Denying Maryland’s claim to having introduced religious liberty into the New World, the tercentenary of which is now being planned, B. H. Hartogensis, Baltimore Jewish attorney and historian, in a letter in Sunday’s New York Times, presents evidence to show that not only is this claim unfounded but that the very opposite is the case, even up to the present day.
Crediting Roger Williams in Rhode Island with first having sponsored religious liberty in the New World, Mr. Hartogensis points out that it was not until 1819 that Catholics were absolved from taking the oaths of abjuration and abhorence as the test of office and that Jews fell under the same exclusion until 1825.
Saying that it “is time that this mis representation be broadcast everywhere as bunk,” Mr. Hartogensis notes that in Maryland “the test of office is upon the ‘faith of a Christian,’ with exception for Jews, who will announce their belief in future rewards and punishments; those of all other creeds and non-believers and atheists alike are excluded from offices of public trust, despite the federal constitution.
“Witnesses and jurors alike are disqualified if unbelieving in a God who will regard and punish; blasphemy, denial of Christ in the very language of the above edict of ‘toleration’ of 1649 is punishable severely; Sunday, ‘the Christians’ Sabbath, the Lord’s Day, is established in commemoration of the rise of our Saviour from the grave’; religiously consecrated marriages alone are legal and not civil or contract marriages, although the state grants civil divorces.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
