Official state church isn't the half of it. The Church collected the taxes and imposed severe fines. They banned other religions.
Here's a little Virginia history leading up to Mr. Jefferson's Virginia Bill for Religious Freedom. For instance, read the entries for 1632 and 1662 - and then go ahead and read all of them. John
From
www.sunnetworks.net/~ggarman/princip.html
1619--Act of the Assembly (colonial legislature). "All ministers shall duely read divine service and exercise their ministerial function according to the Ecclesiastical lawes and orders of the churche of Englande."
1624--Act of the Assembly. Anyone missing one Sunday service was fined one pound of tobacco; one month, fifty pounds. No one was allowed to sell crops until the minister had received his portion, and it had to come from the "first and best tobacco and corn."
1628--Proclamation of the Governor. Colonists were forbidden "to marry without lycence or asking in church."
1632--Act of the Assembly. All ministers were required to maintain complete uniformity to the teachings and constitution of the Church of England, and ministers were to receive from each family the twentieth calf, kid, and pig.
1642--Act of the Assembly. "All nonconformists upon notice of them shall be compelled to depart the collony with all conveniencie." "No ministers shall be admitted to officiate in this country, but such as shall produce to the governor a testimonial that he hath received his ordination from some bishop in England, and shall then subscribe, to be conformable to the orders and constitutions of the church of England, and the laws there established." The tithe tax, for ministers salaries, of ten pounds of tobacco and one bushel of corn was applied to "all youths of sixteen years of age as upwards, as also for all negro women at the age of sixteen years."
1660--Act of the Assembly. The captain of any ship bringing Quakers into the colony was fined 100 pounds, and all Quakers who did enter were to be expelled.
1661--Act of the Assembly. All parishes were required to furnish glebes, houses, and stock for ministers.
1662--Act of the Assembly. Ministers were required to prove that they were ordained by an English bishop, and all others were prohibited from teaching or preaching, publicly or privately.
Responsibility for administering church matters was given to vestrymen elected by the people of the parish. The vestries determined the amount of taxes (and tax rates) necessary for the minister's salary, other church expenses, and relief of the poor. Obviously, religion in colonial Virginia was established by law; and, because taxation was also a significant matter of law, vestrymen were usually wealthy politicians and often members of the House of Burgesses. In his 1910 book Separation of Church and State in Virginia --from which the historical information in this essay is taken, H. J. Eckenrode says: "The union of church and state put the church under a political control. ... The church was thoroughly subordinated to the state" (p. 14).
1727--Act of the Assembly. Ministerial salaries were set at 16,000 pounds of tobacco, each parish was required to provide 200 acres of land on which a parsonage was to be built, and vestrymen were authorized to levy taxes on the people of the parish to pay for the minister's house.
1754--Order of the Council. Clerymen were forbidden to hold the office of Justice of the Peace--a source of additional income.
1755 and 1758--Acts of the Assembly. Laws were passed "to enable the inhabitants of this colony to discharge their tobacco debts [to the clergy] in money" (rather than in the best of tobacco which could normally be sold for even more money). The Anglican clergy appealed to the Bishop of London whose influence prompted the King to veto the action of the Assembly. The general reaction in Virginia added to a growing resentment of both the clergy (as a tax burden) and the king (as a threat to home rule).
1763--A clergyman sued (The Parsons’ Cause) his vestry for lost income because of the Assembly's vetoed acts. Patrick Henry defended the vestrymen and argued that the king was guilty of tyranny in overturning a just law passed by English freemen. A jury composed of Virginians, including some Irish Presbyterians, awarded one penny in damages.
1771--A convention of Anglican clergymen resolved to petition the King of England for a Bishop to be appointed in Virginia. An increasingly anticlerical attitude, combined with a growing nationalism and an ever increasing number of dissenters, prompted even one Anglican to say, "I profess myself a sincere son of the established church, but I can embrace her Doctrines without approving of her Hierarchy, which I know to be a Relick of the Papal Incroachments." The state and the Anglicans were legally united in the colony, and the church was financially dependent on the state--vestrymen and legislators wanted to maintain control of both.
1776--The Declaration of Independence declared civil freedom from the laws of England and its King, and on December 9, 1776, the legislature of Virginia suspended payment of taxes for support of the Anglican clergy. This was a major first step toward total disestablishment of the Anglicans in Virginia, but the controversy was not over; many laws respecting religion continued to exist.
June 2, 1779--Thomas Jefferson's "Bill for Religious Freedom" was introduced; it objected to establishment of religion by law or by required tax support for religion: "The impious presumptions of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world." Petitions for and against Jefferson’s bill were drafted.
