“Because religious, ethnic, economic, and political position in society are often related to each other, separating these categories can be challenging.”[1] A close look at American history bears this out, because, while it contains major incidents of religious violence, the content of religious beliefs was rarely the crux of such disputes. Instead, it was rooted in challenges--real or perceived--to established political authorities.

Even where there was longstanding public hostility or suspicion towards a religious sect, violent action usually only happened where members of the existing political establishment perceived a threat to their continuing authority. However, the violence was often short-lived or averted entirely by the relocation of the sect to an area not controlled by the hostile authority, which ended the conflict. Early America had large areas of land without strong political establishments until the end of the nineteenth century. If the persecuted religious community was able to relocate to such a territory, or one in which the established authorities were willing to accommodate them, the violence usually ceased for as long as the situation was stable. Sometimes, dissenting sects was encouraged to move away under the threat of violence. This suggests that religion itself was not the main cause for religious conflicts—rather, it was the preservation of political control and authority over the community.[2] This paper uses three case studies to demonstrate this argument.

In one of the most significant events in human history, Jesus Christ was crucified for preaching new religious doctrines.  The region in which he lived was no stranger to religious fervor and controversies, and he accumulated significant local influence as a religious leader.

He was executed by Roman officials only when he became disruptive to their allies in the local ruling class, not because the officials had a particular objection to his doctrines.[3] Indeed, officials feared to intervene, lest it cause his followers to revolt, and the local elites argued that Jesus was “no longer just a religious but also a political problem.”[4] Because of Jesus’s religious significance, the rather banal political motivations of officials like Pontius Pilate, such as appeasing local elites whose cooperation he needed to govern, are minimized.[5] This misplaced emphasis is repeated in accounts of early America, where newly settled regions did not have an established governing structure, increasing the potential for power struggles between rival authorities.

            Centuries after Jesus’s death, new political doctrines challenged established power structures throughout Europe. Those who rebelled against the authority of the Catholic Church were known as Protestants, because they protested, among other things, the Church’s claim to being the sole authority on Biblical interpretation, which was central to its authority and political power. Later, different Protestant factions fought amongst themselves for political control of European states. Many of those who were not victorious resolved to sail to the New World, in the hopes of setting up religious communities in places where they would not be persecuted by an established political authority. If these dissident Protestants could set up a community under their own authority, they would be free to practice their beliefs and neutralize challengers.[6]

In contrast to Europe, the first established Christian political authorities in America were usually affiliated with Protestant sects, as the Catholic Church had never established a significant presence in the New World, and Maryland was one of the few colonies with an influential Catholic immigrant community. Before the revolution, even southern colonies like South Carolina would only allow Protestants to hold political offices, and “American colonies were overwhelmingly governed by explicitly religious constitutions,” which “often established official state churches, limited public office to members of certain religions, required oaths that Quakers and Mennonites could not swear, compelled church attendance, and contained many other provisions directly encouraging religious belief and behavior.” [7] This was especially notable in Massachusetts, where Puritans told dissenters and Quakers that they could either leave the community or face execution.[8]

Fortunately, relocating was an option for Quakers and other persecuted sects. As one scholar has summarized John Locke’s arguments, “both natural liberty and the voluntarism of consent require certain conditions to be actualized, one of the most important of which is ‘room enough’: unoccupied space like that found in America in which it is possible to ‘exit’ from the potentially coercive dilemmas of tacit consent and perhaps to originate a founding (express) consent.”[9] In early America, the ease of “exit” allowed religious conflicts to cease quickly, again suggesting they were more about local rivalries than the existence of different religious beliefs.

The cases of early Maryland and New England show that religious violence happened because of perceived challenges to the local governing authority, not the content of religious beliefs. “The 17th century saw a considerable amount of religious violence, especially in New England,” which mostly persecuted members of their own religion who publicly dissented, and in Maryland, “where Catholics and Puritans waged a decades-long on-again-off-again civil war against each other.” Notably, this dispute revolved around “how Maryland was to be governed,” and was settled only when “Puritans achieved a final, decisive victory,” assisted by the “ruling Catholic aristocrat” converting to Protestantism, which removed the political element of the conflict. [10] Catholics could exist in Maryland, despite religious disagreements, if they did not try to rule.  The rest of the violence ceased when religious dissenters “acquired  territories  in  which  their  religious  practice  was  protected  (especially  Pennsylvania,  Rhode  Island,  and,  to  a  lesser  extent,  Delaware  and  North  Carolina).” 

