. 4). He argued that established churches were “an infringement of Religious Liberty,” in that they “interfere with the rights of private judgment: and conscience,” by “taking the consciences of men into their own hands, and taxing them at discretion.” Similar to modern accommodationists or advocates of nonpreferentialism, Tennent thought that it was appropriate for the state to “do any thing for the support of religion,” but that it must do so “without partiality to particular societies or imposition upon the rights of private judgment” (p. 6). This was because “the rights of conscience are unalienable,” and attempts to regulate them are tyrannical (6-7; Underwood 2992, 153).
Tennent said ‘toleration’ of other churches was not enough
Tennent observed that the establishment had prevented individuals from being married other than by an Anglican priest, and that they had forbidden other denominations from holding property in their own name. He further noted that it was unfair for the state to support 20 Episcopal churches, when they were outnumbered by at least 79 dissenting churches.
Supporters of establishment noted that the law provided for “toleration” of dissenters. Tennent noted that Jews were also tolerated and that simply allowing dissenters to go unpunished for thinking for themselves was hardly worthy of a free state.
Tennent opposed officially recognizing one denomination over another even without tax support. He stressed that Americans who opposed the tax on tea, were not complaining about three pence on the pound but the “birth-right that we prize.” He also asked why there should be such “a bone of endless contention,” “for a meer empty name, without profit,--for a meer title of pre-eminency without emolument” (p. 15).
He thought it was equally absurd to “establish all denominations by law; and to pay them all equally.” He advocated leaving “each Church to be supported by its own members” and letting “its real merit be all its pre-eminence.” He argued that such freedom would draw immigrants who could bring “their arts and industry” (p. 18) to the state.
Tennent ended by addressing those who wanted to postpone the decision for a later day. He argued that justice delayed was justice denied and that there was no time like the present to act. Noting that other states were already disestablishing their churches, he observed that those seeking disestablishment “ask no favours, they ask only [for] the common rights rights of mankind” (25). He ended with a plea to “Yield to the mighty current of American freedom and glory, and let our State be inferior to none on this wide continent, in the liberality of its laws, and in the happiness of its people” (28).
South Carolina completed disestablishment in 1790
Tennent died on a trip in 1777. His cause won a partial victory in 1778 when South Carolina replaced the Anglican establishment with a general Protestant establishment in which the state endorsed such churches and allowed them to incorporate but did not financially support them (Underwood 2002, 156). Roman Catholics and Jews were still excluded from such recognition. In 1790, however, South Carolina, influenced by the U.S. Constitution and proposed Bill of Rights, completed the disestablishment movement within South Carolina and allowed Jewish and Catholic churches to incorporate (Underwood 2002, 168).
Even after disestablishment, some South Carolina leaders thought Christianity should be favored religion
Tennent’s arguments and South Carolina’s actions show that the movement for disestablishment rested strongly on the conviction that freedom of conscience was a fundamental right. The fact that Tennent emphasized full freedom for Protestants, which was reminiscent of some of the laws of England and of John Locke’s justification for toleration, indicated that his own proposals were not quite as liberal as he believed them to be.
One aspect of the South Carolinian establishment that had stirred controversy had been the requirement that one swear an oath on the holy evangelists before taking office. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, South Carolina’s Charles Pinckney introduced the provision of the Constitution in Article VI that prohibited any religious office as a condition for federal office (Farrand, II, 342, 468).
Even after the adoption of the South Carolina Constitution disestablishment of religion in 1790, some individuals continued to believe that “it still established Christianity, in general, as the favored religion” (Underwood 2002, 175). In 1833, Jasper Adams, another minister from Charleston, further argued that American should recognize Christianity as its national religion.
A plaque at the Unitarian Church Cemetery in Charlestown, where Tennent is buried, records that Tennent “was distinguished for quickness of perception and solidity of judgment; for energy and firmness of mind; for inflexible patriotism and ardent public spirit; for sincere and zealous piety, for the boldness with which he enforced the claims of the Deity and vindicated the rights of man. As a preacher, he was prompt, solemn, instructive and persuasive, of every social virtue he was a bright example.”
John R. Vile is a political science professor and dean of the Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University.