2018/08/28 by Samuel D Stabler, Samuel D. Stabler
Social Sciences · #American Constitutional Law and Politics #Religion and Society Interactions #Religion, Society, and Development
paper · doi:10.1093/socrel/sry030
crossref issued 2018/08/28 · crossref published 2018/08/28 · crossref published-online 2018/08/28 · openalex publication_date 2018/08/28 · crossref created 2018/08/29 · crossref published-print 2019/05/24 · crossref deposited 2024/07/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06 · crossref indexed 2026/07/29
Sociologists argue that religious diversity motivates violent conflict and the embrace of religious tolerance in response. These accounts struggle to explain the histories of two coterminous Puritan ventures: Massachusetts, where religious intolerance became a legal norm, and Providence Island, a colony in the West Indies where religious infighting undercut the church-state. Drawing settlers from the same religious circles, both faced conflicts about the religious state’s management of territory and banishment. Existing accounts overlook how the difference in territorial size between the colonies altered these debates. Weakened by a massive frontier, leadership in Massachusetts urged that religious toleration could be avoided through the territorial division of spiritual authority and limited confederation. In contrast, Providence Island’s size precluded such divisions, and interaction among the settlers propelled religious conflict. Although frontiers are often theorized as refuge for religious dissenters, this account demonstrates that there are also contexts where frontiers can reinforce religious orthodoxy.