These new colonies were early sites of what would later become an American tradition of separating church and state, designed to prevent religious beliefs from threatening political authority, as “the prevalence of established churches is a large institutional benefit to that church body, but it usually comes paired with formal discrimination against … religious groups not benefiting from formal establishment.” During the revolutionary and post-revolutionary period, as the colonies became states and set up their own constitutions, “which often included explicit guarantees for religious expression, worship, or exercise,” and prevented state funding of religiously-affiliated activities, including sectarian schools. Thus, the early 18th  century  saw  relatively  little  open  violence  on  the  basis  of religion,” and a more tolerant atmosphere reigned, helped by the fact that “those who felt persecuted in a given place could easily move westward into new lands opened to settlement.”[11]

A later eighteenth-century wave of immigration by the descendants of Scottish Presbyterians fleeing religious strife led to a brief period of violence, before they relocated to mostly unsettled territory further west and set up their own communities.[12] Later in American history, these two options of ending the conflict—exit and compromising with or assimilating into the rival political authority--were not available. As the next two case studies will show, in the absence of ways to resolve the conflict over political authority, religious violence became a more persistent problem.  

The “relative religious calm” was disrupted by rapid social change starting in the 1830s,  including several waves of immigration that peaked in the 1840s and 1850s.[13]  The 1830s “saw a rise in religious violence,” the “main victims” of which were Catholic immigrants, who had never before immigrated in such large numbers to America.[14] Additionally, the prevalence of established political authorities usually comes paired with hostility towards perceived rivals, and, since the Revolution, existing state political authority had become more entrenched.

This was a particular issue for the Catholic immigrants of the time, many of whom were fleeing revolutionary violence in Europe or the Irish potato famine and were mostly poor and desperate. They lacked the social capital and shared purpose of earlier waves of immigrants, working as laborers in big Northern cities like New York, and so relocation was impossible when they came into conflict with local authorities. Much of the conflict was involuntary on their part, as few had moved to America for the opportunity of establishing a Catholic-controlled political community. But the fact that the Catholic Church had long politically dominated Europe, and possessed significant centralized power and standardized practices, caused them to be perceived as a threat to established authorities.[15] In 1864, Pope Pius IX emphasized that, despite modern political trends, the Church did not recognize an obligation to defer to secular governments.[16] Such pronouncements made American Protestants fear that the presence of Catholics would undermine the norms of republican government, and newspapers “warned Americans that Rome had designs on their freedom.”[17]

Riots and fights broke out between Catholics and Protestants, and “Know-Nothing gangs attacked Catholic churches and ministers up and down the eastern seaboard.” As one scholar has pointed out, “the movement historians commonly identify as ‘nativism’ is perhaps better described as “sectarianism.’ Native-born Catholics faced hostility from Know-Nothings at least as much as foreign-born Presbyterians did.”[18] In fact, “the first major documented incident of supposedly nativist unrest was the burning of a newly constructed Ursuline convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts,” which housed nuns that ran local Catholic schools, and which ushered in a new era of violence.”[19] But the choice to target a symbolic building, rather than a member of the Catholic faith, indicates the anger was less about violent hatred of believers and more about suspicion of Church’s power and influence in the community, which illustrate the political element of anti-Catholic sentiment.

