Albany, NY -- The first petition for the need for religious toleration in New York, the Flushing Remonstrance, will be the subject of an evening lecture, Thursday, October 11 at 7 p.m. in the State Education Department’s Cultural Education Center, Empire State Plaza on Madison Avenue in Albany. The program will begin at 7:00 p.m.
In a rare opportunity, a copy of the Flushing Remonstrance, taken from the minutes of the 1657 Dutch Colonial Council, will be on display that evening. This document, part of the collections of the New York State Archives, has only been available for public viewing twelve times since 1945. The Flushing Remonstrance has been the subject of an unprecedented amount of statewide attention in this the 350th year since the document’s signing.
The Flushing Remonstrance was written in 1657 by citizens of Flushing, Queens to protest a decree prohibiting Quakers from worshipping in the Dutch colony of New Netherland. The grievance was addressed to Peter Stuyvesant, director general of the colony, who had banned members of “that abominable sect” from practicing their faith.
During the course of the evening, the participants will consider the struggle of colonists to win religious tolerance in New Netherland and examine the Flushing Remonstrance, held by some legal scholars to have influenced the principles codified in 1791 in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Given the background of some of America’s foremost authorities on religious tolerance, the program will additionally consider the importance of religious tolerance in American society and worldwide.
Panel participants for the program include:Dr. Charles Gehring, director of the New Netherland Project and one of the world’s foremost experts on the 17th century Dutch in New York;
Ambassador Robert A. Seiple, the first U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom and president and CEO of the Council for America’s First Freedom in Richmond, VA; and
Dr. Charles C. Haynes, senior scholar on religious liberty in American public life at the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center in Arlington, VA and a nationally syndicated columnist on religion in America.
The program will be moderated by Times Union editor-in-chief and nationally syndicated radio personality Rex Smith.
This program is sponsored by the New York State Archives, Archives Partnership Trust and the New York State Historical Association. It is being generously supported by the New York Council for the Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities and Archives Partnership Trust board member Barbara Brinkley.
Due to expected overwhelming interest to this public event, reserved seating
is limited. For reservations contact (518) 486-9349.