Flushing's Freedom

Walking down the main thoroughfares of Flushing is a good way to consolidate a survey course on American religious history into one afternoon.

There are churches, temples, synagogues, and mosques dedicated to every faith and denomination imaginable within a square mile of this Queens neighborhood. In fact, long before it was home to the Mets and the country's biggest tennis tournament, Flushing was where the concept of American Religious Freedom first took root.

Ever hear of the Flushing Remonstrance? It's a document that turns 350 years old next month. It's true that the Pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving in Massachusetts. But we have the 17th century colonial settlers of Flushing — the authors of this Remonstrance — to thank for the holiday's uniquely interfaith nature and the religious freedom Americans enjoy to this day.

The mid-17th century was a challenging time for the Dutch West India Company, the enterprise that governed New Amsterdam. English colonists had established themselves in Virginia and Boston — and were gaining footholds closer to New Amsterdam on both sides.

Although the colonial government followed the authority of the Dutch Reformed Church, leaders of New Amsterdam granted a charter to a group of English families to settle an area of Long Island called Vlishing. (The English called it Flushing.)

These English settlers, mostly Quakers, were fleeing the religious persecution of their country's Puritan colonies. It was a bit of a 17th-century public relations coup for the Dutch to allow them to settle nearby.

But things changed when "Peg-leg" Peter Stuyvesant became governor. After a decade of persecution, the Flushing colony argued with Stuyvesant that their Dutch charter included the idea of a "Liberty of Conscience." All men of faith, they reasoned, should be allowed to give thanks to God — even if it weren't in a Dutch Reformed Church.

In the 1657 document, the residents of Flushing wrote: "Wee desire therefore in this case not to judge least we be judged, neither to condemn least we be condemned, but rather let every man stand or fall to his own Master. Wee are bounde by the law to do good unto all men, especially to those of the household of faith." For these Quakers, a household of faith was all-inclusive. Their Remonstrance argued that everyone in the Flushing colony, which had grown to include Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Jews, Roman Catholics, and even Muslims, should be free to follow their own religious traditions.

After lots of haggling, the families of Flushing got their way. The fall of New Amsterdam to the English in 1664 certainly didn't hurt, either. In some ways, the persecution by the new English overlords overshadowed their Dutch predecessors.

But the Flushing Remonstrance served as proof that a good citizen does not necessarily have to worship in the same church as the sovereign. A professor of history at Touro College, Ronald Brown, frequently leads walking tours of Flushing that show how this ideal continues some 350 years later.

Mr. Brown points out Sikh temples and blossoming Hindu congregations. There are many types of Buddhist and Muslim communities taking hold. Long after Jews from Germany settled the area, Jews from Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine followed with their own synagogues. Christian Scientists have a reading room there, and many different types of Eastern Orthodox Christians have erected dazzling churches.

In St. George's Episcopal Church of Flushing, a stained glass window is dedicated to the Right Reverend Samuel Seabury, an 18th century rector of that church who had to go as far as Aberdeen, Scotland to be ordained as a bishop — a rite that the bitter English clergy had refused to perform for the newly independent American church after the Revolutionary War.

It's no wonder that Bishop Seabury lived for a time in Flushing, according to Mr. Brown. The Quaker signers of the Remonstrance in 1657 set the stage for bold actions of clergymen like him. And it's because of this religious liberty that Americans give thanks this Thursday as one nation, each in his own way.

Mr. Akasie contributes to The New York Sun.