ST. MARY'S CITY — The Maryland General Assembly passed "An Act Concerning Religion" in 1649 in St. Mary's City. This legislation, known as the Toleration Act, aimed to maintain peace among settlers of competing Christian faiths.
The Toleration Act granted legal protections only to Trinitarian Christians who acknowledged the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It excluded legal protections for Quakers, Unitarians, Jews, and followers of Native American faiths. "It has progressive language within it, but it also has religious exclusions for non-Trinitarian Christians, Unitarians, and Jews," said Fatimah Fanusie, a religious historian and director of the Civic Leaders Fellowship program at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore.
Anna Majeski, the Lilly Endowment curator of religious history for the Maryland Center for History and Culture, stated that the act was an experiment. "This was an experiment born out of pragmatism. They knew they needed people of other faiths to populate the colony. The only way to do that was tolerance," Majeski said. In 1654, Puritan settlers in Maryland overthrew the provincial government and repealed the Toleration Act. Control of Maryland's provincial government shifted between Catholics and Protestants repeatedly over the subsequent four decades.
The Toleration Act was permanently repealed in 1692. Fanusie said, "The 1649 act is the opening of a 200-year argument about religious liberty." She added, "We're still having that 200-year argument today, but I do think we have moved significantly beyond the types of exclusions – at least legally – that existed in the 17th century." Peter Friesen, director of education at Historic St. Mary's City, said, "To me, it's always important to remind people that rights can come and rights can go. It's up to us to keep our rights and to fight for them and to be diligent with our rights, because as soon as you take them from other people, then it's easier to take them from more people."
Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, and Leonard Calvert, who were both Catholics, established the Maryland colony. They intended the colony to serve as a refuge for Catholics facing persecution in England. Settlers arrived in Maryland in 1635. St. Mary's City operated as a port town on the Chesapeake Bay, and tobacco served as the primary cash crop for the colony. The site of the former provincial governor's residence is currently an archaeological site. Historic St. Mary's City has reconstructed a chapel, inns, and the State House on their original footprints.