As delivered at the New York Public Library.

Thank you for that introduction.  I am honored by it, and by the opportunity to say a few words today about the extraordinary document that is the subject of this exhibition.

I am grateful to the New York Public Library, the New York State Archives, Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, and the exhibition’s other sponsors for giving us this special opportunity to view a marvelous historical document, and to reflect on its significance.

As we looked at the Remonstrance a few moments ago, I found myself thinking about how it combines time-bound and timeless characteristics.

The document on display today is a precious artifact of the past, fragile, charred by fire, written in words and phrases unlike our own, by people whose material circumstances were very different from ours.

In these respects, it is time-bound, rare and fascinating because of what it tells us about another period of history.

Yet, the principles that it expresses, in its words and indeed in the very act of publishing them, speak to timeless issues and principles relevant to every age, including our own.

I am a constitutional lawyer and a political theorist, not a historian, so I feel more qualified to reflect on the principles expressed in the Remonstrance, rather than on the time-bound circumstances of its making.

The Remonstrance used theological language to make claims that invoke what would later become two major themes of the American tradition of religious liberty:  conscience and equality.

The settlers who authored the Remonstrance asserted their right to act according to their conscience with regard to the Quakers. And they declared their responsibility to treat other faiths with the same respect that they would want for themselves.

They stated this principle in terms that are remarkably expansive if not perhaps fully comprehensive.  They specifically mentioned Jews, Turks, Egyptians, Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and Quakers—though, as others have pointed out, they conspicuously omitted any mention of Catholics.

The settlers also, in their claims and by the sheer fact of asserting them, exemplified the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.

They asserted their right to act on the basis of conscience in the face of executive authority wielded by Peter Stuyvesant, then the Director-General of New Netherland.  And they demonstrated their right and responsibility to speak up for what they believe.

That took real courage, for they risked retaliation from the Director-General.  And he did indeed retaliate.  The magistrates who signed the document were imprisoned and forced to recant their position. They were fined, and Stuyvesant created a new day of mandatory prayer to squelch what he called the “abominable heresy” of the Quakers.[1]

The climate became more tolerant within a few years.  In 1663, the Dutch West India Company directed Stuyvesant to stop persecuting Quakers, though the Company’s arguments arguably had more to do with its desire to attract immigrant labor than with principles of religious freedom.[2]  And of course the American Constitution eventually incorporated principles related to those asserted in the Flushing Remonstrance.

I wish I could tell you a tidy story in which the Remonstrance helped to bring about greater freedom in seventeenth century New York or contributed to the Bill of Rights.  I am not sure, however, that either of those claims is true; in any event, as I said earlier, I am a lawyer, not a historian.

I will therefore close with the following observations.

The first I owe to the historian Russell Shorto, a leading expert on Dutch New York, who suggests that the story of the Flushing Remonstrance “reminds us that freedom of religion is in a constant struggle with fear of the other, that basic rights are never secure, but are only upheld by constant vigilance.”[3]

To his wise comments, I would add this:   The timebound document that we see this evening is old and fragile, but it nevertheless shines with the vital and timeless strength of people who long ago understood that citizenship demands that we speak up, not only for our own rights, but—as they did—for the rights of others.

May their courage be a beacon to us as we contemplate our own responsibilities and confront our own challenges.

[1] https://tif.ssrc.org/2014/01/15/the-forgotten-story-of-the-flushing-remonstrance/; See also Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World 263-64 (Vintage Books 2005); Russell Shorto, “New Amsterdam Figured Out Religious Tolerance 361 Years Ago,” The New York Times (June 27, 2018).

[2] Id.

[3] Shorto, “New Amsterdam Figured Out Religious Tolerance.”