Governing “Jews, Heathens, and Other Dissenters” in the British Atlantic World, Shari Rabin
The 1669 Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina imagined Jews in the new colony before any had arrived there. Writing less than fifteen years after Jews were readmitted to England, Anthony Ashley Cooper and his secretary, a young John Locke, wrote that “Jews, heathens, and other dissenters from the purity of the Christian religion” would be allowed to worship freely. This paper will consider this document and the place of Jews in British colonial governance - in Carolina, Barbados, and Georgia - in order to shed new light on the Atlantic history of “religion” and religious freedom.
Respondent: Tobias Brinkmann, Penn State University