ShmoopTube

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We speak student!

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by a stinging sense of humor.

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All right, give this excerpt a quick look.

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[ mumbles ]

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[ mumbling continues ] All right. Bill Penn.

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And the question:

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In the New England colonies in the mid-to-late 17th century,

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the freedoms described in the excerpt above were generally...

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what?

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And here are your potential answers.

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Okay, let's start out by figuring out exactly what

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kinds of freedoms William Penn was talking about here.

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There's a bit about

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"power in reverence with the people."

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And also that people "may be free by their

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just obedience."

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Huh.

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Which basically means that people should be able to

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participate in their government and have a say

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in how their lives are lived.

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Well, no wonder they named a state after that guy.

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Yeah, he's pretty good.

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So we just need to figure out

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who in the New England colonies actually had

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access to those freedoms.

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Were those rights A - extended to worshippers of all faiths?

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Well, you'd like to think so, but even though British colonists

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fled to America to escape religious persecution

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in their home country,

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they were pretty intolerant toward people who didn't agree with them.

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That's right. If you didn't believe in Jesus Christ,

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there was pretty good chance you could be executed. Hmm.

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Talk about Philly fanatics.

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Yeah. So that knocks out A. Thank you, Brits.

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All right. Were those freedoms B - available only for

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Quakers and Mennonites?

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Well, there were a lot of Quakers and Mennonites

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in the Pennsylvania colony, but remember,

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this question is asking us about all of New England.

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And the other colonists really didn't like the Quakers.

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So much so that in 1660,

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four Quakers were executed in Massachusetts for heresy.

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So that eliminates B, as well.

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So then were these freedoms C -

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rejected by Catholics and Jews?

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Hmm.

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Well, that doesn't really make sense at all,

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especially because those religious minorities

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would want these kinds of freedoms in the first place.

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So that's a no-go on C.

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Which must mean these freedoms D -

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were limited to Protestants

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and small pockets of other Christian denominations.

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And that makes sense, right?

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All those Puritans that were escaping religious

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persecution - they only wanted freedoms extended

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to people who were just like them:

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white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant.

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Yeah. WASP.

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So D is the right answer.

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Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase,

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"hive mentality."

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[ trumpet ]

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