The act of arson followed a break-in, a purported rescue attempt based on rumors that a mysterious young woman was being kept in the convent against her will. Yet most Protestant locals did not complain about the religious beliefs of Catholics; to them the convent symbolized a kind of foreign invasion and sent them into a frenzy of suspicion. Local laborers saw in the convent “a religion whose presence signaled economic strife….fail[ing] to distinguish between the small, affluent religious community that sponsored the convent and the masses of poor Irish Catholics now settling in Boston, willing to provide the cheap labor that threatened the livelihoods of thousands of Yankee workmen.” A local woman said it seemed “foreign,” “as if, like Aladdin’s Palace, it had been wafted from Europe by the power of a magician.”[20]

Shortly before the incident, prominent Presbyterian preacher Lyman Beecher had spoken in the area about the need to resist Catholic immigrants “who brought un-American values,” claiming “that the well-funded inter-national Catholic Church would corrupt American institutions by establishing schools, thereby indoctrinating American children into the supposedly ‘despotic’ and ‘feudal’ norms of Catholicism.”[21]

The suspicion over the introduction of Catholic school systems to northern American cities only spread, not because of major differences in religious beliefs, but because of fear that the Catholic Church’s immense institutional and political power would have a corrupting and even subverting influence on American politics.[22]

In other words, in North America, Catholic immigrants ended up in more conflict than the Protestant immigrants because they were associated with a large institutional structure. Even though what institutions they imported, like schools and convents, were religious rather than explicitly political, this created a perceived political conflict. This can be seen in the passage of the Blaine amendments and similar laws, which secularized American public schools shortly after the wave of Catholic immigration. Because of the perceived power asymmetry and the fact that religious beliefs were not central to the conflict, the response was not to insist a more Protestant curriculum, but to defund sectarian schools entirely, knowing this would disproportionately affect Catholic institutional power.[23]

Ironically, despite the fear of organized Catholic power in American, most did not have the resources or desire to set up their own territories, as early persecuted groups had done, and were rarely a political majority in areas where conflict arose.[24] Struggling to survive, their dependence on wage labor kept them trapped in Northern cities, where they clashed with pro-Union political leaders during the Civil War. Unlike those leaders, they were unable to pay to for military substitutes, and were drafted in large numbers for a war effort that may did not support, in part because they feared the abolition of slavery would increase completion for employment. This led the worst riot in American history, the New York City draft riots of 1863.[25]

Newspaper coverage from his time indicates that the issue was perceived as mainly political in nature.  After the draft riots, Republican newspapers raised doubts about the loyalty and political compatibility of Catholic immigrants, especially the Irish. “The immediate actors in the late riots in this city … excite the hostility of the non-Catholic American people not only against the foreign, especially the Irish, element in our population, but against the Catholic religion itself,” read a Boston Evening Transcript editorial. But it went on to say that the non-Catholic majority judged the national and political bearings of the Church by the conduct of her members themselves, indicating they were not complaining of Catholic Doctrine in itself, but of the political threat posed by the sentiments and actions of the rioters. [26] A close read of the coverage makes it clear that the main problem was partisan: as most Catholic immigrants were Democrats, including religious leaders, the target was the alleged irresponsibility of the Democratic leadership, as the Democratic Party was then associated with Confederate sympathies, and was the natural target of opposition press hostility. New York’s Bishop Hughes responded by issuing a public letter that appealed “all persons who love God and revere the holy Catholic religion which they profess, to respect also the laws of man and the peace of society,” warning them against “bad associations which reckless men, who have little regard either for Divine and Human laws,” suggesting secular motivations that contradicted Catholic principles were the main source of trouble.[27]

But though Catholics could not exit, they eventually compromised and largely assimilated with the power structure, ending what had been a long and violent conflict without changing or hiding their Catholic beliefs. Despite the draft riots “the Civil War changed everything.” Many Catholic immigrants willing joined the Union Army and distinguished themselves there. [28] Local Catholic leaders like Hughes generally encouraged such assimilating and attempted to ally or at least cooperate with the political authorities, especially during the Civil War, knowing it was central to their community’s wellbeing and survival. [29]  Additionally, anti-Catholic prejudice became politically unpopular with most people in northern cities after its association with the Ku Klux Klan. In the end, “Catholics had won their place in America.”[30]

At the same time Catholic immigrants were struggling to resolve political attentions, another group encountered similar problems: the Mormons, a new religious sect native to America. “Compared to their small numbers, Mormons were subjected to an extraordinary amount of well-documented violence, and while “America had become a more tolerant place than in the 17th or 18th centuries,” when Mormon leaders advocated for polygamy, “that was a bridge too far for America’s monogamist, Protestant majority.”[31] While their practice of polygamy was a substantive religious conflict, they were initially caught up mainly in the same series of conflicts as the Native Americans and Mexicans, as American westward expansion increased political conflict leading up to the Civil War. The establishment of new states and territories meant a proliferation of political authorities, and the violent conflict that tends to accompany it. Ultimately, the Mormons’ strategy for resolving such conflicts was a mix of exit and cooperation or assimilation.[32]

