Massive Civil Disobedience as a Baptist Tactic in 1773
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2730372 |
|---|---|
| Authors | William G Mcloughlin (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1969 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 710 |
| Publication date | 1969-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0678 • E-ISSN: 1080-6490 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2711604 |
| OpenAlex | W2324110563 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
Boston Massacre, the Baptists of New England launched a remarkable protest for religious liberty which has been all but forgotten by historians. It was the year 1773, the year of the Boston Tea Party-one of the most celebrated examples of violent civil disobedience in our history. But the protest of the Baptists employed a different tactic, a calculated policy of massive, non-violent civil disobedience. And they used it not against the king and Parliament, but against the legislature and people of Massachusetts to fill the Massachusetts jails, disrupt the established system and focus the attention of the whole world upon unjust discriminations against a persecuted religious minority. Appropriating the slogan of the Sons of Liberty (to make the tactic even more embarrassing to the Patriots), the Baptists claimed that they were fighting for No Taxation without Representation. Only it was a tax levied by their neighbors and not by Parliament which they were protesting-taxes collected annually from all inhabitants of the province for the support of the ministers and the maintenance of the meetinghouses of the favored Congregational churches. Thoreauvians before Thoreau, the Baptists fought for liberty of conscience by a method which had once brought hanging to an earlier group of protestants in Massachusettsthe Quakers. In 1773 refusal to obey the laws for the support of the established church would not bring hanging, but the Baptists could certainly expect imprisonment, distraint of their property and harassment of their families. The nerves of the people of New England were taut in the fall of 1773. Relations with the king and Parliament had gone from bad to worse since 1770, and with the colonies on the eve of their war for independence it was hardly a propitious moment for this noisy minority of Baptists to put their own personal grievances above the general welfare of the colony
Art · Civil disobedience · Political science · Politics · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Religious Studies
| Citations per year | 0.11 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2008 - 2011 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |