THE QUEEN, GROUNATION & RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE?

Today the 21^st April 2011 is Queen Elizabeth II’s 85^th birthday. She was born in 1926 the same year as Marilyn Monroe, Chuck Berry, Mel Brooks and Caroline Middleton DeCamp Benn, a.k.a. Viscountess Stansgate, who was an educationalist, writer, and wife of the British Labour politician Tony Benn. Ms Benn was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. I do not know where her second name of Middleton comes from, or if she is any relation of the prospective daughter-in-law. Ms Kate would be lucky if she were. Caroline Benn was by all accounts a remarkable woman, author and educationalist who devoted her life to education.

The Queen also shares the 21^st April as a birthday with Charlotte Bronte, John Mortimer and Elaine May.

The 21^st April is also an important Rastafarian holy day. It is Grounation Day. It is celebrated in honour of Haile Selassie’s 1966 visit to Jamaica. On that day, some 100,000 Rastafari from all over Jamaica descended on Palisadoes Airport in Kingston, having heard that he was coming to visit them. They waited at the airport playing drums and smoking large quantities of marijua
Also on the 21st April 1649, the Maryland Toleration Act, which allegedly provided for freedom of worship for all Christians, was passed by the Maryland Assembly.

A large broadside reprint of the Maryland Toleration Act

The Preamble of the Act as pictured above reads:

A   L A W

OF

M A R Y L A N D

Concerning

R E L I G I O N

Forasmuch as in a well governed and Christian Commonwealth, matters concerning Religion and the Honour of God ought to be in the first place to be taken into serious consideration, and endeavoured to bee settled. Be it therefore Ordained and Enacted by the Right Honourable Caecilius Lord Baron of Baltemore, absolute Lord and Proprietary of this Province with the Advice and Consent of the Upper and Lower House of this General Assembly, That whatsoever person or persons within this Province and the Islands thereunto belonging, shall from henceforth blaspheme God, that is curse him; or deny our Saviour JESUS CHRIST to be the Son of God; or shall deny the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son & Holy Ghost; or the Godhead of any of the said Three Persons of the Trinity, or the Unity of the Godhead, or shall use or utter any reproachful speeches, words, or language concerning the Holy Trinity, or any of the said three Persons thereof, shall be punished with death, and confiscation or forfeiture of all his or her Lands and Goods to the Lord Proprietary and his Heirs.

Cæcillius Calvert,

The Maryland Toleration Act, also known as the Act Concerning Religion, was a law mandating religious tolerance for Trinitarian Christians. Passed on 21 April, 1649 by the assembly of the Maryland Colony.  Charles I granted the charter for Maryland, a proprietary colony of about twelve million acres, to Cæcillius Calvert, 2^nd Baron Baltimore in the Peerage of Ireland, on 20^th June, 1632. Lord Baltimore wished to create a haven for English Catholics in the new world at the time of the European wars of religion. It was, purportedly, the second law requiring religious tolerance in the British North American colonies and created the first legal limitations on hate speech in the world.

Historians argue that it helped inspire later legal protections for freedom of religion in the United States.

The Act allowed freedom of worship for all Trinitarian Christians in Maryland, but sentenced to death anyone who denied the divinity of Jesus.  Although Charles I granted the charter to Calvert in 1632, the Toleration Act was only made law on the 21^st April 1949, by which time the unfortunate Charles had been executed in London on the 30^th January of that year and the United Kingdom was in the hands of Oliver Cromwell. In 1654, only five years after its passage, the Act was repealed. Two years earlier, the colony had been seized by Protestants following the execution of the King and the outbreak of the English Civil War. In the early stages of that conflict, the colonial assembly of Maryland and its neighbors in Virginia had publicly declared their support for the King. Parliament appointed Protestant commissioners loyal to their cause to subdue the colonies, and two of them, the Virginian William Claiborne and Puritan leader Richard Bennett, took control of the colonial government in St. Mary's City in 1652. In addition to repealing the Maryland Toleration Act with the assistance of Protestant assemblymen, Claiborne and Bennett passed a new law barring Catholics from openly practicing their religion. Calvert regained control after making a deal with the colony's Protestants, and in 1658 the Act was again passed by the colonial assembly. This time, it would last more than thirty years, until 1692.

The Maryland Toleration Act was designed as an act of tolerance, allowing specific religious groups to practice their religion without being punished, but retaining the ability to revoke that right at any time. It also only granted tolerance to Christians who believed in the Trinity. The law was very explicit in limiting its effects to Christians;

...noe person or persons...professing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall from henceforth be any waies troubled, Molested or discountenanced for or in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise thereof within this Province

—Maryland Toleration Act, 1649

Settlers who blasphemed by denying either the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus Christ could be punished by execution or the seizure of their lands. That meant that Jews, Unitarians, and other dissenters from Trinitarian Christianity were practicing their religions at risk to their lives. Any person who insulted the Virgin Mary, the apostles, or the evangelists could be whipped, jailed, or fined. Otherwise, Trinitarian Christians' right to worship was protected. The law outlawed the use of "heretic" and other religious insults against them. This attempt to limit the use of religious slurs and insults has been described as the first attempt in the world to limit the use of hate speech.

It is claimed that as the first law on religious tolerance in the British North America, it influenced related laws in other colonies and portions of it were echoed in the writing of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which enshrined religious freedom in American law.

Although how you get from:

 “…whatsoever person or persons...shall…blaspheme God, that is curse him; or deny our Saviour JESUS CHRIST to be the Son of God; or shall deny the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son & Holy Ghost;…shall be punished with death…”

 to:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

is a bit of a stretch for some of us.