In the first decades of Mormonism, America still had enough land with relatively little established political authority for exit to be the logical strategy. Mormons relocated many times from their origin in New York, home of founder Joseph Smith. “The largest contingent fled to Utah, where they ultimately fought an armed conflict against non-Mormon settlers and US military detachments, fiercely resisting assimilation.”[33] From the beginning, Smith’s charismatic influence and ambitious social vision drew followers and led to conflict with local authorities that were overwhelmingly related to political topics other than polygamy:

“…what made him most controversial was his commitment to establishing a ‘new Jerusalem’ in the United States. The utopia he envisioned would be godly, ordered, and radically communitarian. As the Mormons searched for a place to build their Zion, they were met with an escalating campaign of persecution and mob violence. In New York, Smith was arrested at the urging of local clergy. In Ohio, he was tarred and feathered. By the time the Mormons settled in Missouri, they were viewed as enemies of the state. Their economic and political power made local officials nervous, as did their abolitionist streak. ”[34]

Smith was murdered in one of these violent incidents in Illinois, and was replaced by Brigham Young, who relocated the Mormons to the Utah territory in order to avoid violence like that they had recently experienced. This was a good strategy, as a description of their experience over time demonstrates that challenges to existing political authorities were increasingly the main source of tension:

“The tension came to a head on October 27, 1838, when the governor issued an ‘extermination order’ demanding that all Mormons be driven out of the state or killed. A few days later, a militia descended on a Mormon settlement about 70 miles northeast of Kansas City and opened fire… Even as they were forced to flee Missouri and resettle in Nauvoo, Illinois, they were convinced that the Constitution guaranteed their freedom of religion… But the president [Marin Van Buren], fearing a backlash from Missourians, dismissed his appeals…The experience radicalized Smith. Stung by the government’s mistreatment—and under siege by a growing anti-Mormon cohort—he took on a more theocratic bent. In Nauvoo, he served simultaneously as prophet, mayor, and lieutenant general of a well-armed Mormon militia. He introduced the ancient biblical practice of polygamy to his followers… He even convened a group of men to draft a replacement for the U.S. Constitution…[and] launched a quixotic presidential bid to draw attention to the Mormon plight. He campaigned on abolishing prisons and selling public lands to purchase the freedom of every enslaved person in the country….That June, Smith was arrested for ordering the destruction of an anti-Mormon printing press. While he awaited trial, a mob attacked the jail where he was being held with his brother Hyrum and murdered them both.”[35]

For decades, they enjoyed relative peace and political autonomy. As governor of the Utah territory, Young ran it as a virtual theocracy, which federal authorities initially accepted. Utah was far enough from Washington at that time, with its primitive communication and transportation, that there was little conflict. Young noted that, "If the people of the United States will let us alone for ten years," Young said, referring to federal authorities, "we will ask no odds of them." But westward expansion made federal authorities more interested in control of Utah, which was valuable as a railroad and telegraph connection point, and polygamy became an increasingly significant political issue with the rise of the Republican Party, which campaigned against it along with slavery in the late 1850s. There was an attempt by the federal government to replace Brigham Young with a non-Mormon territorial governor, but this was because some federal officials felt he did not respect their authority, and was possibly allying with Native Americans against them. After a period of significant tension that nearly exploded into a military conflict, the Civil War came to the rescue of Young’s authority. He offered to cooperate with the federal authorities in the war effort, and with the introduction of a more pressing political conflict, the authorities decided to accept the help and back off. While the Republican Party’s position on polygamy had not changed, and neither had the Mormons’, the issue of slavery took priority and the political conflict ceased for the duration of the war. President Abraham Lincoln did not enforce the the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act passed by Republicans in Congress, which has been described as “a symbolic assertion of federal power, not a realistic piece of anti-polygamy legislation.” [36]

