PURITAN NATION:

Because it is such a useful resource, every college and university library should own a copy of Disestablishment and Religious Dissent. But it also should be read by anyone who works on religious liberty or church-state relations in early America. Unlike many scholars, Esbeck and Den Hartog carefully define important terms, starting with "establishment" itself. They contend that establishments include one or more of the following features:

Government financial support of the state church: assessments to pay ministers and rents from glebe lands.

Government control over the creeds, order of worship, polity, and clerical appointments of the state church. . . .

Mandatory attendance at worship services in the state church, prohibitions on church services by others, and required licensure to open a meeting house for nonconformists.

Use of the state church to record births, marriages, and deaths; to perform all marriages and funerals; and to administer tax revenues for the care of the poor and widows. . . .

Religious tests. Public office and voting rights confined to members of the state church or a broader test to include nonconformists.

This definition is similar to one offered by Michael W. McConnell in an influential 2003 article, but theirs is derived from the book's 20 substantive chapters. It is worth emphasizing this nuanced definition because far too many scholars simplistically equate establishments with financial support for churches.

Esbeck and Den Hartog's definition of "establishment" makes it difficult to offer neat, tidy dates for when states disestablished religion. For instance, many states retained religious tests for civic offices and prohibitions on ministers holding civic office well into the 19th century, and a few maintained them until they were declared to be unconstitutional in Torcaso v. Watkins (1961) and McDaniel v. Paty (1978).

The Virginia General Assembly, on the other hand, banned religious tests for civic offices when it passed Thomas Jefferson's Statute for Religious Liberty in 1786. But it did not repeal a law "whereby the general assembly made ecclesiastical decisions on behalf of the Episcopalian Church" until 1787. It is thus not unreasonable to conclude, contrary to many scholars and popular authors, that Virginia disestablished its state church in 1787 rather than 1786.

Even more interesting, Ohio's 1802 constitution stated that "no man shall be compelled to attend, erect, or support any place of worship, or to maintain any ministry, against his consent," and that the:

laws shall be passed by the legislature which shall secure to each and every denomination of religious societies in each surveyed township, which now is or may hereafter be formed in the State, an equal participation, according to their number of adherents, of the profits arising from the land granted by Congress for the support of religion.

Acting upon this provision, the Ohio legislature passed laws directing revenue from "ministerial lands" to churches. These statutes were amended and revised, but they remained law until voters amended the state constitution in 1968.

Many of the book's chapters discuss ways in which states continued to favor some denominations and religions over others well into the 19th century. 

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