William Penn's 'radical' document marks 300th anniversary
By The Associated Press
10.31.01
PHILADELPHIA — Three hundred years ago, William Penn signed a document containing some radical ideas: freedom of religion, separation of church and state, and representative government.
The Charter of Privileges of 1701 provided all that for residents of the Pennsylvania Colony and served as a model for many governments — including the yet-to-be-born United States of America.
When Penn put pen to paper, Britain was still reeling from its religious civil war, France had recently expelled its Protestant population and four Quakers had been executed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony for practicing a "deviant" religion.
But the Charter of Privileges affirmed that residents of Penn's new colony could worship as they chose. There would be no established religion. An elected assembly would have the right to meet and legislate as it chose.
"The Charter of Privileges was critical for the establishment of religious liberty and the model for a lot of other governments, including our own," said Robert S. Cox of the American Philosophical Society. The charter is one of the most important documents preserved at the society, he said.
"I doe hereby Grant and Declare that noe person ... shall be in any case molested or prejudiced ... because of his or theire Conscientious perswasion or practice nor be compelled to frequent or mentein any Religious Worship place or Ministry contrary to his or theire mind," Penn wrote in Gothic script.
The charter, dated Oct. 28, 1701, also set up an elected, unicameral Assembly to prepare bills, vote them into law, elect its own officers and decide when and for how long it would be in session.
The society calls the charter "the most famous of all colonial constitutions," and noted that many of the other colonies did not enjoy Pennsylvania's religious freedoms until the American Revolution.
Evan Haefeli, a lecturer in the history department at Princeton University, cautions that the Charter of Privileges is an imperfect document by modern standards.
For one thing, protections were given only to those residents who "confess and acknowledge one Almighty God," excluding polytheistic religions, let alone atheists or agnostics, and restricted government office to Christians. And since a Protestant king had returned to the English throne, Catholics were implicitly prohibited from serving in the colonial government.
"Penn didn't want to sign it," Haefeli said in a telephone interview last week. "He viewed the charter as a retreat" from his vision of an ecumenical utopia, established in 1682 as a haven for Quakers, but open to all faiths.
Many Quakers feared an attempt by Anglicans to establish themselves as the colony's official denomination, and drafted the charter to ensure that Quakers could never be excluded from Pennsylvania government.
Seventy-five years later, Pennsylvania's refusal to establish an official religion set a model for the framers of the U.S. government, Haefeli said. "It compelled religious freedom on a national level," she said.
Peggy Morscheck, director of the Quaker Information Center at the American Friends Service Committee, calls the charter an extraordinary document for its time.
"It has no equal," she said, as "the living embodiment of the separation of church and state ... and for expanding the whole concept of participatory government."
Morscheck said the 300th anniversary of the charter would be worth noting in any context, "but especially in light of the events of Sept. 11, it's something we as a nation need to lift up."
In 1751, a new bell was commissioned for the statehouse that most scholars believe was intended to honor the charter. Inscribed "Proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof," it is now called the Liberty Bell.