Lincoln used a story that echoed Young’s sentiment to explain this approach:

“…when I was a boy on the farm in Illinois there was a great deal of timber on the farm which we had to clear away. Occasionally we would come to a log which had fallen down. It was too hard to split, too wet to burn, and too heavy to move, so we plowed around it. [That’s what I intend to do with the Mormons.] You go back and tell Brigham Young that if he will let me alone I will let him alone.”[37]

This cooperation worked for a while: Mormons celebrated Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and several Union victories, and their support for him increased throughout the war, and Lincoln was able to accept Mormons “as part of the American whole.” “Looking back, we can see that Lincoln and his administration took no steps whatsoever to enforce [anti-polygamy laws] in Utah,” and as a result of this political settlement, the Mormons were able to ignore it for fifteen years without major consequences.[38]

As the cases of the Calver family and Catholic immigrants show, sometimes, these disputes may be resolved by one group agreeing to assimilate into the local power structure. This removes the source of the conflict while allowing them to say in the community, if they are willing to surrender the commitments, religious or otherwise, that are connected to the conflict. As the frontier closed and federal authorities took more interest in controlling Utah and admitting it as a state, Mormons eventually had no choice but to change strategy. “By 1890, Mormons were hanging on by their fingernails,” and church leaders promised that “from now on, Mormons would obey the law of the land.” As one historian put it, “just as the nation had to deal with the issue of slavery to ensure its continuation, so did the Territory of Utah have to come to an understanding and acceptance of its relationship with the rest of the nation.” Another wrote that “the United States government used polygamy as a wrecking ball to destroy the old theocracy.” Church leaders denounced the practice of polygamy, and amnesty was granted to anyone who had previously practiced it. Utah was made a state, fully integrated into the broader U.S. political community.[39]

            Through the three different case studies, Protestants, to Catholics, and Mormons, we see that in American history, religious violence has not been caused mainly by disputes over religious doctrine, but competition for political control over territory and the people within it. Therefore, religious conflicts often lasted a long time before suddenly breaking out into violence when they happened to become relevant to a politically salient issue, and ended when the rivalry was defused by means of exit or cooperation/assimilation, without the religious beliefs of either party having to change. A better understanding of these dynamics leads to a more accurate understanding of American history and political behavior.  

Works Cited

Ancestry. Newspapers.com Database.

Balmer, Randall. “Killing Jesus: Who Was the Real Pontius Pilate?” The New York Times. March 3, 2017. nytimes.com/2017/03/03/books/review/pontius-pilate-aldo-schiavone.html.

Biography.com Editors. “Pontius Pilate.” Biography. Accessed July 21, 2021. biography.com/religious-figure/pontius-pilate.

Coppins, McKay.“The Most American Religion.” The Atlantic. December 16, 2020. theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/01/the-most-american-religion/617263/.

History.com Editors. “New York Draft Riots.” History.com. April 16, 2021. history.com/topics/american-civil-war/draft-riots.

Klausen, J. “Room Enough: America, Natural Liberty, and Consent in Locke' Second Treatise.” The Journal of Politics, 69(3), 760-769. 2007. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2508.2007.00573.x.

Leyburn, James G. “The Scotch-Irish.” American Heritage. Vol. 22. Issue 1. December 1970. americanheritage.com/scotch-irish.

Loughery, John. “Dagger John: the bishop who built Irish America.” The Irish Times. March 14, 2018. irishtimes.com/culture/books/dagger-john-the-bishop-who-built-irish-america-1.3425444.

Pius X. “The Syllabus Of Errors.” 1864. papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9syll.htm.

Prioli, Carmine A.  “The Ursuline Outrage.” American Heritage. Volume 33. Issue 2. February/March 1982. americanheritage.com/ursuline-outrage.

Roberts, David. “The Brink of War.” Smithsonian Magazine. June 1, 2008. smithsonianmag.com/history/the-brink-of-war-48447228/.

Stone, Lyman. “Promise and peril: The history of American religiosity and its recent decline.” American Enterprise Institute. April 30, 2020. aei.org/research-products/report/promise-and-peril-the-history-of-american-religiosity-and-its-recent-decline/.

Wilkinson, Freddie. “The Protestant Reformation.” National Geographic. April 7, 2021. nationalgeographic.org/article/protestant-reformation/.

Woodger, Mary Jane. “Abraham Lincoln and the Mormons,” in Civil War Saints, ed. Kenneth L. Alford (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2012).

[1] Lyman Stone, “Promise and peril: The history of American religiosity and its recent decline,” American Enterprise Institute, April 30, 2020, p. 39, aei.org/research-products/report/promise-and-peril-the-history-of-american-religiosity-and-its-recent-decline/.
[2] See ibid., p. 34.
[3] See Biography.com Editors, “Pontius Pilate,” Biography, accessed July 21, 2021, biography.com/religious-figure/pontius-pilate; Randall Balmer, “Killing Jesus: Who Was the Real Pontius Pilate?,” The New York Times, March 3, 2017, nytimes.com/2017/03/03/books/review/pontius-pilate-aldo-schiavone.html.
[4] Balmer, “Killing Jesus: Who Was the Real Pontius Pilate?”
[5] See ibid.; Biography.com Editors, “Pontius Pilate.”
[6] See Freddie Wilkinson, “The Protestant Reformation,” National Geographic, April 7, 2021, nationalgeographic.org/article/protestant-reformation/; James G. Leyburn, “The Scotch-Irish,” American Heritage, Vol. 22, Issue 1, December 1970, americanheritage.com/scotch-irish.
[7] Stone, p. 29
[8]  Ibid., p. 34.
[9] J. Klausen, “Abstract,” “Room Enough: America, Natural Liberty, and Consent in Locke' Second Treatise,” The Journal of Politics, 69(3), p. 760-769, 2007, doi:10.1111/j.1468-2508.2007.00573.x.
[10] Stone, p. 34.
[11] See ibid., p. 29-31, 34.
[12] Leyburn, “The Scotch-Irish.”
[13] See Stone, p. 34-37.
[14] Ibid., p. 36-37.
[15] Ibid., p. 33; John Loughery, “Dagger John: the bishop who built Irish America,” The Irish Times, March 14, 2018, irishtimes.com/culture/books/dagger-john-the-bishop-who-built-irish-america-1.3425444; History.com Editors, “New York Draft Riots,” History.com, April 16, 2021, history.com/topics/american-civil-war/draft-riots.  
[16] See Pope Pius X, “The Syllabus Of Errors,” 1864, papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9syll.htm.
[17] Loughery, “Dagger John: the bishop who built Irish America.”
[18] Stone, p. 37.
[19] Ibid., p. 39.
[20] Carmine A. Prioli, “The Ursuline Outrage,” American Heritage, Volume 33, Issue 2, February/March 1982, americanheritage.com/ursuline-outrage.
[21] Stone, p. 36-37.
[22] Prioli, “The Ursuline Outrage.”
[23] Stone, p. 31.
[24] See Loughery, “Dagger John: the bishop who built Irish America.”
[25] History.com Editors, “New York Draft Riots.”
[26] Boston Evening Transcript, October 17, 1863, p. 4, Newspapers.com.
[27] Baltimore Sun, July 16, 1863, p. 1, Newspapers.com.
[28] Stone, p. 37.
[29] See, for example, Loughery, “Dagger John: the bishop who built Irish America”; Baltimore Sun, July 16, 1863.
[30] Stone, p. 37.
[31] Ibid.
[32] See Mary Jane Woodger, “Abraham Lincoln and the Mormons,” in Civil War Saints, ed. Kenneth L. Alford (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2012), p. 61–81, n2; McKay Coppins, “The Most American Religion,” The Atlantic, December 16, 2020, theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/01/the-most-american-religion/617263/.
[33] Stone, p. 37.
[34] Coppins, “The Most American Religion.”
[35] Ibid.
[36] See, for example, ibid.; Woodger, “Abraham Lincoln and the Mormons”; David Roberts, “The Brink of War,” Smithsonian Magazine, June 1, 2008, smithsonianmag.com/history/the-brink-of-war-48447228/.
[37] Quoted in Woodger, “Abraham Lincoln and the Mormons.”
[38] Ibid.
[39] Ibid.